Okta Launches Enhanced Free Developer Edition

During its Oktane21 conference, Okta, a leading platform for authentication and identity management, unveiled a new developer edition. This offering is available at no cost and boasts fewer restrictions alongside support for a considerably larger number of monthly active users compared to its previous free plan.

Expanded Capabilities with Okta Starter Developer Edition

The newly introduced ‘Okta Starter Developer Edition’ empowers developers to scale their applications to accommodate up to 15,000 monthly active users. This represents a significant increase from the 1,000 user limit of the existing free version.

Furthermore, the company is releasing improved documentation, a collection of sample applications, and updated SDKs. These SDKs now encompass a wider range of programming languages and frameworks, including Go, Java, JavaScript, Python, Vue.js, React Native, and Spring Boot.

A Holistic Approach to Developer Needs

“Our primary aim isn’t simply to deliver a suite of authentication and authorization services,” explained Diya Jolly, Okta’s chief product officer. “We are focused on providing app developers with a robust foundation to quickly implement authorization and authentication as an integral component of their projects.”

Jolly emphasized Okta’s unique position in this space, highlighting its ability to offer not only tools for managing authorization and access but also systems for securing microservices and granting applications access to privileged resources.

Image Credits: Okta

Strategic Alignment with Auth0 Acquisition

It is important to note that Okta’s planned acquisition of Auth0, while still pending, will further strengthen its developer strategy. This is due to Auth0’s inherent focus on a developer-centric approach.

Enhanced Features in the Free Developer Edition

The company discovered that developers required greater access to the service’s functionalities during the initial prototyping stages. Consequently, the new free Developer Edition includes support for features like multi-factor authentication, machine-to-machine tokens, and B2B integrations.

In addition to the expanded user capacity, the free edition offers broader support for integrations within existing development toolchains.

As is typical with enterprise-level tools, the free edition does not include the comprehensive support options available with paid plans and has lower rate limits.

Potential for Production Use

Jolly acknowledged that a small or medium-sized business could potentially develop and deploy applications into a production environment utilizing this new free plan.

“A limit of 15,000 monthly active users is substantial, and aligns well with the requirements of smaller business applications and true SMBs,” Jolly stated. “Our goal is to encourage developers to experiment with the platform and then upgrade as their needs evolve. A free offering that allows for exploration and experimentation is crucial for attracting developers.”

Image Credits: Okta

Supporting the Entire Application Lifecycle

The company has invested significant effort in understanding how to best support developers throughout the entire application development lifecycle.

This includes the development of improved command-line interface (CLI) tools for developers who prefer to operate outside of Okta’s web-based console, as well as additional integrations with tools such as Terraform, Kong, and Heroku.

“We’ve proactively integrated identity and Okta into these experiences, eliminating the need for developers to manually stitch things together – or rely on alternative identity solutions,” Jolly explained.

Availability

The new Okta Starter Developer Edition, along with the updated documentation, sample applications, and integrations, is now accessible at developer.okta.com.