UrbanSitter’s voyage into B2B meant that they needed to add SSO and MFA without taxing their internal development teams.
The Problem
UrbanSitter is a company that connects families with babysitters. As they have grown, UrbanSitter has started offering their service in a B2B model so companies can provide UrbanSitter as a perk for employees. Taking advantage of this B2B expansion meant they needed to add better security to the login process, especially since children and caregiving was involved. Their B2B customers required features like single sign-on (SSO) and multi-factor authentication (MFA).
UrbanSitter’s home-grown auth couldn’t meet these new needs. It worked fine for everyday use, but it wasn’t flexible or secure enough for B2B customers. These companies had strict security rules and UrbanSitter’s DIY authentication system would need significant retooling to meet their demands.
UrbanSitter’s main goal is connecting families with childcare, not building complex login systems.
Building a whole new system from scratch would have taken too much time and pulled their developers away from their main job. UrbanSitter’s main goal is connecting families with childcare, not building complex login systems. They needed a solution that was reliable, secure, and would work well with their current setup.
The Solution
After looking at several options, UrbanSitter chose FusionAuth to solve their problem. FusionAuth offered what they needed without requiring extensive work from their dev team. It could handle the tough security demands of their business customers without impacting their own work.
FusionAuth was a good fit because it could easily work with UrbanSitter’s current system which ran on Kubernetes via Google Cloud. It also offered the features like SSO and MFA that their business clients wanted. Another big plus was that UrbanSitter could host FusionAuth themselves instead of being in a shared environment. This flexibility meant that they kept control over sensitive data about families and sitters.
Lucas Whitman, UrbanSitter’s Chief Technology Officer, explained why FusionAuth’s flexibility was so important:
“FusionAuth let us add SSO for clients without changing how we work or disrupting our processes. Being able to host it ourselves was crucial for managing sensitive family and sitter data.”
The switch to FusionAuth didn’t take long. Whitman shared, “The whole migration process took about a week. That includes setting up the self-hosting and all the integration and testing.” Bulk Migration allowed UrbanSitter to move their existing users over without any breaks in service.
The Results
After switching to FusionAuth, UrbanSitter saw big improvements in how efficiently they work. They can now quickly set up SSO for their partners. This means the employees of their partners could log in to UrbanSitter’s platform as easily as they would log in to any of their other internal SaaS services, versus having to set up a separate login to take advantage of the service.
One of the best parts for UrbanSitter is how little work FusionAuth needs. Whitman said, “We rarely have to do anything with FusionAuth. It just works in the background, which is exactly what you want with a login system.” He also pointed out FusionAuth’s reliability:
“If FusionAuth goes down, our whole system will go down. So the fact that it’s so reliable is impressive and makes me very happy.”
Using FusionAuth has allowed UrbanSitter to grow its B2B services with confidence. Whitman explained that they work with other caregiving partners to provide different niches of care, and they have been able to use FusionAuth as a way to ease login across multiple partnerships “With just a click of a button they can navigate back and forth between us and the partner regardless of whichever side they start on, without having to log in several times.”
UrbanSitter especially appreciates how FusionAuth stays ahead of security issues. Whitman noted, “From what I see from the FusionAuth team, like posts from Daniel [DeGroff, FusionAuth CTO] and Brian [Pontarelli, FusionAuth CEO], they’re very proactive about security. They don’t just react to problems, they try to prevent them. That’s a big reason why we chose them.”
Looking to the future, Whitman is excited about how much more they can do with FusionAuth. He said, “We’re just scratching the surface with FusionAuth. There’s so much more we can grow into and so many more options for us to expand our login capabilities.”
The UrbanSitter team also called out the difference between working with FusionAuth and their experience with other companies:
“We work with a lot of technologies and a lot of partners. There’s a radical difference sometimes in the quality of the customer service and the interactions that you have with the humans on the other side. And so that’s another big piece that was big for me. Working with [FusionAuth] was great.”
The success UrbanSitter has had with FusionAuth shows how important it is for growing companies to choose the right tools. By picking a solution that fit their needs and could grow with them, UrbanSitter set themselves up for success. They solved their immediate problem of needing better security for business clients, but they also gave themselves room to expand in the future.
As more companies look to offer perks like UrbanSitter to their employees, having a robust, flexible login system will be crucial. UrbanSitter is now well-positioned to take advantage of this trend, thanks to their choice to let FusionAuth handle their authentication needs.
