What is Okta SSO? I Tested It So You Don't Have To

Last updated on November 18th, 2025 at 12:37 pm

Ok, I will be frank, I had heard about Okta SSO months earlier but had never tried it before. Everybody continued to say so it is the gold standard in terms of handling logins between apps, yet I needed to know whether or not it was as good as they claim.

And thus I registered their free trial and spent a weekend in the test. Here’s what happened.

Table of Contents

What is Okta SSO, Really?

There was searching of the dashboard that I had to do before I could comprehend anything. Okta SSO is literally a cloud-based service that allows you to use a single user to access multiple applications. Consider it a digital keychain, you auth with Okta once and it does the rest with Gmail, Slack, Salesforce, or whatever you are using.

Its technical name is the so-called federated identity, which is fancy to pronounce, yet simply means that Okta serves as an intermediary between you and your applications. On verification, it sends a token to every application indicating yes, this individual is genuine. Type in passwords no longer 47 times a day.

Establishing It: The Good and the Baffling.

I began with the Developer Edition of Okta where you are allowed to have a free trial to play around. The first thing I noticed? The interface is user friendly and it has a learning curve unless one is conversant with SSO.

The Protocol Puzzle

Okta allows channeling three primary connection formats to apps:

OIDC (OpenID Connect): Contemporary and lightweight, does well with modern day apps.
SAML: The time-tested one- The XML-based, always there, enterprise entity.
SWA (Secure Web Authentication): The Backup solution by Okta used with applications that do not support SSO by default.

To begin with, I have attempted to connect a few test applications using OIDC since Okta suggests it to be used with new installations. The initial integration I made was not so bad and took me about 15 minutes. SAML? That was where real-life set in. You are working with API keys, XML configurations and much copy-pasting metadata URLs.

The thing is here: it takes manual effort to configure a SAML per app. When you decide to hook up dozens of applications, you will need to be patient or find a person who is skilled.

What I Actually Liked

Effective Multi-Factor Authentication.

The MFA setup impressed me. I turned on the Okta Verify feature on my phone and set the preferences such that it will demand the use of biometrics to access high-risk logins. When it was tested on a different device then an additional verification was triggered automatically. No settings required- it worked.

The Dashboard Experience

When all the arrangements are ready, the end-user dashboard is smooth. Everything is there automatically, and the one you click in gives you an automatic log-in. I experimented and used a dummy system that had five applications and the automatic-login was smooth. It is something that would save employees a lot of time in case you are controlling access to 20-plus tools.

Automated User Management

I got around to user provisioning, and here is the field where Okta excels. You can run the creation of an account as a person becomes part of your team and revoke it as soon as he or she quits. That is massive in the case of companies that handle turnover.

The Frustrating Parts

The SSO Tax is Real

The next thing that no one told me is that despite having Okta, most SaaS apps charge more to get higher-end SSO functionality such as SCIM provisioning. You are paying Okta by user, and you are even paying more to your app vendors to enable complete integration. That adds up fast.

Not Plug-and-Play

Okta will need more work than you are used to, when you are accustomed to such a system as Google SSO (which actually is built in). You develop policies, establish authentication flows, and before rolling out, you get everything configured. It works, it is just not immediate.

Configuration Drift

I came across one thing that I read as part of my research: configuration drift. Although you got all the settings correct, it can change over time, features can be disabled, security rules may become lenient and you may not even notice until the first time when something goes wrong.

Should You Actually Use It?

Having tried it, I would say that Okta SSO makes sense in case you are a manager who has to manage access of a team or organization having a variety of apps. Even the security enhancements, which include MFA, automated provisioning and session controls, are worth having it, provided you are serious about the security of your systems.

However, when it is only one or few users on a single computer or in a small team of workers using only a few applications? It might be overkill. The inconvenience may not be overridden by the setup time and the concealed costs (goodbye, SSO tax).

My Take

I entered this with another bloated enterprise tool, but the Okta SSO actually performs when you are past with the initial setup. It is not flawless, the SAML settings are painful, and the costing model has traps but the very fabric of the experience is good.

Wondering to know what it is like, get the free trial and try it. But please do not think it is going to be that easy as turning on a switch. Make a weekend of fooling with, and you will get it figured out.

What is Okta SSO? I Tested It So You Don’t Have To