Build vs. Buy: Roll your own auth vs. embed a pre-built identity layer into your app

Every team building a new web or mobile application faces a choice: build the entire application in-house or selectively use out-of-the-box services to make the job easier and faster. Many of today's successful teams have chosen the latter with services like Stripe and Braintree to offload payments and Twilio to offload communications. A third-party customer identity and access management (CIAM) solution is another such service. A digital identity layer comprised of APIs, SDKs, and out-of-the-box customizable components can serve as building blocks to increase speed-to-market, lower development costs, and focus in-house developers on the core features of the application.