What is social sign in? Definition, benefits and choosing the right provider

Social sign-in lets customers sign in to your website or app with an account they already have, such as Google, Apple, Microsoft, or Amazon, instead of creating a new username and password. It's also called social authentication. 

Done well, it cuts friction at the "sign in" and "create account" buttons and lifts conversion. Done poorly, it creates duplicate accounts and messy customer data.

If your website or app doesn't offer "Continue with Google" or "Sign in with Apple," odds are someone has told you it should. Everyone's doing it, they say. It's a best practice.

There's probably also someone who told you not to. Customers don't trust it, they say. Or it'll mess up your customer data.

At Strivacity, our goal is to engineer unexpectedly simple sign-in journeys. The reality is that social sign-in has pros and cons. Sometimes it makes signing in dramatically simpler for your customers. Other times it adds speed bumps you may want to avoid. If you're on the fence, this post is for you.

What is social sign-in?

Social sign-in is an authentication method that lets customers sign in to your website or app using their existing credentials from another site. It hands the authentication step to a trusted provider, which passes secure tokens back to your site behind the scenes to confirm the customer's identity. Most providers use the OpenID Connect (OIDC) standard to do this.

Think "Continue with Google," "Sign in with Apple," or "Sign in with X".

Social sign-in is common in retail, media, travel, and gaming. It's rarely used as the only sign-in option in highly regulated industries like financial services and healthcare. Why? It comes down to the pros and cons

How does social sign in work?

Social sign in lets customers sign in to a website or app using an existing account, such as Google, Apple, or Facebook, instead of creating a separate username and password.

Imagine a customer wants to sign in to a retail website using their Google account. Here’s how that process works:

1. The customer chooses Sign in with Google: On the retailer’s sign-in page, the customer selects Google from the available options.
2. The website redirects them to Google: Behind the scenes, the website sends Google a request identifying itself and the information it needs. Google asks the customer to choose an account and sign in. If they’re already signed in to Google, they may continue without entering their password again.
3. Google asks permission to share their information: Once signed in to Google shows the customer which details the retailer is requesting, such as their name and email address. The customer can approve or decline. If they’ve already approved the same permissions, Google may skip this prompt.
4. Google sends the customer back to the retailer: After successful sign-in and approval, Google redirects the customer back with a temporary authorization code. The retailer’s server exchanges that code for tokens, including an ID token: a signed message containing the customer’s identity information.
5. The retailer verifies the response and signs the customer in: The website validates the response and ID token, then finds the linked customer account or creates a new one.

What are the benefits of social sign-in?

Social sign in can make account opening and returning visits easier for customers and for your organization it can remove barriers to conversion and reduce some of the work involved in managing passwords. 

Social sign in benefits for your customers

• Faster account opening: Social sign-in lets customers trying an app for the first time use an existing account, such as Google or Apple, instead of creating a new username and password. This enables the customers to open an account with less typing, fewer steps and time. 
• Easier access when they return: Customers can sign in to your app through their chosen provider without remembering a separate username or password for your website.
• A familiar sign-in process: Customers can authenticate through a provider they already use and trust. They enter any required credentials directly with that provider, so they don’t have to share its password with your app.

For your customers, social sign-in creates a streamlined experience. If they're already signed in to Google or Apple, they're through in a tap, with one less password to remember.

Social sign in benefits for your organization

• Fewer barriers to conversion: Social sign-in lets customers open an account without creating another username and password. Removing that step can help more customers complete account opening and start using your product.
• Less password management and support: Your app never receives or stores the customer’s password for their social provider. This reduces the responsibilities around secure storage, reset flows, recovery, credential attacks, and customer support. 
• More consistent customer account data: Social providers can supply account identifiers and profile details, such as a name and email address, with the customer’s permission. This reduces manual data entry, while provider account identifiers help your app recognize returning customers.

Which are the top social sign-in providers?

1. Google

Google is a social sign-in option best suited for consumer applications and educational tools. Customers can use their existing Google account to access your app without creating separate credentials.

2. Apple

Apple’s privacy features make it relevant for iOS, macOS, and web apps. It suits businesses that primarily serve customers on Apple devices or want to offer those customers another sign-in option.

3. Microsoft

Microsoft sign-in supports single sign-on, which lets customers use one set of credentials to access connected applications. It suits business applications and corporate collaboration tools serving customers who already use Microsoft accounts.

4. Facebook

Facebook provides a social sign-in option for consumer-facing and ecommerce applications. Customers can use their existing Facebook account to open and access an account with your business.

How to select the right social sign-in providers for your brand

If you're leaning toward social sign-in, one of the most important decisions is which providers to offer.

The answer depends on context. The key question is which accounts your customers are already signed in to when they visit your site or app. That tends to vary by the type of site:

• Consumer sites: Google and Apple cover most customers, with Facebook and X as options for audiences that use them heavily.
• Business apps: a work-related app might offer Microsoft or Salesforce. A tool for software engineers might offer GitHub.
• Retail sites: Google and Apple, plus Amazon or PayPal, especially if you already accept them as payment methods.
• UK and European sites: Google, Apple, Microsoft, and Facebook are the most familiar choices. PayPal is also widely recognized by UK shoppers.
• Regional sites: the largest providers are US-based, so review which providers your customers trust in each market. Depending on where you operate, that could include WeChat, Taobao, Sina Weibo, KakaoTalk, LINE, or VKontakte.

Consider your customers' level of trust (or distrust) in each network, too. Signing in with Facebook doesn't give Meta access to the customer's account on your site, but some customers may still be wary. A social sign-in option customers won't choose isn't worth the effort.

What are the downsides of social sign in?

If the benefits sound good, why wouldn't you use social sign in? Some of the same benefits cut both ways, especially in highly regulated industries like finance, gaming, or education.

1. Reputational risk

Customer trust is a prime example. The reputational benefit of associating your brand with a social provider could be one data breach away from becoming a liability.

2. Account linking and duplicate records

Social sign-in can also cause problems with account linking. If a customer uses more than one of your social sign-in options, or signs up with email first and Google later, you can end up with multiple accounts for the same person and struggle to connect that customer data on the back end.

Duplicate records also make it harder to answer data access and deletion requests under privacy laws like UK GDPR and CCPA. The custom code needed to link those accounts steers many brands away from social sign-in.

3. Data mapping

Then there's data mapping. All modern social providers build on OpenID Connect, but each one diverges a little (Apple diverges the most). That makes it harder to map incoming profile data, such as name, photo, email, and location, to fields in your own customer identity store.

Building that business logic and resyncing data each time the customer signs in can be a heavy lift, and many CIAM providers don't offer it out of the box.

4. Implementation and maintenance

Most of these downsides depend on how you implement social sign-in. If your in-house team writes it from scratch, every provider you add can mean hundreds more lines of code to maintain.

If your CIAM provider requires custom API work for each provider, adding or removing one, or changing your data mapping, can turn into a sizeable project.

How Strivacity handles social sign-in

The best way to implement social sign-in is to have someone else do it for you.

Your CIAM solution should let you add a provider to your customer journey in a way that makes customers and your marketing team say "wow, that was simple," without a major change request or engineering ticket. With Strivacity, you can:

• Add or remove social sign-in providers through configuration instead of custom code.
• Control which profile data you request from each provider with per-provider scopes, and map incoming claims to your own customer profile fields.
• Link accounts automatically with account linking, so a customer who signs up with email and later chooses Google keeps one account and one history.
• Capture consent as part of social sign-up, so data you sync from a provider is tied to a consent record.

Want to see how it works? Here's an overview.

Want to talk specifics for your brand? Our team is just a click away.

FAQ

What is social sign-in?

Social sign-in is a sign-in method that lets customers use an existing account from a provider like Google, Apple, Microsoft, or Amazon to sign in to your website or app. The provider confirms the customer's identity and passes a secure token back to your site, so the customer doesn't need a new password.

What is social authentication?

Social authentication is another name for social sign-in. It means relying on a social or consumer identity provider to authenticate a customer, usually through the OpenID Connect or OAuth 2.0 standards.

What are the benefits of social sign-in?

The main benefits of social sign-in are faster sign-up and sign-in, higher conversion, fewer forgotten passwords and reset requests, stronger account security from the provider's own protections, and access to provider-supplied profile data.

Is social sign-in secure?

Social sign-in is generally secure because major providers protect their accounts with MFA, passkeys, and risk detection. The main risks are account takeover of the customer's social account and dependence on a third party, so high-risk actions on your site should still use step-up authentication.

What are the disadvantages of social sign-in?

The main disadvantages are reliance on a third-party provider, duplicate customer accounts when people use more than one sign-in method, and the work of mapping each provider's profile data to your own customer records. A CIAM solution with account linking and claim mapping reduces most of that work.

Which social sign-in providers should I offer?

Offer the providers your customers already use. Google and Apple suit most consumer sites, Amazon and PayPal fit retail, Microsoft and GitHub fit business and developer tools, and regional providers like WeChat or KakaoTalk matter in specific markets.