Enterprise-tier example: customer account portal — Auth0 + RDS + role-based permissions; commodity parts, bespoke assembly still costs
Summary
Claim: A customer account portal — authenticated login (Auth0 founded 2013 — managed identity, social login, SSO, SAML or Amazon Cognito and Firebase Auth — 2014-era managed identity peers to Auth0), per-customer data in a managed DB (Amazon RDS announced October 2009 (MySQL first); GA May 31, 2011 — managed DB absorbs admin/backup/failover), document/invoice access, role-based permissions. Pre-2009 this required a server, a DB admin, and a custom auth build; the components are now commodity. The bespoke assembly still costs — see SPP (2025): custom client portal $20k–$50k initial development + $10k–$25k/yr maintenance; Agency Handy $25k–$60k all-in over 6–12 months.
Source: Synthesis of the parts + ceiling entries.
Confidence: Industry-consensus.
Why this matters for Candid: The canonical worked example of the brief's thesis. Use in client conversations as the "here's what the floor-vs-ceiling actually looks like for the project you're asking about."
Related entries
Depends on
Related
- reference Pre-Auth0 auth: roll-your-own password hashing, sessions, resets, lockouts — security-critical and error-prone
- reference SPP (2025): custom client portal $20k–$50k initial development + $10k–$25k/yr maintenance; Agency Handy $25k–$60k all-in over 6–12 months
- rule R3 — Rent the commodity parts (Stripe / Auth0 / Algolia / RDS / Lambda); build only what is genuinely differentiated logic
- rule R4 — The floor fell, the ceiling did not: bespoke client portals still cost $20k–$50k + $10k–$25k/yr — say so honestly
- reference Research brief: the website as a working surface of the business — four capabilities, AI-citation decoupling, freshness as a real signal (June 2026)