What is Slack SSO? (Supporting Slack for Single Sign-On)

Last updated 11/01/2023

*Bread & Butter supports Slack SSO as part of our free universal API and WordPress plugin.*

Slack’s SSO enables existing Slack users to sign-on to other application integrations. SSO simplifies the handling of passwords and identity, both for users and administrators of websites and apps.

An example of this is using a Slack account to login to another application. The system will map the Slack account to its back-end credentials.

The application benefits from being able to verify a user without having them create a new password. This can reduce friction considerably and drive conversion rates way up. Some people turn away rather than fill out another signup form, whereas familiar SSO options are an easy “yes.”

The user benefits in two ways:

Why Support Slack for SSO?

If your app or member site has a lot of Slack users, you may want to offer them a chance to log in with their existing credentials. For many of those users, they might consider it a more secure verification option; one that doesn’t require creating another password.

Especially for companies that align with Slack, supporting Slack’s SSO could help convert a lot more users than if you did not support it.

If you think about, users are increasingly dependent on an evolving set of software-as-a-service accounts and tools. Helping to bring all of these under a single and secure identity management tool with one login is a way to reduce the friction involved with task switching, and alleviate concerns around the protection of data.

Disadvantages of Supporting Slack SSO

If you do it yourself, it could be costly in terms of your time. And you’ll have to continue to monitor it for changes or updates, costing your team even more time, and risking having it break at a crucial time.

With Bread & Butter, you can add Slack SSO to your existing login screen for free, and leave the support to us. We already keep the module up to date and keep it live.

If you set up your own Slack SSO integration, you can get data on its usage. But it will have nothing to say about any logins that aren’t Slack logins (obviously). So with Bread & Butter, you have your Slack login data visible in the same table with all of your logins.

Benefits of Supporting Slack SSO

Removes the honus from your team to handle password resets. If the user knows their Slack credentials, they’re good to go.
Saves your users’ time. Easier account creation and logins.
Reduces risk. Ask your users to create a password and they’ll probably go with old faithful. Offer them a chance to use their existing, secure ‘work’ login from Slack, and they’ll pick the safer choice almost every time. Also, you’re not storing a password for them, so your data is protected by that as well.

How to Support Slack SSO

As mentioned above, Bread & Butter supports Slack SSO, even in the free version. To get started, view our API documentation, or if you are building on WordPress, use our WordPress plugin.

Bread & Butter works simple enough – you add a code snippet to your back-end and another to your front end in your login screen.

Right now, there’s nothing special required to integrate with Slack. Just add Bread & Butter to your site/app and select Slack from the social identity providers list: