Unplugged Cognito and plugged in Stytch in just 2 days
Imagine having a 24/7 personal stylist that helps you plan outfits and purchase items that optimize what you already have in your closet. That’s Pronti, a smart wardrobe app using AI and machine learning to make hyper-personalized styling and buying recommendations while supporting reuse and sustainability. Pronti is all about saving users the time, strain, and expense of endless scrolling and shopping — and they need a streamlined authentication flow to match. With Stytch’s flexible passcodes, they minimize their costs and workloads while maximizing users’ login options via email and SMS.
Partnership highlights
- +30K MAUs: within 72 hours of integrating with Stytch, Pronti saw over 30K users log in seamlessly to their app.
- Smooth UX: with Stytch’s easy One-Time Passcodes and autofill capabilities, users enjoy frictionless onboarding and instant access to Pronti’s platform via email or SMS.
- 200 errors to 0: Pronti received about 200 authentication errors a week with their earlier provider, AWS Cognito, creating work and worry for the team. With Stytch, they’ve reduced these errors to zero, giving them valuable time back to focus on their core product.
Stytch products
Challenge
For Pronti, effective authentication means not only offering each user a unique, secured account, but also saving them time and effort logging in. These days, no one wants the hassle of creating and remembering usernames and passwords, so Pronti decided to eliminate them altogether.
“It was a UI/UX choice aimed at making our onboarding and access flows really smooth,” said Mila Banerjee, Pronti’s founder and CEO. “We just wanted a simple passcode that users could enter to instantly log in to our platform.”
Initially, Pronti turned to AWS Cognito. But users soon began experiencing slow and unsuccessful login attempts, resulting in mounting complaints and mounting costs.
“If users grew impatient, they would keep clicking the resend-code button,” said Banerjee. “Since Cognito priced us on a per-code basis, we were charged for every click. As we went viral and traffic increased, our authentication costs went through the roof.”
Pronti did some research into more flexible, user-friendly alternatives and found a promising answer in Stytch’s startup program.
Solution
Right off the bat, Stytch helped Pronti cut costs with a per-user pricing model that scales along with their business.
“What was really appealing was the fact that Stytch was willing to grow with us,” said Banerjee. “They believed in our business and made it easy to have more opportunities and less pain points as we evolve. That’s rare. Other providers would just tell us to come back when we were bigger, but Stytch knew we wouldn’t be small for long.”
Stytch also set Pronti up with an adaptable set of One-Time Passcodes that users could access and execute without ever leaving Pronti’s app — leading not only to a better UX and an uptick in MAUs, but less cleanup and grunt work for Pronti’s team.
Results
A swift, simple integration
Thanks to Stytch’s straightforward documentation and helpful resources, Pronti’s small team had no trouble getting up and running quickly.
“When we partnered with Stytch, our team was lean, lean, lean,” said Banerjee. “A complex auth integration just wasn’t going to work. But Stytch’s solutions were easy to implement with one back-end engineer. We essentially unplugged Cognito and plugged in Stytch in just a couple of days, and the simplicity of Stytch’s docs made it effortless.”
And, unlike Cognito, where they struggled to get the tech support they needed, Banerjee noted that Stytch’s team was with them every step of the way.
“With Stytch, it was a collaborative process,” she said. “Zero friction. Whenever an issue arose or something didn’t make sense, their team responded right away and jumped in to fix the docs.”
Flexible flows
With Stytch’s simple, MAU-based pricing, Pronti’s users can log in however they want, as often as they want, without Pronti getting stuck with higher bills. That means Pronti can offer the same seamless, secure experience across different devices.
“The flexibility to authenticate via phone or email has been a huge deal for us,” said Banerjee. “Our users really appreciate the ability to use both and having an easy backup to get into their account.”
In fact, within days of integrating with Stytch, this streamlined, accessible UX helped 30K distinct users log in to Pronti’s platform without a hitch. And the numbers keep getting better.
“Our engagement and retention rates have definitely improved,” said Banerjee. “We’ve taken the friction out of our onboarding and login flows, and that’s a huge relief.”
Restored resources
According to Andrea Veintimilla, Pronti’s founding designer and marketer, before partnering with Stytch, Pronti’s team would regularly hear about frustrated users who weren’t receiving their authentication codes and weren’t able to log in to the app.
“With Cognito, we’d get so many user complaints that it would affect our ratings in the App Store,” she said. “We’d also get about 200 direct messages a week reporting authentication errors that we’d have to deal with. Now, we’re not getting any at all.”
The proliferating auth problems didn’t just drive away Pronti’s users — they created more work and worry for Pronti’s dedicated team.
“We just weren’t big enough to handle that volume of error, between the customer service hours and the back-end tech work it would take to figure out what was going on,” said Banerjee. “Stytch has allowed us to focus on our core business, rather than spending all our time on authentication.”
The bottom line
With Stytch, Pronti gets authentication flows that are affordable, flexible, and functional enough to cover their wide user base. Now, Banerjee says they’re excited to scale to a million users and add even more auth solutions — like embeddable magic links — to open new communication channels and tap into new revenue streams.
“Offering multiple easy ways to log in helps us get users into our app and using it faster,” she said. “At the end of the day, our whole mantra is about going out and doing what you do best — instead of wasting energy authenticating, picking an outfit, or whatever else distracts you from your goals.”
The proliferating auth problems didn’t just drive away Pronti’s users — they created more work and worry for Pronti’s dedicated team.
“We just weren’t big enough to handle that volume of error, between the customer service hours and the back-end tech work it would take to figure out what was going on,” said Banerjee. “Stytch has allowed us to focus on our core business, rather than spending all our time on authentication.”
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“Offering multiple easy ways to log in helps us get users into our app and using it faster,” she said. “At the end of the day, our whole mantra is about going out and doing what you do best — instead of wasting energy authenticating, picking an outfit, or whatever else distracts you from your goals.”