Kinde for different business models

Kinde is built to support many types of SaaS models, for apps, sites, and projects.

From straightforward models where you provide services directly to individuals, to multi-tenant setups for managing other business’s auth and user needs.

This topic explains how to use organizations in Kinde to support your business model.

You provide services directly to customers (B2C)

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Users sign up directly to your business and you manage them in one large user group.

For this business setup, configure everything at the Business and Environment level in Kinde, including:

• Authentication (including signing up and in with third party providers like Google)
• Global brand and page design
• Defining roles and permissions

Kinde comes with a default organization, so if you only have one user group, they all belong to that default organization.

You provide services to companies (B2B)

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Each company your business services has their own organization in Kinde. Each organization can also have it’s own group of users.

If you want, you can allow organizations to be created when a new business signs up to your service.

Configure these settings at the Business and Environment level for organizations to inherit:

• Authentication (including enterprise auth such as Entra ID or SAML)
• Global brand and page design
• Define roles and permissions

Then you’ll set up organizations for each business you service, and in each organization:

• Manage how users sign up to organizations
• (optional) Set up individual organization brand, including the sign up and sign in experience
• Define what roles and permissions apply for users of each organization
• Enable special feature access for individual organizations

You provide services to companies, and their customers (B2B2C)

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Each company your business services has their own organization in Kinde. And for each organization, there is a group of users who are managed separate to each other. In tech-speak, this is multi-tenanting.

You will want to carefully manage how users sign up to organizations for this business model.

You will configure most settings at the Business and Environment level, and then you can decide if you customize some settings per organization.

You might set up the following for your business and in your applications:

• Supported Authentication types, including custom auth for SAML, and social sign in
• Global brand and page design
• Define the roles and permissions that can be applied to users in each organization

For each organization, you will want to:

• Assign user roles and permissions, including default roles that apply when a user signs up
• Enable special feature access for individual organizations
• (optional) Set up individual organization brand, including the sign up and sign in experience

In this set up, you will likely need to manage users across organizations as well.

You’re a membership-type organization

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You’re a central organization, and you service related businesses, branches, locations, or clubs, who have members. This works a bit like a B2B2C, but the structure is usually more simple.

Membership organizations are typically branded at the org level, and authentication is kept fairly simple.

You will configure most settings at the Business and Environment level, such as:

• Authentication (including passwordless and social sign up to make things easy)
• A base global brand and page design
• Defining simple sets of roles and permissions

For each organization, you will want to:

• Spend time setting up brand and design
• Align roles and feature access within each organization to ensure different users see the right part of your application
• Decide how user’s are able to sign up to an org

You’re a marketplace

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A marketplace usually combines a bit of B2C and B2B. This kind of business connects buyers with sellers, creators and audiences, businesses and consumers - you get the idea.

A marketplace usually separates the different market participants, which can be done through organizations. This enables independent control of the parts of your app each organization can access, and how.

Configure most settings at the Business and Environment level, such as:

• A base global brand and page design
• Defining simple sets of roles and permissions

For each organization, you will want to:

• Set up Authentication per organization to enable different sign up and sign in methods, depending on user segment. For example, set password authentication with multi-factor authentication for your supplier side users, and easy social sign up for your consumer side users.
• Align roles and feature access within each organization to ensure different users see the right part of your application
• Decide how user’s are able to sign up to an org
• (optional) Set up individual organization brand, including the sign up and sign in experience

You’re an agency

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This model is for enterprise-sized customers who really love Kinde. For example, an agency who sets up and runs multiple businesses and applications, on behalf of clients, using the Kinde platform.

You’ll set up each of your client’s businesses according to what type of business model they are. See above for business structure recommendations.

Tip: You could adapt this model if you’re a large multi-location, multi-department, or multi-service enterprise.

You run a multi-brand consumer portfolio

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You’re a parent company with several distinct consumer products — each with its own brand, app or site, and user base. This is common for product studios, media groups, and consumer tech companies that launch multiple consumer-facing properties under one umbrella.

Unlike the agency model (where you run Kinde for clients), these are your own products. The main decision is whether each property should be its own Kinde business, or live as an environment under one business.

Separate business vs environment

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Use a separate business for each consumer product when:

• Each product has its own brand, domain, and sign-in experience
• Users, organizations, and activity should stay isolated per product
• Auth methods, roles, or billing differ between products
• Teams manage products independently

Run multiple businesses on Kinde so organizations, users, branding, and activity are managed separately for each property.

Use an environment only for the development lifecycle of a single product — for example production, staging, and testing. Environments are not meant to separate brands or consumer products. See About environments.

Recommended setup

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For each product business, configure it like a B2C (or B2B / B2B2C if that product sells to companies):

• Authentication for that product’s users
• Global brand and page design matched to the product brand
• Roles and permissions for that product’s app

Keep each product’s production setup in its own business’s production environment, and use non-production environments within that business for testing and staging.