Why we built an all-in-one dev platform

At Kinde, we set out to solve a problem we’d faced ourselves at other startups, gluing together essential infrastructure that should just work out of the box.

I remember working at a startup that had home-rolled auth and permissions, plus a Frankenstein stack of Chargebee, Xero, Stripe, and HubSpot. It was duct-taped together with good intentions, but things kept falling out of sync.

A user might be authenticated correctly, but their permissions in another system were outdated. Or they’d be downgraded in billing but still had access to premium features. Multiply that pain across a B2B2C setup with businesses, teams, and end users… and it became a minefield.

There was no “aha” moment. It was a slow accumulation of paper cuts. At first, you just think: I’ll build this bit myself. But over time, you realize you’re rebuilding the same primitives - auth, permissions, billing, feature flags, again and again.

We asked: What if all of this just worked together? What if you could get the power of rolling your own with the speed and safety of a hosted platform?

It’s the front door to your app. You can’t leave it wide open.

And since we dogfood everything we build, Kinde’s login system had to be battle-ready from day one. We were using it to log into Kinde itself.

We started lightweight with email and social logins, then expanded as demand grew to include all the Enterprise grade features you’d expect. Founders trust us with the front door to their product, so we built for security and scale from the start.

As with everything, initially this was just for us. We wanted a clean way to roll out features gradually and allow certain customers to beta test new areas of Kinde. But like everything we build, it had to be good enough for our customers too. So we made sure it could support teams of any size and integrated it into our core platform.

We couldn’t charge our customers for the first year. Not because we didn’t want to, but because we hadn’t built billing yet. And we refused to hack on a Stripe checkout and call it a day.

Instead, we built the first version of our billing product for ourselves. It only supported Kinde’s model (B2B, simple plans), but it worked, and it let us test our own APIs.

As feature requests rolled in, custom auth flows, pricing rules and conditional access, we had a choice: bloat the product, or offer extensibility.

Workflows let you run your own code inside Kinde, triggered by specific events (sign-in, plan change, etc.). So instead of saying “no” to feature requests, we could say “no, but here’s how.” You stay in control, without compromising security or maintainability.

We don’t chase every shiny request. We log them. We track demand. And when it makes sense, we add them thoughtfully. But when something’s too niche, we help you implement it yourself with workflows.

We build what most people need, most of the time. And we let you handle the edge cases with code.

This philosophy lets us stay small, move fast, and build deep, integrated infrastructure without losing our minds.

The beautiful thing about using our own billing service to charge our customers for the last 2 years is that it’s already been tried and tested before releasing it. This isn’t a product coming out of left-field, we put our money where our mouth is (literally).

It’s super close and will include all the great things that you have come to expect from a Kinde product.

One of the things I’m most proud of about the platform, is you don’t have to use everything. Each of the core Kinde services can be used independently.

If you just need authentication, we’ve got you. If you already have auth sorted but want a clean billing setup - go for it. You can plug in only what you need.

No forced bundling. No lock-in. Just solid infrastructure that works together if and when you want it to.

As engineers, we all suffer from the same thing: I can build that. And sure, you can. But should you?

We’ve lived the pain of DIY infrastructure. We’ve seen what happens when a single engineer leaves and no one else understands how auth, billing, and permissions are wired together.

Kinde is for founders, indie hackers, and dev teams who want to ship faster without trading off control. It’s all the plumbing, all in one place.

And it just works.