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

Last updated 11/01/2023

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

Who doesn’t have a Facebook account? It’s a given in the 21st Century. Facebook SSO enables existing Facebook and Messenger users to easily and effortlessly sign on to other application integrations. SSO simplifies the handling of passwords and identity. Not just for users but especially for administrators of websites and apps. And it helps spread brand awareness and makes Facebook a more important part of users’ day to day lives. It can also increase conversion rates.

How does it work? A Facebook user comes to your website or application. The login screen offers a “Verify with Facebook” button, which the user selects. Their Facebook credentials are used to verify them, without the need for your site to receive or store those credentials. With proof that the user is real, the application creates a new account for them.

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 is now in your app or website, without the fuss of having to come up with a new password and username, and you avoid the bother and expense of managing the login credentials.

The user benefits in two ways:

Why Support Facebook Accounts for SSO?

If your app or member site has a lot of Facebook or Messenger users, and most of them do, 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 or researching your corporate security.

SSO can help convert a lot more users than if you did not support it. This is especially true for companies that have audiences that are Facebook users. Verifying a Facebook user can help to complete the account profile as well.

Brand awareness breeds confidence. If users can have just one login for many services, it can reduce the friction involved with task switching. It also helps to alleviate concerns around the protection of data.

Disadvantages of Supporting Facebook 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 Facebook SSO to your existing login screen for free, and leave the support to us. We already keep the module up to date for you by responding to any changes on Facebook’s end.

With Bread & Butter, you have your Facebook login data visible in the same table with all of your login data.

Benefits of Supporting Facebook Account SSO

So many organizations use Facebook that there exists a huge market for users with existing Facebook logins. With 2.41 billion users, Facebook is everywhere your users are.

Your team no longer has to handle or process password resets.The user always uses their Facebook credentials. If problems do crop up, Facebook handles them.
Saves time for your users. Account creation and subsequent logins are made easier.

You can reduce risk. When users are asked to create a password, they will often default to an easy choice they can remember top-of-mind. But if you offer them a chance to use their login from Facebook, they’ll pick the safer and easier choice more often. Since you’re not storing a password for them, your data is better protected.

How to Support Facebook SSO

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

Bread & Butter works simply – you add a code snippet to your back-end and another to your front end in your login screen. And we’re platform-neutral. Whether you’re using Java, .NET, PHP, Python on your backend or JS, iOS, or Android on your front end, Bread & Butter will work.

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

Tags: facebook, facebook sso