FAQs

1) What is Hellō?

Hellō is a service that simplifies registration and log in of your users. Hellō uses OpenID Connect, the same protocol used by Apple, Facebook, and Google in their social log in services.

2) How much does Hellō cost?

Login, verified email, and self declared claims such as name, nickname, and picture are free, for unlimited monthly active users. Verified phone numbers are currently free, but it may be a premium claim in the future. Unlike traditional CIAM products, there is no limit to how many monthly active users you can have using the free claims.

3) What is Hellō's business model?

Hellō has a freemium business model where we provide free and premium verified claims. In the future we will offer premium claims such as verified name, age, citizenship, residency, affiliations, and entitlements.

4) How do I get started using Hellō?

Check if there is a Quickstart for your platform, or the the Using Hellō documentation.

5) What types of applications is Hellō suitable for?

Hellō can be used with any application that can perform an OpenID Connect flow. Hellō is currently best suitable for new applications wanting to sign up individual users. We are working on adding enterprise federation features for B2B applications.

6) Why is Hellō only intended for new applications?

New applications have no existing user pool to integrate with. Since there is no existing investment in registration and log in, the Hellō value proposition to a new application is very strong. In the future, as Hellō starts to achieve a critical mass of users, we will provide integration features for existing (brown field) applications.

7) What is a publisher?

A publisher is a group of administrators and testers working on one or more applications. The publisher abstraction allows you to have multiple apps that all receive the same sub subject identifier for a given user, so that you can provide user's a holistic experience across all of your apps if desired. (Currently you are not yet able to invite others to your application -- coming soon!)

8) What is the difference between Development and Production Redirect URIs?

Hellō will only allow a publisher's administrator and testers to access an application's development URIs. Other users will be denied access. Localhost addresses are not permitted in production URIs.

9) Which OpenID Connect flows does Hellō support?

Hellō supports the both the code and implicit flows. We recommend the code flow unless you are writing a single page app.

10) What does Hellō provide me to identify my users?

We recommend you use the sub claim in the ID Token, which is a GUID. The OpenID Connect ID Token specifies the iss and sub claim identify the user, but as the sub claim is a globally unique, the iss claim is redundant.

11) Why should I use the sub claim to identify my users instead of email?

The sub value is a globally unique identifier that you always receive back for the same user across all of a publisher's applications. The email is not guaranteed to be unique between users as some users share email address, and many users have multiple email addresses. You no longer require the user's email for account recovery as that is managed by Hellō, and your app could be more privacy friendly by not requiring an email, reducing compliance requirements. We believe that the sub claim is not PII as it is not shared with any other party -- but you should consult your own compliance counsel.

12) What claims will I receive back?

You will receive back all claims for all the scopes you requested. We suggest you only ask for what you need, and not until you need it. Hellō makes it easy for you to incrementally request information.

13) What can I do with the picture URL I receive?

You can use the picture URL as the user's profile picture using the Hellō CDN, or you can download the image and store it on your own infrastructure.

14) How can users update the profile information I received from Hellō? For example, the user wants to change their profile picture or email?

You can send the user back to Hellō where the user can update a claim. To see this in action, see the:

functionality in the GreenfieldDemo.com (opens in a new tab) demo app.

15) How do I tell Hellō the user wants to update the profile they have at my application?

You include profile_update as an additional scope. See Profile Update for more information.

16) Why the name Hellō?

We wanted a human friendly name rather than a technical term such as log in or sign in. The word hello was popularized in our first virtual interactions — what we said when we answered the phone. It is a globally recognized word with a common meaning — and it is the start of a conversation. When a user clicks Hellō, they are starting a conversation with an application.

17) What does the ō mean in Hellō?

The letter o with a macron is symbolic of the open and global nature of Hellō, and makes the name distinctive.

18) What if I don't want to use Hellō sometime in the future?

If you are worried that you may not want to use Hellō in the future, we recommend that you request a verified email for your users. If you decide to stop using Hellō, you can migrate to sending your user's a one time password (OTP (opens in a new tab)) or magic link (opens in a new tab) for them to log in.