Microsoft Entra ID (Azure AD) and Okta are leading IAM solutions with different strengths. Entra ID is praised for its seamless integration with Microsoft products like Office 365 and Azure, focusing on Active Directory integration, user lifecycle management and conditional access. Entra ID's customizable options and reliable performance are highly valued. Okta is platform-agnostic, streamlining access management processes, praised for its user-friendly interface, competitive pricing and exceptional customer service.
The summary above is based on 141 interviews we conducted recently with Okta Workforce Identity and Microsoft Entra ID users. To access the review's full transcripts, download our report.
"All of the features are amazing, such as identity governance and privileged identity management."
"With Azure Active Directory we were able to manage with different options the access for different users."
"The most valuable feature is the authentication platform."
"Azure Active Directory features have helped improve our security posture. The remote working has been a massive help during the pandemic."
"The valuable features I use daily are enterprise application, conditional access, identity governance, password monitoring, and a password reset."
"This solution is less time-consuming. We don't have to hire as many resources to give permissions to a particular user or group for any application."
"The self-password reset if it's enabled and configured properly, really helps a company be able to reset rather than getting IT involved."
"The performance is good."
"We find the solution to be stable."
"Enabled MFA to access federated applications as well as increased user satisfaction through improved provisioning times and more reliable processes."
"I find the provisioning features and the integration with other applications useful."
"The ease of deployment, ease of use, and speed of delivery is what I like about Okta Workforce Identity. It is very easy to use. For a lot of software, you need to be trained extensively and have a very technical background. Okta Workforce Identity is quite simple. You can integrate any software into Okta. They've got a network of 7,000 applications that easily integrate into it."
"The solution so far has been very stable."
"I like the tool's workflows, which is user-friendly. It can integrate with different applications. I particularly like that users are delighted to access their applications without the hassle of entering their username and password each time. It truly enhances user-friendliness."
"The solution can scale very well."
"A solution that's easy to use, stable, and reliable."
"Adding a new account can be tricky."
"In a hybrid deployment, when we update a license by changing the UPN or email address of a user, it does not get updated automatically during normal sync. This means that we have to update it manually from Azure, which is something that needs to be corrected."
"The licensing cost is a bit prohibitive."
"Entra ID is not battle-tested or stable enough to support a business of our size. There are some design issues specifically around support for legacy services."
"Compared to what we can do on-prem, Azure AD lacks a feature for multiple hierarchical groups. For example, Group A is part of group B. Group B is part of group C. Then, if I put someone into group A, which is part of already B, they get access to any system that group B has access to, and that provisioning is automatically there."
"They should put the features of P1 and P2 into a single license."
"One thing that bothers me about Azure AD is that I can't specify login hours. I have to use an on-premises instance of Active Directory if I want to specify the hours during which a user can log in. For example, if I want to restrict login to only be possible during working hours, to prevent overtime payments or to prevent lawsuits, I can't do this using only Azure AD."
"I faced difficulties from Micorosft's end and during the transition from Microsoft Active Directory to Microsoft Entra ID. Sometimes, some of Microsoft's documentation could be a little outdated."
"The error logging could be improved. Okta doesn't provide enough details when you are troubleshooting an issue. It's often difficult to fix it from our end, so we always need additional support from Okta."
"It's not compatible with on-premises installations, unless you host it as a SaaS. We were not able to do that. For example, imagine a scenario where the cloud is not available. Then, Okta will not work for you. That use case will readily fail because it doesn't have an on-premises installation that you can use to authenticate or provide identity and access management. If you have a purely on-premises solution that is not connected to the internet, then this will not work. This is one area that can be improved."
"RESTful Web Service calls and their response seem a bit slow."
"SSO and MFA for improved end-user experience, and protection against password spray attacks, account password self-service."
"We experienced some technical glitches that need to be resolved."
"Therefore, if you have 10 million users, that's almost 100 million, so it is costly."
"The product does not offer enough integration capabilities."
"In some setup cases, there are issues with attributes not going in properly."
Microsoft Entra ID is ranked 1st in Identity and Access Management as a Service (IDaaS) (IAMaaS) with 190 reviews while Okta Workforce Identity is ranked 2nd in Identity and Access Management as a Service (IDaaS) (IAMaaS) with 59 reviews. Microsoft Entra ID is rated 8.6, while Okta Workforce Identity is rated 8.4. The top reviewer of Microsoft Entra ID writes "Saves us time and money and features Conditional Access policies, SSPR, and MFA". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Okta Workforce Identity writes "Extremely easy to work with, simple to set up, and reasonably priced ". Microsoft Entra ID is most compared with Microsoft Intune, Google Cloud Identity, CyberArk Privileged Access Manager, Ping Identity Platform and Cisco Duo, whereas Okta Workforce Identity is most compared with Google Cloud Identity, SailPoint Identity Security Cloud, Saviynt, Auth0 and IBM Security Verify Access. See our Microsoft Entra ID vs. Okta Workforce Identity report.
See our list of best Identity and Access Management as a Service (IDaaS) (IAMaaS) vendors, best Single Sign-On (SSO) vendors, and best Authentication Systems vendors.
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