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.
"Azure Active Directory provides access to resources in a very secure manner. We can detect which user is logging in to access resources on the cloud. It gives us a comprehensive audit trace in terms of from where a user signed in and whether a sign-in is a risky sign-in or a normal sign-in. So, there is a lot of security around the access to resources, which helps us in realizing that a particular sign-in is not a normal sign-in. If a sign-in is not normal, Azure Active Directory automatically blocks it for us and sends us an email, and unless we allow that user, he or she won't be able to log in. So, the User Identity Protection feature is the most liked feature for me in Azure Active Directory."
"Coming from a traditional on-premises Active Directory infrastructure, it is purely a SaaS platform. It is global. It is evergreen. It is always evolving. It is core to the Microsoft Ecosystem."
"Its ability to provide secure connections to people at all locations is the most valuable. It is mostly used by enterprises."
"What I like about Microsoft Authenticator is that it has good features. I also like that the tool is straightforward to use. Microsoft Authenticator also has a good UI that's very simple to use. I also like that I didn't find any limitations or negative aspects from the features of the tool because Microsoft Authenticator is not an extensive application. It has a two-factor based authentication which validates the user through the password, then it approves authentication."
"The most valuable components of the solution are provisioning and deprovisioning since both features work...Microsoft Entra Verified ID is a very stable solution."
"It enhanced our end user experience quite a bit. Instead of the days of having to contact the service desk with challenges for choosing their password, users can go in and do it themselves locally, regardless of where they are in the world. This has certainly made it a better experience accessing their applications. Previously, a lot of times, they had to remember multiple usernames and passwords for different systems. This solution brings it all together, using a single sign-on experience."
"Azure AD allowed us to get rid of servers and other hardware running at our offices. We moved everything to the cloud. Once we set up roles and permissions, it's only a matter of adding people and removing people from different groups and letting permissions flow through."
"Azure Active Directory features have helped improve our security posture. The remote working has been a massive help during the pandemic."
"The MFA part is the best. MFA provided most of the security that we were looking at with respect to the second level of authentication. Okta Workforce Identity provides a number of options with respect to multifactor authentication, such as the app, phone call, and text. These options provide different ways of logging in for users, and they were a lot more than what we needed. This is certainly a very good feature of Okta Workforce Identity."
"It offers very helpful support. The technical team is very helpful."
"It made things a lot easier, especially with passwords."
"The most valuable features of Okta Workforce Identity are MFA, and SSO, which have high security."
"We find the solution to be reliable for our customers and it is nice that it is cloud-based and can be accessed from anywhere."
"One of the features that I have found to be very valuable is its interoperability and compatibility with all types of resources, whether it's networking, infrastructure, or applications. That is, it is compatible as well as interoperable, as far as the federated authentication is concerned."
"The provisioning functionality has been the most valuable. This solution has good performance, fast integration and is very responsive."
"The initial setup of Okta Workforce Identity is straightforward. I was able to get an environment ready within half a day."
"Better integration with external governance products would be a welcome addition to Azure AD."
"I would like to be able to authenticate Wi-Fi users using the Azure ID"
"Allowing for more customization would be very useful. There is a limited metadata capability. When you look at a user, there are only six pieces of information you can see, but organizations are way more complex, so having that metadata available and being able to use that for dynamic user groups and other policies would be very helpful."
"The only improvement would be for everything to be instant in terms of applying changes and propagating them to systems."
"The security policy of Azure Active Directory should be based on a matrix so that we can easily visualize which users have access to what."
"The solution has certain limitations. For example, it has very little governance functionality."
"If any service is down, it can affect a whole region. We would need to wait on a ticket and get word from Microsoft to understand the issues. If it takes longer to resolve the issue on Microsoft's side, all we can do is wait for them to fix it."
"The Azure AD Application Proxy, which helps you publish applications in a secure way, has room for improvement. We are moving from another solution into the Application Proxy and it's quite detailed. Depending on the role you're signing in as, you can end up at different websites, which wasn't an issue with our old solution."
"We have experienced some challenges in integrating this solution with Scope and Cognito."
"Okta Workforce Identity could improve the support system, they are too slow."
"We still had to write several internal programs/scripts to complete the user-provisioning process. Okta does not have the ability to provision mailbox accounts for on-premise Exchange or in a hybrid O365 environment. The Group Push function from Okta to AD did not work reliably in our environment."
"The guest user access could be improved."
"Therefore, if you have 10 million users, that's almost 100 million, so it is costly."
"There should be automated aggregation and complete classification processes included in it."
"The solution is very expensive."
"The solution can be quite expensive."
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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