We performed a comparison between Azure Active Directory (Azure AD) and F5 BIG-IP Access Policy Manager (APM) based on real PeerSpot user reviews in five categories. After reading all of the collected data, you can find our conclusion below.
Comparison Results: Azure Active Directory is the preferred solution over F5 BIG-IP Access Policy Manager due to its advanced security features, customizable options, ease of use, and cost-effectiveness. While F5 BIG-IP APM is noted for its reliability and stability, it is considered complex and costly, with room for improvement in reporting and management. Azure AD offers a more feature-rich solution with better integration options and a user-friendly management interface, along with a free basic tier and flexible pricing options, making it a better value for the money compared to F5 BIG-IP APM.
"The solution is stable and reliable."
"The product allows us to create customized portals for your users."
"Stickiness is the most valuable feature of the product."
"This is a product that is easy to install and integrate, and it is simple to use."
"The tool is reliable and easy to configure."
"Our customers have never complained about the stability"
"The portal access was very good."
"The load balancing features are valuable."
"Conditional access is a very important feature where a specific user can be restricted such that they cannot connect to the application if they travel outside of the US."
"The most valuable feature is that it is very easy to implement, you don't need a lot of effort to set up the solution. This is the most advantageous point, that you can do anything on Azure without taking too much time."
"The security features, multi-factor authentication, and service management features are valuable."
"Single sign-on is the reason we use AD."
"Application integration is easy. MFA and password self-service have reduced most of the supportive work of IT. We use multi-factor authentication. Every access from a user is through multi-factor authentication. There is no legacy authentication. We have blocked legacy authentication methods. For people who use the MDM on mobile, we push our application through Intune. In a hybrid environment, users can work from anywhere. With Intune, we can push policies and secure the data."
"Azure Active Directory has useful policy assigning and management."
"Privileged Identity Management and Privileged Identity Management make controlling access considerably easier and ensure that authorized access is achieved."
"Configuring the domain and setting it up in the Azure portal is just three clicks to be honest."
"I'd suggest improved documentation integration directly within the GUI. Right now, finding comprehensive documentation often requires going to external websites like the community portal."
"The technical support’s response time must be improved."
"The solution is quite costly."
"Integrating identity providers and single sign-on solutions can simplify user authentication and access control."
"In my opinion, the GUI side needs some improvement based on my usage. Sometimes, it doesn't work as efficiently as the CLI side."
"The operational deployment is not great."
"The price of this product can be improved."
"The solution’s GUI looks very old."
"I want to see new functionalities for the active directory."
"The product needs to improve its support."
"If somebody is using an IdP or an identity solution other than Active Directory, that's where you have to start jumping through some hoops... I don't think the solution is quite as third-party-centric as Okta or Auth0."
"The Cloud Provisioning Agent cannot provision a lot of the information that AD Connect does. For starters, the lightweight version cannot synchronize device information. If you have computers on-premises, the information about them will not be synchronized by the Cloud Provisioning Agent. In addition, if you have a user on the cloud and he changes his password, that information should be written back to the on-premises instance. But that workflow cannot be done with the lightweight agent. It can only be done with the more robust version."
"An area where there is room for improvement is the ease of use of the dashboards."
"We would like to have more granularity in the Azure conditional access in order to be able to manage more groups for devices and for applications."
"Some of the features that they offer, e.g., customized emails, are not available with B2C. You are stuck with whatever email template they give you, and it is not the best user experience. For B2C, that is a bit of a negative thing."
"The role-based access control can be improved. Normally, the role-based access control has different privileges. Each role, such as administrator or user, has different privileges, and the setup rules for them should be defined automatically rather than doing it manually."
More F5 BIG-IP Access Policy Manager (APM) Pricing and Cost Advice →
F5 BIG-IP Access Policy Manager (APM) is ranked 6th in Access Management with 13 reviews while Microsoft Entra ID is ranked 1st in Access Management with 190 reviews. F5 BIG-IP Access Policy Manager (APM) is rated 8.2, while Microsoft Entra ID is rated 8.6. The top reviewer of F5 BIG-IP Access Policy Manager (APM) writes " Facilitates packet inspection, modification, and offloading and offers visibility and troubleshooting capabilities, allowing for pre-production server testing". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Microsoft Entra ID writes "Saves us time and money and features Conditional Access policies, SSPR, and MFA". F5 BIG-IP Access Policy Manager (APM) is most compared with Citrix Gateway, CyberArk Privileged Access Manager, Ivanti Connect Secure, Cisco ISE (Identity Services Engine) and Aruba ClearPass, whereas Microsoft Entra ID is most compared with Microsoft Intune, Google Cloud Identity, CyberArk Privileged Access Manager, Ping Identity Platform and Okta Workforce Identity. See our F5 BIG-IP Access Policy Manager (APM) vs. Microsoft Entra ID report.
See our list of best Access Management vendors.
We monitor all Access Management reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.
