AWS Directory Service vs Okta Workforce Identity comparison

Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Okta are both solutions in the Identity and Access Management as a Service (IDaaS) (IAMaaS) category. Amazon Web Services (AWS) is ranked #16 with an average rating of 9.0, while Okta is ranked #2 with an average rating of 8.4. Amazon Web Services (AWS) holds a 1.8% mindshare in IAMS, compared to Okta’s 13.3% mindshare. Additionally, 93% of Amazon Web Services (AWS) users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 94% of Okta users who would recommend it.

AWS Directory Service

Read 15 AWS Directory Service reviews

830 Views
567 Comparison Views

93% willing to recommend

Okta Workforce Identity

Read 65 Okta Workforce Identity reviews

4,379 Views
3,565 Comparison Views

94% willing to recommend

AWS Directory Service

Okta Workforce Identity

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 2, 2024

Okta Workforce Identity and AWS Directory Service compete in the identity management category. Okta seems to have the upper hand due to its advanced multifactor authentication capabilities and wide integration options.

Features: Okta Workforce Identity excels in central password management, robust user and app management, and adaptive multifactor authentication (MFA). It offers extensive SSO options and seamless SAML integrations. AWS Directory Service focuses on extending AD identity to AWS resources, role-based mechanisms, and achieves high availability with a rate of 99.99% due to concurrent data centers.

Room for Improvement: Okta Workforce Identity needs better reporting, integration with RADIUS solutions, and on-premises deployment options. AWS Directory Service could benefit from enhanced CloudWatch integration, DNS controls, and improvements in security protocols.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Okta Workforce Identity supports hybrid, public, and on-premises options and is known for excellent technical support. AWS Directory Service provides consistent support and supports public and hybrid environments.

Pricing and ROI: Okta Workforce Identity is priced per user and is considered costly but offers a strong ROI through increased security. It’s suitable for larger enterprises. AWS Directory Service offers flexible pricing with no hidden fees, benefiting organizations using AWS’s ecosystem.

To learn more, read our detailed AWS Directory Service vs. Okta Workforce Identity Report (Updated: March 2025).

Buyer's Guide

AWS Directory Service vs. Okta Workforce Identity

March 2025

Download the complete report

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Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:

Categories and Ranking

AWS Directory Service

Ranking in Identity and Access Management as a Service (IDaaS) (IAMaaS)

16th

Average Rating

8.6

Reviews Sentiment

7.3

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Okta Workforce Identity

Ranking in Identity and Access Management as a Service (IDaaS) (IAMaaS)

2nd

Average Rating

8.6

Reviews Sentiment

7.2

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Single Sign-On (SSO) (3rd), Authentication Systems (5th), Privileged Access Management (PAM) (6th), Access Management (2nd), ZTNA as a Service (10th)

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2025, in the Identity and Access Management as a Service (IDaaS) (IAMaaS) category, the mindshare of AWS Directory Service is 1.8%, down from 2.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Okta Workforce Identity is 13.3%, up from 13.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Identity and Access Management as a Service (IDaaS) (IAMaaS)

Featured Reviews

Basa Saiteja

Consultant at Infosys

A valuable access management system with a user-friendly and straightforward setup

The solution is scalable, and we can scale according to our needs. I rate the scalability a nine out of ten. In our organization, our access to our AWS comes from IAM. We use AWS consoles using our credentials and don't have route access, so each person will log in through our IAM programmatic access, and everyone on our team can work on cloud. Over 10,000 people in our organization utilize the solution.

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Tor Nordhagen

Executive Director at Semaphore

Extremely easy to work with, simple to set up, and reasonably priced

The drawback of this solution is that in our shops, many staff members sometimes have to be borrowed from one shop to another and the solution does not really support having multiple roles. The user experience we would like to have when a person works in shop A which pays their salary is that they should have access to pretty much everything. Maybe you have somebody who is a manager in that shop A, he should be able to order new wear, he should be able to change the pricing, he should be able to empty the cash registry, and ship it to the bank. But when for instance, in COVID, people had to fill in for people in shops where a lot of people were sick, then they had to actually use user accounts of people that work in shop B. If you were employed in shop A, you could not work in shop B without borrowing somebody else's user ID and password. Which is really bad. We haven't been able to work around that and Okta Workforce Identity does not have a solution for it. We are now piloting their identity governance solution. Obviously, it's easy to give somebody access, give them an account, and give them roles, but it's hard to maintain that. For example, if you moved from, say working in a shop to working in a warehouse. But why do you still have all this shop access? The solution has until now not had anything to really support the process of taking away access. But now we are in a better release program of Okta's identity governance solution. Although it's very basic, the solution has started on a journey, but identity governance is something that Okta Workforce Identity really needs to improve. The ability or the options in the solution for changing the look and feel are not good enough because in our partner portal, essentially what they have is an ugly admin interface. The admin interface is good enough for us technical people because that's all we need. We work with the product and we're able to see the data but when it comes to presenting the service portal, Okta Workforce Identity does not have any capabilities really for making it look pretty. To add branding and different graphical user interface elements than Okta basic for essentially delegated admin for the business-to-business portal is horrifying because you're essentially using the tech admin. The only option we had and used, was to take the tech admin console and strip it. so that a vendor that has some goods that are sold in the shops, when they want to add a user on their side, say a driver or a packer on their side who should know how much they've packed in a truck to come to our warehouse, then the user interface that this vendor is using, these functional people will then have to use an extremely basic user interface.

Read full review

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:

Pros

"The AD Connector is very good and easy to implement."

"I like the manageability. Activate Connect makes it easier to assign information and to manage the resources in the network."

"The most valuable feature is ease of use."

"The support is very good. I would rate the technical support as a nine out of ten."

"AWS handles everything on the backend requiring minimal legwork from our team. We only require a dedicated database administrator while depending on Amazon for RDS."

"The solution integrates well with other tools, particularly through single sign-on, allowing users to connect to various applications using just one password, including email."

"We can provide specific access to people based on what they need from our accounts."

"AWS has eliminated the downtime we waste when our on-premises resources go down."

More AWS Directory Service pros

"It's reliable and it does what it is advertised to do."

"The product’s most valuable feature is multifactor authentication."

"It's easy to use and straightforward."

"It is a very stable solution."

"The most useful features of Okta for my organization are identity and access management, single sign-on, and the flexibility for hybrid setups."

"I find the provisioning features and the integration with other applications useful."

"It made things a lot easier, especially with passwords."

"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."

More Okta Workforce Identity pros

Cons

"I would like to see better integration with other business solutions."

"The group policy can be improved."

"To get CloudWatch to monitor your memory and storage, you have to do some configuration within your server, which sometimes results in errors."

"The AWS Directory Service should be easier to integrate."

"Can be improved by including on-premises access for services through Identity Access Management."

"Accessing the data needs improvement."

"Our only complaint is that you cannot integrate your Exchange server. Or, if you are planning to install an Exchange server on your Amazon EC2 instance, then you need to configure Active Directory on EC2 instance. We would like for this limitation to be lifted."

"Currently, there is no option to integrate our on-premises Cisco AWS Directory Service, requiring some manual configuration. If AWS Active Directory Service provided additional domain controller functionalities, like other on-premises Active Directory, it would be very helpful."

More AWS Directory Service cons

"Okta doesn't have a partial push. It pushes down the full profile schema for lifecycle management or provisioning."

"It would be pricing, which is a tough one because it goes against Microsoft. A lot of companies say they're a Microsoft partner, and they get all their software for free. Okta is like a luxury product, and it's not the most affordable one. I would say if they could work on pricing, it would help. Other than that, they've done great strides in developing a product that is really good. The companies that do see the value tend to invest in it."

"The solution is very expensive."

"A room for improvement in Okta Workforce Identity is its price. It could be cheaper. The biggest benefit of the solution is that everything works securely without extra steps, so you're saving on your workforce's time and effort because your applications work smoothly and securely, but you'd need to pay some amount of money for that. Another area that could be improved, though not necessarily regarding Okta Workforce Identity, is the SSO applications because so many of the source applications charge extra money to put the SSO to work, which means you have to buy a more expensive license. Nowadays, SSO is a mainstream functionality and it should be out-of-the-box in those applications because it's so easy to set up."

"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."

"The product is expensive compared to other tools."

"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."

"SSO and MFA for improved end-user experience, and protection against password spray attacks, account password self-service."

More Okta Workforce Identity cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"We pay an annual subscription fee."

"The pricing is reasonable."

"AWS' pricing is fair, and costs can be cut if you look carefully at when you're using it."

"The pricing depends because with AWS there are two types of directory objects: 30,000 and 500,000. It varies. AWS provides the pricing calculators so we can get an estimate from there as per the company requirement of how many users and objects that we need to create. So we can go to that portal, put in the data, and get the quotation. There are no extra licensing fees. It's all included."

"Workforce Identity is well-priced."

"The price of Okta Workforce Identity is competitively priced. We pay annually for the use of the solution."

"License is around US$20,000 annually."

"This is an expensive solution but the security makes it worthwhile."

"The pricing is reasonable."

"The solution is not the cheapest but not the most expensive. They are in the middle rating."

"The solution’s pricing needs to be reasonable. You are dealing with a lot of components and the pricing is component-based."

"The price of this product could be lower."

More Okta Workforce Identity pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

17%

Financial Services Firm

11%

Healthcare Company

11%

Manufacturing Company

Computer Software Company

16%

Financial Services Firm

11%

Manufacturing Company

Government

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about AWS Directory Service?

The most valuable feature of AWS Directory Service is cost-cutting features.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for AWS Directory Service?

The pricing is very good because it is low and there is no management cost. You do not need to hire any system administrator to manage your Active Directory.

See all answers

What needs improvement with AWS Directory Service?

Currently, there is no option to integrate our on-premises Cisco AWS Directory Service, requiring some manual configuration. If AWS Active Directory Service provided additional domain controller fu...

See all answers

What do you like most about Okta Workforce Identity?

Okta has introduced the Universal Directory. It has custom attribute capability and user permissions to read/write on their profiles or hide them. Profile sources and identity profile sourcing are ...

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Okta Workforce Identity?

Pricing for Okta is reasonably not that much, however, I don't have access to the commercial aspect.

See all answers

What needs improvement with Okta Workforce Identity?

Okta should have at least a local presense for countries that align with or comply with GDPR or data sovereignty, so there are no compliance or audit questions. There are integration issues with Of...

See all answers

Comparisons

Microsoft Entra ID vs AWS Directory Service

Compared 81% of the time

Microsoft Entra External ID vs AWS Directory Service

Compared 19% of the time

More AWS Directory Service Competitors

Microsoft Entra ID vs Okta Workforce Identity

Compared 38% of the time

SailPoint Identity Security Cloud vs Okta Workforce Identity

Compared 11% of the time

Google Cloud Identity vs Okta Workforce Identity

Compared 10% of the time

Saviynt vs Okta Workforce Identity

Compared 7% of the time

OneLogin by One Identity vs Okta Workforce Identity

Compared 2% of the time

More Okta Workforce Identity Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Identity and Access Management as a Service (IDaaS) (IAMaaS)

April 2025

Download AWS Directory Service product report

Buyer's Guide

Okta Workforce Identity

March 2025

Download Okta Workforce Identity product report

Also Known As

AWS Managed Microsoft AD

No data available

Overview

AWS Directory Service lets you run Microsoft Active Directory (AD) as a managed service. AWS Directory Service for Microsoft Active Directory, also referred to as AWS Managed Microsoft AD, is powered by Windows Server 2012 R2. When you select and launch this directory type, it is created as a highly available pair of domain controllers connected to your virtual private cloud (VPC). The domain controllers run in different Availability Zones in a region of your choice. Host monitoring and recovery, data replication, snapshots, and software updates are automatically configured and managed for you.

Amazon Web Services (AWS)

Okta Workforce Identity is a comprehensive identity and access management (IAM) solution designed to enhance security and streamline user experiences for businesses of all sizes. As a cloud-based platform, it offers a suite of tools that simplify user authentication, authorization, and management across a variety of applications and services.

Core Features

Single Sign-On (SSO): Enables users to access multiple applications with a single set of credentials, enhancing convenience and reducing password fatigue.
Adaptive Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA): Provides robust security by requiring additional verification factors, which can adapt based on the user's location, device, and behavior.
Lifecycle Management: Automates user account creation, updating, and deactivation, ensuring access rights are current and compliant with company policies.
Universal Directory: A centralized directory service that supports user and group management across various applications, simplifying administrative tasks.
API Access Management: Safeguards APIs by implementing policies that control how and when they can be accessed, which is crucial for protecting sensitive data.

PeerSpot users often praise Okta Workforce Identity for its ease of use and robust security features. IT professionals appreciate the streamlined integration with numerous applications and the flexibility in configuring access policies. Business executives value the enhanced security posture and the ability to enforce compliance across their digital assets.

For IT professionals, Okta Workforce Identity offers a scalable and efficient solution to manage user identities and access rights. The ability to automate routine tasks like user provisioning and deactivation significantly reduces administrative overhead, allowing IT teams to focus on more strategic initiatives. Furthermore, the platform's comprehensive reporting capabilities aid in monitoring and auditing access, which is critical for maintaining security and compliance.

Business executives will find that Okta Workforce Identity aligns with broader organizational goals of operational efficiency and risk management. Its intuitive user experience minimizes disruptions to workforce productivity, while advanced security features like adaptive MFA help mitigate the risk of data breaches. The platform's cloud-based nature ensures scalability and agility, enabling businesses to adapt quickly to changing market conditions and workforce dynamics.

Okta Workforce Identity stands out as a versatile and secure IAM solution, adept at meeting the complex needs of modern enterprises. Its combination of user-friendly features and robust security measures makes it a top choice for organizations aiming to streamline their identity management processes while bolstering their cybersecurity defenses.

Okta

Sample Customers

Expedia, Intuit, Royal Dutch Shell, Brooks Brothers

FedEx, Zoom, Takeda, Lululemon Athletica, GrunHub, jetBlue, McKensson, Bain & Company, Engie, Peloton, Sonos, T-Mobile, Hewlett Packard, MGM Resorts, Ally Financial, Priceline, Albertsons, Itercom, Classy, FICO, Kensho, Live Nation, Drata, Rotary, and others.

Buyer's Guide

AWS Directory Service vs. Okta Workforce Identity

March 2025

Free Report: AWS Directory Service vs. Okta Workforce Identity

Find out what your peers are saying about AWS Directory Service vs. Okta Workforce Identity and other solutions. Updated: March 2025.

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