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Microsoft Entra ID vs Venafi comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Aug 11, 2024

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

Microsoft Entra ID
Ranking in Authentication Systems
1st
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
225
Ranking in other categories
Single Sign-On (SSO) (1st), Identity Management (IM) (1st), Identity and Access Management as a Service (IDaaS) (IAMaaS) (1st), Access Management (1st), Microsoft Security Suite (2nd)
Venafi
Ranking in Authentication Systems
16th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
8
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2025, in the Authentication Systems category, the mindshare of Microsoft Entra ID is 16.2%, down from 22.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Venafi is 1.0%, up from 0.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Authentication Systems
 

Featured Reviews

Aaron Liang - PeerSpot reviewer
Has significantly improved secure access to applications and resources in our environment
Microsoft Entra ID has helped by simplifying our management of permissions for APIs. We are not directly exposing credentials, as we use tokens instead. It has made management easier and more secure, especially in a multi-user environment. The implementation of Microsoft Entra ID significantly improved secure access to applications and resources in our environment, primarily through the widespread use of single-sign-on. Managing API permissions became much easier, as application registration often involves calling an API to utilize services without directly exposing credentials, relying instead on token-based authentication. This streamlined approach benefits end-users by simplifying access while remaining transparent to them. Ultimately, my role focuses on ensuring a smooth and user-friendly experience, even if the underlying technology remains unseen by the end-users. Our company strongly emphasizes passwordless authentication, primarily through device-bound passkeys in Microsoft Authenticator. While administrators with high-privileged accounts utilize YubiKeys and passwords for tasks like accessing Microsoft Graph, we are actively transitioning all other users towards passwordless methods such as Windows Hello biometrics. This approach streamlines authentication and enhances security. Though initial deployment in 2022 presented challenges due to hardware limitations and the lingering effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, the technology has significantly improved and provides a simple and effective user experience.
Adam Goldstein - PeerSpot reviewer
Automates certificate management across platforms and has enhanced integration support
Venafi's automation capabilities were significant, as they allowed us to automate certificate rotation and deployment effectively. We integrated it with GlobalSign and aimed to automate DNS verification, although challenges remained. Venafi's platform-agnostic nature was beneficial for handling certificates across different systems like IIS, AWS, and Azure. It ensures centralized certificate management, which is crucial for compliance and maintaining best practices. It significantly improved our operational efficiency by automating certificate workflows. This reduced the number of certificates requiring manual management, freeing internal resources from deploying trivial certificates. While some complex certificates still needed manual intervention, automating simpler ones eliminated internal bottlenecks associated with tasks like uploading certificates to Imperva. By automating these processes, we reduced errors, streamlined workflows, and eliminated the need to repeatedly remember and execute complex procedures, ultimately increasing our overall operational efficiency. The automation capabilities are good; when properly configured, it performs as expected.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"We can have an audit and we can easily audit logs."
"The most valuable features of this solution are security, the conditional access feature, and multifactor authentication."
"I find the stability of Microsoft Entra ID to be excellent."
"Azure Active Directory provides us with identity-based authentication, which secures access at the user level and also integrates with conditional access policies and multi-factor authentication helping to increase the identity security for that person. So, the hacking and leaking of passwords is a secondary problem because you will not authenticate a person with one factor. There is a second factor of authentication available to increase the security premise for your company."
"Installation is straightforward. It only took a couple of hours to set everything up."
"It is a central point where we provide the cloud lock-in for our company. We focus the multi-factor authentication within Azure AD before jumping to other clouds or software as a service offerings. So, it is the central point when you need to access something for our company within the cloud. You go to Azure AD and can authenticate there, then you move from there to the target destination or the single sign-on."
"Having access to Azure Active Directory on the cloud gives us speed and use of the latest technology. The application services are very good, such as GitHub."
"It's a quite comprehensive solution and it scales quite well within our required scale as well, which is very useful."
"It's definitely worth the money to have Venafi as a tool; it's definitely miles away from the competition, in my opinion."
"We use Venafi for PKI certificates."
"The support is definitely great. What I like best about Venafi is that it's very easy to get somebody on a call and get any of my questions answered. That's probably the biggest thing. Besides the fact that it's a mature product and it works, the support is a big deal."
"Venafi's technical support is impressively fast."
"We have reduced 80% to 90% of our outages with Venafi, which impacts the revenue substantially."
"Venafi's automation capabilities were significant, as they allowed us to automate certificate rotation and deployment effectively."
"Automating anything, whether on-prem or cloud, is possible."
"The feature that I have found most valuable is their certificate discovery."
 

Cons

"I think the documentation and configuration are both areas that need improvement."
"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."
"I believe it can also be integrated into other Microsoft products, as well as more integrations with other solutions."
"Better user sign-in logging is needed. We work with Okta, and the two of them do not always work well together. We can have more insight into some of the user information and how it interacts."
"Azure Active Directory could improve the two-factor authentication."
"Active Directory could always be more secure. Right now, we've got two-factor authentications. All services based on Active Directory have a username and password. If somebody hacked our username, they could easily get all the data from our side. So I want two-factor authentication and a stronger password policy from Active Directory. The domain controllers should be more secure as well."
"Four years ago, we had an issue with Azure AD. We wanted to reverse sync from Azure AD to on-prem Active Directory, but we couldn't achieve this. Azure AD could connect only in one way, for example, from your site to Azure. If you needed to do the reverse and connect from Azure to on-prem, there was no way to achieve it. We asked Microsoft, and they told us that they don't support it."
"Compatibility features for legacy system integration with new features will be challenging at times."
"There are quite a few different technical aspects of Venafi that I feel they just missed out on; I'd have to look at my notes for the specifics."
"The product was really good when it was a Venafi product. However, since its acquisition by CyberArk, there has been a lack of significant innovations."
"Venafi excels in automating certificate rotation and deployment but could enhance its offering by improving support for hardware security modules like Fortanix and providing more advanced, out-of-the-box integrations with public certificate authorities for DNS re-verification."
"Venafi could enhance its offerings by providing more automation features."
"Currently lacks the capability to automatically download certificates in JKS."
"Venafi excels in automating certificate rotation and deployment but could enhance its offering by improving support for hardware security modules like Fortanix and providing more advanced, out-of-the-box integrations with public certificate authorities for DNS re-verification."
"I would like to see included in the next release of Venafi integration with the cloud HSM's, Hardware Security Module. Additionally, I would say other cloud services, because it's not only cloud that's essential. If you have a customer that has a lot of their IT moved into cloud, integration with different cloud services is always an area to improve."
"Currently, specific processes require manual installations due to the lack of built-in integrations."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Be sure: You know your userbase, e.g., how many users you have. You choose the right license and model that suit your business requirements."
"It is a packaged license. We have a Premium P1 subscription of Office 365, and it came with that."
"The P1 version costs $6 per user per month."
"The product's price is in the midrange."
"The pricing depends on the use case and can be negotiated based on volume."
"The cost is billed on a per-user licensing basis."
"We have various levels of their licensing, which includes users on different levels of their enterprise offering."
"The licensing costs are yearly. There is a standard fee per user."
"The pricing model is complex, considering factors beyond the number of certificates. This complexity can make our payments to Venafi challenging if costs continue to rise. It is good but more expensive than the competitors."
"The pricing of Venafi is really good, and that was a key reason we chose it. The pricing is very competitive compared to other solutions."
"Venafi's pricing appears to be competitive within the market."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Educational Organization
31%
Computer Software Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Manufacturing Company
6%
Financial Services Firm
17%
Government
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Computer Software Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

How does Duo Security compare with Microsoft Authenticator?
We switched to Duo Security for identity verification. We’d been using a competitor but got the chance to evaluate Duo for 30 days, and we could not be happier. Duo Security is easy to configure a...
What do you like most about Azure Active Directory?
It is very simple. The Active Directory functions are very easy for us. Its integration with anything is very easy. We can easily do third-party multifactor authentication.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Azure Active Directory?
Microsoft Entra ID is reportedly quite expensive for each user regarding security features. The renewal cost is particularly high according to the teams managing purchases.
What do you like most about Venafi?
We use Venafi for PKI certificates.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Venafi?
The pricing has increased for us, impacting our organization due to its operational expenditure (OPEX). The pricing model is complex, considering factors beyond the number of certificates. This com...
What needs improvement with Venafi?
The product was really good when it was a Venafi product. However, since its acquisition by CyberArk, there has been a lack of significant innovations. They are pushing for cloud adoption, but we p...
 

Also Known As

Azure AD, Azure Active Directory, Azure Active Directory, Microsoft Authenticator
No data available
 

Interactive Demo

Demo not available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Microsoft Entre ID is trusted by companies of all sizes and industries including Walmart, Zscaler, Uniper, Amtrak, monday.com, and more.
Surescripts, CME Group, TD Bank Group, Aetna, MoneyGram, Zions Bancorp, Cisco
Find out what your peers are saying about Microsoft Entra ID vs. Venafi and other solutions. Updated: April 2025.
849,190 professionals have used our research since 2012.