Microsoft Entra ID Reviews

We use the solution for sign-on authentication to our devices.

During the pandemic, we were able to smoothly shift our employees to work from home. Azure Active Directory played a crucial role in ensuring the security of our systems by verifying the identity of the authorized personnel logging in.

We started using Azure Active Directory because it helped our IT administrators and department save time, which was one of the main reasons.

Azure Active Directory saved our organization money.

Azure Active Directory significantly enhanced the user experience for our employees. We observed a notable increase in employee usage and positive communication regarding their experience, particularly after the pandemic.

The two-step authentication is the most valuable.

I would like to have an additional security option to prevent spam.

The price has room for improvement.

I have been using the solution for five years.

The solution is extremely stable.

The solution is highly scalable. We are a school district that is compromised of seven schools. The solution is implemented in multiple locations, and we have over 200 employees and 1,600 students.

The technical support is good. They are always responsive and provide quick resolutions.

Positive

We were using Office 365 but all of the employees started to use their personal emails which affected security so we added Azure AD.

We obtained certification for the deployment of the solution. Microsoft provided a document outlining all the deployment rules and steps, as well as a planning team that provided instructions for all email templates. The deployment required three people.

The implementation was completed in-house.

We have seen a return on investment using Azure AD.

We are currently on the education plan, so the price is slightly better than the development plan. However, I believe there is room for even better pricing.

We assessed Google Cloud Identity but ultimately chose Azure AD due to the Microsoft product familiarity among our team. We believed the transition would be smoother, which has been confirmed. Moreover, since not everyone was using Gmail, it would have been challenging for them to learn a new system. However, at that time, everyone in our school was using Microsoft products.

I give the solution a nine out of ten.

We have a full-time IT staff and part of their role is to maintain the solution.

Azure AD is an excellent and highly stable product. Its user interface is intuitive for those who have prior experience with Microsoft products. With some training, deployment can be carried out successfully. Our deployment experience was hassle-free, but the pre-training we received proved to be very helpful.

We use it for the single sign-on to different products that we have, and it works pretty well.

In general terms, we use it as an admin tool. If we want to set up accounts for people, it's easier for us to do it like this because everything is connected to different groups.

It's a very intuitive platform. It's easy to create groups and add people.

I have used Okta in the past. Okta is easy to use, and it's also very friendly. Even users who have no tech experience would be able to use Okta.

When it comes to Azure, creating certain things or getting different resources isn't very clear. You need a certain level of knowledge of the system. It could be a little bit more friendly so that some of the things can be done easily, but after everything is created, it's easy to use.

I've been using this solution for five years. In this company, I've been using it for two years, and before that, I used it for about three years.

It's good. It has never hung up.

They're good. We don't have issues with scalability because we are not like Amazon or other companies that are super huge and have got tons of traffic.

I don't handle it directly now, but based on my previous experience, they're pretty fast. I'd rate them a 10 out of 10.

Positive

There was probably the Google management system, but it works similarly to Azure AD. 

I was not involved in its deployment.

In terms of our environment, it's a private cloud. We have the infrastructure within the platform, but all the software, all the usage, and other things are handled by us. We're private because we're a big company, so we're able to afford it. We're not an IT company, so we don't need so much processing power. So, we use Azure as a PaaS solution.

We use it as a connector for different applications. We have Adobe Sign and applications on AWS. AWS has a translation solution, and people have accounts over there. They have their translations of different products and things like that. That's how we use it.

In terms of maintenance, everything is done by Microsoft. We are just the end users.

The return on investment is easier to calculate with Okta. It's a bit complicated to calculate in the case of Azure. Of course, Azure is already a trusted platform. It's pretty big, and it's handled by Microsoft, so there are no issues with that, but it's easier to check the return on investment with Okta.

I'd recommend Azure Active Directory if you are a big company. For small or medium companies, it's probably not the best idea in the world because of the pricing. If you are a small company, you can probably deploy your own solutions because you're not handling a website with tons of traffic. If you are not like Adidas, Nike, or Walmart, you can do it in a way that is more localized than handling everything through a big price solution. However, Azure tends to provide you with solutions that are easier to use. If it was cheaper, I'd definitely recommend going for it.

I didn't evaluate any other solution. 

I'd rate Azure Active Directory a 10 out of 10.

The primary use cases for Azure AD include use in projects and deliverables when implementing different solutions like SSPR, multifactor authentication, Conditional Access policies, and fine-graining the controls on end-user machines, devices, and applications. I also use it to sign licenses via different methods, including group-based licensing, direct licensing to individual users, registering applications, and providing CPUs and credentials. Lastly, I use Azure AD for whitelisting external identities and domains for communication between internal and external domains.

Our organization is global, with over nine locations across the world. We have a hybrid environment, which is very complex due to the size of the organization, and we have a varied client base. From a security standpoint, we have a variety of security services and products. 

Azure AD is a one-stop solution where we can manage every aspect of identities, access, and applications via policies across all domains of our organization.

We use the Conditional Access feature to enforce fine-tuned and adaptive access controls. This makes our Zero Trust strategy to verify users more robust, as standard users have limited access, on limited devices, with limited permissions. They can only access the domain on specific machines and must be on the corporate or office network. Access from outside the network isn't possible unless it's from a whitelisted location, and along with MFA, we have a powerful Zero Trust model in place.

Azure AD saves us a lot of time, as we previously used an on-prem legacy solution with poor integrations, which slowed onboarding and other processes. Thanks to the product, we spend approximately 70% less time daily and about 80% less time weekly. That's a big plus. 

The solution helps our organization save money from a cost perspective, and there are several other vital angles to consider. Azure AD is an out-of-the-box product in terms of features and security, which is a reduced cost. Whether an organization requires P1 or P2 licensing is another consideration. Finally, if a company is replacing legacy systems, that's money saved for licensing and maintaining those systems. Some of our clients have seen 30-40% savings, especially those using complete legacy systems and then switching to a cloud environment.   

Azure AD greatly helps user experience, as we can integrate the solution with many services. End-user experience improved, whether staff members try to access resources from mobile or even personal devices. We can fine-tune access control across the enterprise, and that helps us provide a good end-user experience.  

The most valuable features are the Conditional Access policies, SSPR, and MFA. Another good functionality is registering enterprise applications to provide access to external parties. These four features are precious and are the most used across different use cases for various clients and projects.

Azure AD provides a single pane of glass for managing user access; we can assign access permissions to different user accounts based on situational requirements, and helpful security features are available. The solution provides sign-on consistency, and we can configure permissions to enable single sign-on for a particular application or domain. This gives us the flexibility to offer a great user experience.    

The solution gives us a lot of flexibility when it comes to managing all identity and access tasks in our organization. We can manage freshly provisioned identities from scratch, as well as existing identities and apps through the Azure admin center.   

I want better integration between Azure AD and the on-prem environment because there are currently limitations that can hamper employee experience. We use a feature called password writeback, that can be challenging to implement in a hybrid environment. Employees can change their passwords using a self-service password reset (SSPR) feature, which reflects from the cloud to the on-prem identity, but not the other way around. Currently, there is no way to reflect passwords from on-prem identities to the cloud.

There are other similar limitations, such as a cap on the number of identities that can be synchronized in a particular time frame, which can be an issue for large enterprises with 300,000 employees or more.

I've been using the solution for over three years. 

The solution is stable, though there can be issues around synchronization within a vast organization. Performance-wise, Azure AD is a good product.

The scalability is good. 

Microsoft technical support can take a while to resolve. I can get a response in 30 minutes, but the time to resolve is usually more than four hours or over a day. I wonder if the support staff has adequate training and expertise to provide a better service.

Neutral

We previously used on-premises AD and switched to Azure AD because we wanted the benefits associated with cloud-based solutions.

The complexity of the initial setup depends on the deployment; cloud deployments are very straightforward, on-prem implementations are more complex due to the infrastructure, and hybrid deployments are always complex as there are many considerations and assessments to be made.

It is hard to measure ROI with security solutions, but identity is the first point of vulnerability for cyber attacks, so identities must be secure and well-managed. The solution provides this, and that is a worthwhile investment.

Azure AD has four licensing options- free, Office 365 apps, Premium P1, and Premium P2. The free option has a limited number of identities and features, and the Office 365 version comes included in several Office 365 subscriptions. With the P1 and P2 licenses, we get all the freeware features plus additional security features, but these come at a higher price. The base price for P1 and P2 is $6 and $9 per user per month, respectively.

I rate the solution nine out of ten. 

From a security standpoint, we don't have major controls from Azure AD, but we can implement features such as MFA and Conditional Access policies to fine-grain the rules on apps and devices. We can also enforce policies where users have different sign-on requirements for the same account, depending on where they sign in from.  

We used the solution's Conditional Access feature in conjunction with Microsoft Endpoint Manager as it was a requirement for a client-side project. There were some conflicts between the two tools regarding device management, so we had to select a different approach. Conditional Access reduces the risk of unpatched devices connecting to our corporate network because it triggers the policy stating only compliant devices can log in and access resources.

Clients use different deployment methods for Azure AD, but most implement them within a hybrid environment. A few organizations are entirely cloud and SaaS-based, as they don't want the maintenance and management associated with on-prem infrastructure and prefer the security offered by the cloud.

My advice to those looking to implement the solution is to consider their primary goal and use case for the product and how they want to implement it. If you have a hybrid environment, many details about how Azure AD can fit into the environment must be figured out beforehand. Consider the costs and how the solution will help from a security standpoint over the next five to ten years, from all perspectives, including networking, security, systems management, and maintenance.

There are many use cases. The main use case is identity synchronization to on-prem with AD Connect. Another main use case is related to conditional access. Automated licensing is also one of the use cases. 

It is also used for identity access management with specific workflows, rules, etc. Permission or role management for applications is another use case, but I have never used that in production. I have demonstrated it to multiple customers, but they were not there yet.

The main benefit is that you have one repository for identities. That is very important for main companies. If you have worked with or are familiar with the concepts of on-prem Active Directory, you can easily start with Microsoft Entra ID. You have everything in one area. You have application identities, workload identities, and other identities in one area. It is very convenient and powerful. It helps with centralized identity management. You can also connect with your partner organizations. It is quite powerful for collaboration with your partners, customers, etc.

Microsoft Entra ID provides a single pane of glass for managing user access. It is pretty good in terms of the sign-on experience of users. It is easy to understand for even non-technical people.

With this single pane of glass, we also have a good view of the security part or security policies. From an admin's perspective, we have complete logs of everything that is happening in almost real time. We have pretty much everything we need. In recent times, I have not come across many use cases that could not be covered.

With conditional access, you can make sure that you have control at any time. It is a part of the zero-trust strategy. Any access is verified. You have a very good grasp on identity and devices for compliance. You can manage any issues through Microsoft Entra ID. Most companies I have worked with let you bring your own device, and device management is very important for them. They have a tight grasp on who can connect and which devices can connect to their network or cloud resources.

There have been improvements in the onboarding and the leaving process. It has always been a challenge to make sure that people are given the right access right at the beginning and that their access is disabled at the right moment. Historically, while auditing clients, I could see people who left the company five years ago, but their access was still active. Permission management has been helpful there. It is a nice thing to implement.

In terms of user experience, we have not received any feedback from the users about Microsoft Entra ID, which is good because it means it is transparent to them. It works as expected.

My two preferred features are conditional access and privileged identity management. They are very powerful. I like conditional access a lot. It is an easy way to secure identities.

Privileged identity management helps to control who is requesting access, when, and what for. It gives you a nice overview of what is happening in your tenant and why people are doing certain things. You can easily detect outliers or if something is wrong. 

They can combine conditional access for user actions and application filtering. Currently, they are separated, and we cannot mix the two. I do not know how it would be possible, but it would be interesting.

For permission access, there can be a bit more granular distinction between Microsoft applications. Currently, you have a pack of things, but sometimes, you only want to allow one of the things and not the whole pack. For example, you just want to allow the Azure portal, not the whole experience. However, such scenarios are rare. Overall, I am pretty happy with where we are today. It is always exciting to do new things, but for the customers I have worked with, it covered 99% of the scenarios.

I have been using it since I started using Azure and M365. It has been almost six years.

It is very stable.

It is very scalable. I have not met any limitations, but I do not have clients with more than 2,000 users. 

I have used their tech support one or two times. It is pretty good. I would rate them a nine out of ten.

Positive

I have worked a bit with Okta and AWS IAM, but they are more expensive than Microsoft Entra ID. I last worked with Okta about two years ago. At that time, Okta was more advanced and intuitive in certain aspects.

Microsoft Entra ID is a no-brainer if you already do not have a solution and if you have on-prem Active Directory. If you already have something, then the choice can be different. Microsoft Entra ID works for various use cases because you have connectors with pretty much every application on the planet. You have a lot of possibilities to integrate. You can also integrate with on-prem. In terms of security, there are a lot of features to protect your identity. It is quite helpful and appealing, so if you do not have anything and you are going to use Microsoft technologies, it is a no-brainer. Similarly, if you are a cloud company just starting, and if you choose Azure, Microsoft Entra ID is a no-brainer. If you choose another cloud, you can go for another solution.

I have been working with cloud and hybrid deployments. There are a few cloud deployments, but I work a lot with hybrid deployments.

Its setup is straightforward. I am very used to it now, and for me, it is pretty straightforward. The deployment duration depends on the features that you want to enable. Features such as conditional access require discussions with the customers. Generally, two weeks are enough. You might also have to train the internal team on it, which could take a bit more time.

You do not require too many people for deployment. One or two people are normally enough.

In terms of maintenance, it is very easy to maintain. You might have to add another business case for your customers or simplify something you put in place. You have to be aware of the new features, etc.

Microsoft Entra ID must have saved organizations money, but I do not have the data.

Its price is okay. It is easy to go from a P1 to P2 license. It is not exactly a bargain, but I would recommend the P2 license.

Make sure to use MFA and conditional access wherever possible.

Overall, I would rate Microsoft Entra ID a nine out of ten.

We use Azure AD to implement conditional access when using Microsoft Network (MSN) services. Our infrastructure is primarily on-prem, and we operate our email in a hybrid environment and use the solution for continuity between our on-prem and cloud landscapes.

The solution improved our organization, especially in terms of security control. Overall, we're 65-70% satisfied with the product.

The most valuable feature is Conditional Access, and we use it extensively.

Azure AD provides a single pane of glass for managing user access; we integrated multiple APIs and use single sign-on for all of our Microsoft products. I can't speak in universal terms, but we had some positive feedback from our users regarding user experience.  

We use the Conditional Access feature to enforce fine-tuned and adaptive access controls, an excellent feature we use to enhance the security of all the machines connected to our domain. Users cannot access long-term data, data from untrusted devices, or data on connected personal devices.  

We use Azure AD Verified ID, which is a good feature for privacy and control of identity data; it offers a good level of secrecy. 

We've been using the solution for over six years now. 

The product is stable. 

The scalability isn't an issue; it depends on our license.

We previously used Microsoft's technical support, which was excellent; they were very responsive. Now, we use a CSP, and their support is lacking, so I rate them five out of ten.

Neutral

The initial setup was straightforward, and a partner was present to assist us during the implementation. We have around 250 users, and the solution doesn't require any maintenance.

The product's price is in the midrange. 

I rate the solution eight out of ten. 

Azure AD helped to save some time for our IT admins but not for our HR department, as they don't currently have access to the tool.

I recommend the product to those considering it, though it depends on the use case and requirements. If Azure AD has featured you don't need, then going with one of the cheaper competitors could be a better option.   

We use Office 365 for our emails and Office. As part of that, we have Active Directory on the cloud. We want to safeguard things, keeping in mind the recent upsurge in cyber attacks.

I get a single pane of glass view of all the users. I know who has been registered, who has joined, what their last activity was, and when they logged in. If I extend it, I can purchase Intune from Microsoft and I'll be able to do mobile data management.

Single sign-on is the reason we use AD.

I would like to see a better user interface. Right now, it's not that great. Maybe there could be a dashboard view for Active Directory with some pie or bar charts on who is logged in, who is not logged in, and on the activity of each user for the past few days: whether they're active or not active.

I have been using Azure Active Directory for about a year.

It's definitely stable, a 10 out of 10.

We are a small company so it is scalable, seamlessly. We don't even have 100 users, so we don't have any issues with scalability.

We were previously using Gmail, which didn't have anything of this sort, so we moved to Office 365 which has Azure AD. We have joined the domain controller using Azure AD now.

We were not involved in any deployment. It was automatic. The moment we signed in, we were part of Azure. It was straightforward. We just purchased our license, logged in, and we were automatically onboarded to Active Directory seamlessly.

It doesn't require any maintenance. It's managed by Microsoft.

There is a return on investment for us with Azure AD.

Azure AD comes with Office 365, so we are just paying for the Office 365 license.

We did not evaluate other options because Azure AD seems to be the market leader.

Azure AD is one place where you can manage all users and devices and it's safe and secure.

I have come to depend upon Azure AD as my go-to identity management tool. Almost all businesses today use a Microsoft cloud-based product in some form or another, and integration in Azure AD ensures consistency, compliance, and simplified integration across the enterprise.

Additionally, we use many of the built-in security enhancements and features offered by the solution. Single sign-on and other integrations into a range of line-of-business software applications add to the many use cases available through Azure AD. Along with securely extending the on-premises environment to the hybrid state.

The key improvements to our organization are:

1. A singular control plane is enabling a more efficient administrative process.
2. RBAC simplifies role access providing a simpler approach to zero trust.
3. Onboarding and offboarding extend to every integrated application meaning that compliance is maintained.
4. PIM and PAM: Privileged Identity Management and Privileged Identity Management make controlling access considerably easier and ensure that authorized access is achieved.

With so many features available out of the box, it is difficult to adequately summarise in the space provided here.

I find that integration of enterprise applications outside of Microsoft via OATH and SAML is by far one of the most valuable features as it makes software distribution and access simpler and, with SSO enablement, ensures a lower threat surface from end users.

Azure boasts 90 compliance certifications, and this exceeds that of its competitors. With the compliance manager resource, you can control the company’s compliance tasks from one place.

The tool helps you meet complex compliance obligations. For example, you can undertake continuous risk examinations, provide an outlook on your company’s status and provide opportunities for improvement as needed.

With Azure Advisor and the Secure Score continually assessing your security and compliance posture, there is less need for highly paid security engineers. Especially when considering the size of the Microsoft security operations team also monitoring significant portions of the client environment.

It's really difficult to speak to this. The product is constantly undergoing feature enhancement and enrichment, and anything I would like to see coming is already available for public review.

Azure Active Directory is an easy-to-deploy, robust unified identity and access solution that securely extends your existing on-premise infrastructure to the cloud and provides seamless integration for in-house applications and 3rd party SaaS platforms. Granular policy-driven access controls ensure that access is granted only to authorized identities and devices and from approved locations. Azure AD includes an array of security and compliance options to ensure your business governance is adhered to without impacting productivity.

If I had to pick one, it would be to put the features of P1 and P2 into a single license.

I have been using Azure AD for approximately seven years.

The platform is not without its occasional hiccups, however, in general, it is stable and issue-free.

There are few other identity options available with the scale made available by Azure AD.

Support is hit-and-miss. Some days you'll get someone amazing who has the right knowledge and is willing to go beyond to help. And then there are the other times when help isn't forthcoming.

Neutral

The initial configuration is simple. The configuration process is guided so that even a non-technical person can successfully complete the onboarding.

I started using Azure in my organization for user management, identity management, and app security.

I am using purely Azure Active Directory, but I've used Azure Active Directory in a hybrid scenario. I sync my user from on-premises Active Directory to cloud. While I have used the solution in both scenarios, I use it mostly for purely ATS cloud situations.

We don't really have breaches anymore. Now, in most cases, we set up a sign-in policy for risky things, like a user signing in via VPN or they can't sign in based on their location. This security aspect is cool.

If a user wants to sign onto the company's account, but turn on their VPN at the same time, they might not be able to sign in because of the Conditional Access policy set up in place for them. This means their location is different from the trusted site and trusted location. Therefore, they would not be able to sign in. While they might not like it, this is for the security of the organization and its products.

The cloud security part is very valuable. Security is the most important thing in today's world. With Azure Active Directory, there are some features that tell you how you need to improve your security level. It informs you if you set up certain policies, e.g., this is where my users sign in. It tends to let you know if your organization has been breached with this security set up. Therefore, it is easier to know when you have been breached, especially if you set up a Conditional Access policy for your organization.

The authentication, the SSO and MFA, are cool. 

It has easy integration with on-premises applications using the cloud. This was useful in my previous hybrid environment. 

The user management and application management are okay.

There are some features, where if you want to access them, then you need to make use of PowerShell. If someone is not really versed in PowerShell scripting, then they would definitely have issues using some of those features in Azure Active Directory. 

I have been using Azure AD for three years.

Overall, stability is okay. Although, sometimes with the cloud, we have had downtime. In some instances, Microsoft is trying, when it comes to Azure AD, to mitigate any issues as soon as possible. I give them that. They don't have downtime for a long time.

You can extend it as much as you need. For example, you can create as many users as you want on the cloud if you sync your users from on-premises. Therefore, it is highly scalable.

I used to manage about 1,500 users in the cloud. Also, at times, I have worked with organizations who have up to 25,000 users. When it comes to scalability, it is actually okay. Based on your business requirements, small businesses can use Azure Active Directory with no extra cost as well as an organization with more than 10,000 users.

The support is okay, but it is actually different based on your specific issue because they have different teams. For example, when you have issues with cloud identity management, I think those are being handled by Microsoft 365 support, and if you have an issue with your Azure services, the Azure team handles it. 

I can say the support from Microsoft 365 support is awesome because it is free support. Although the experience is not all that awesome every time, and there is no perfect system, when compared to other supports, I would rate them as 10 (out of 10).

Positive

The initial setup was straightforward. When I set up Azure Active Directory, I just had to create an Office 365 tenant.

Creating an Office 365 tenant automatically creates an Azure Active Directory organization for you. For example, if I create my user in Microsoft 365 automatically, I see them in Azure Active Directory. I just need to go to Azure Active Directory, set up my policies, and whatever I want to do based on the documentation.

A part of the documentation is actually complex. You need to read it multiple times and reference a lot of links before you can grasp how it works and what you need to do.

The very first time, it took me awhile to set up. However, when setting it up the second time, having to create Azure AD without setting up users was less than three minutes.

I work with a client who has a small organization of 50 users worldwide. With Active Directory, they are spending a lot for 50 users for management, the cost of maintenance, etc. The ROI number is too small for the costs that they are spending on the maintenance of an on-premises setup. So, I migrated them to Azure Active Directory, where it is cost-effective compared to an on-premises setup.

For you to make use of some of the security features, you need to upgrade your licenses. If it is possible, could they just make some features free? For instance, for the Condition Access policy, you need to set that up and be on Azure AD P2 licensing. So if they could make it free or reduce the licensing for small businesses, that would be cool, as I believe security is for everyone.

The product is very good. Sometimes, I try to use Google Workspace, but I still prefer Azure to that solution. I prefer the Azure user interface versus the Google Workspace interface.

Draw out a plan. Know what you want and your requirements. Microsoft has most things in place. If you have an existing setup or MFA agreement with Okta and other services, you can still make use of them at the same time while you are using Azure Active Directory. Just know your requirements, then look for any possible way to integrate what you have with your requirements.

Overall, this solution is okay.

I would rate this solution as an eight out of 10.