Okta Workforce Identity Reviews

We are primarily trying to uncover the differences between this product and JumpCloud. 

Okta has its own Active Directory, which is the main core of your identity and from Okta, you can easily reply to other services, like Google Workspace. You can synchronize everything.

It is very easy to implement. We just followed the documentation and followed the steps to connect to our services. They have all of these recommendations in place. If you follow the process, it's very straightforward. 

The synchronization of services is very easy. 

It offers very helpful support. The technical team is very helpful. 

It is scalable.

The solution is always very stable and reliable. 

I'm not sure what areas need improvement. They are at the top in terms of identity management. I can't find any shortcomings. 

We don't need any additional features as it covers more than our needs. It's a massive tool. 

The solution is very expensive.

We have tried a 30-day trial and implemented in our lab.

The stability is great. I'd rate it eight out of ten. There are no bugs or glitches. It doesn't crash or freeze. 

We have temporary accounts right now. We have six or eight accounts and the same number of devices. 

The scalability is pretty good. I'd rate it eight out of ten. It can expand. 

Technical support is excellent. They are helpful and responsive.

Positive

I've also used JumpCloud and have started to compare these two solutions. 

The initial setup is complex. However, you have all of the documentation and if you follow the directions, you can manage the setup well. It will be done correctly. Also, if you need help, their support is also available, and they are quite helpful. 

We had two people handling the deployment. 

It might take a lot of time to achieve an ROI. However, it simplifies a lot of duties. Likely, you'd see a return in the future. 

We are using the 30-day free trial.

The solution is expensive. I'd rate it one out of ten in terms of affordability. 

I cannot recall the version we were using. However, my understanding is that the trial version is the same as the full solution. 

You do have to follow the documentation for your specific case. Okta is a massive tool. It covers a lot of use cases and likely will cover more of the company's actual needs. It's a good idea to be specific about your needs.

I'd rate the solution ten out of ten. 

Our organization only uses Okta for single sign-on. Everybody is working from home, so we need a multi-factor authentication solution for remote users. We have around 70,000 users. 

Okta integrates well with other solutions. Once you have integrated an application into Okta and onboarded a user, they will be onboarded for just-in-time provisioning. 

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.

I have worked with Okta for two years.

I rate Okta six out of 10 for stability. We don't see many bugs, but the product doesn't support some of our custom requirements. We have to submit feature requests that they implement later. 

I rate Okta six out of 10 for scalability. In January, they were doing something on their side, and a cell was down. The US was completely down, and most users had problems logging into. Okta confirmed that auto-scaling was not happening properly from their end.

I rate Okta support eight out of 10. 

Positive

The company used RSA before I joined. I believe they switched because they preferred a SaaS platform, and RSA was late to adopt this model. RSA is excellent as an on-prem solution, but they didn't transition to the cloud until later. 

I rate Okta eight out of 10 for ease of setup. It's a SaaS product. You can configure it in a few hours. It takes additional time if you use on-prem agents. Active Directory has some other agents that must be integrated. It will take additional time. Otherwise, it won't take much time. You need three people at most to deploy it. Usually, one person deploys the solution, and two other people are on standby. 

I rate Okta Workforce Identity eight out of 10. 

We use the solution to give access to the server. It verifies and allows users to access the server.

The product is easy to use. I just have to click on the Okta app on my mobile. The verification takes two seconds. We need to verify once we start the software because we use single sign-on.

The stability could be better.

I have been using the solution since April. I am using the latest version of the solution.

I rate the tool’s stability an eight or a nine out of ten.

Around 2000 to 3000 people use the product in our organization.

The deployment was done in-house.

I would recommend the product to others. It is a good solution. Overall, I rate the tool an eight out of ten.

We use the solution for our single sign-on applications. It resolves password issues.

We use it for authentication and 90% of our SaaS app. 

We use it for on and off-boarding users. It syncs with our on-premises master directory to set them up and take them off.

We like that the solution helps us to streamline multifactor authentication.

It's got great SSO and good provisioning and de-provisioning. 

The product is easy to set up. 

It is stable.

The solution can scale very well.

I've been pleased with its capabilities overall. 

Support could be a bit faster.

I've used the solution for five years. 

The solution is stable. I'd rate its reliability ten out of ten. 

It's extremely scalable. It'd rate the solution's ease of expansion ten out of ten. 

We have 1500 users on the solution currently.

Support is good. However, sometimes it takes them a bit longer to deal with issues. 

Positive

We previously used a different solution. We moved to Okta as the GUI is very user-friendly, and the solution is simple to use. 

The initial setup is very easy. It's not complex. 

The deployment took a matter of three to four days for our hybrid setup.

K+Okta's team helped us deploy the solution. They made it very easy.

We have gotten an ROI in terms of time savings. We've seen 20% to 30% ROI, as it is saving us a lot of time. 

The pricing is a bit expensive. I'd rate it four out of ten in terms of affordability. It's a bit more expensive than our older solution.  

Okta charges per user, and that can make it costly if you are a big company.

We are customers and end-users. 

I'm using the latest version of the solution. 

I'd rate the solution eight out of ten. The pricing is a bit high, and they do charge per user. There are other options that are a bit less expensive. 

We used Okta Workforce Identity for SSO, MFA, life cycle management, as well as the external identity and access management for external customers. We used the solution internally for accessing all applications, so we had an Okta software portal where we could then start any application we wanted.

The biggest benefit my company gained from Okta Workforce Identity is that everything just works securely so that all your managed devices can access all your applications without any hassle because they are trusted devices, but if you want to use your father's or mother's PC to access the company application, then it will ask more MFA (multifactor authentication) steps.

What I found most valuable in Okta Workforce Identity is that it worked together with VMware Workspace One, so there was this device check at the same time. My company used the trusted device method that enabled you to define that only the trusted devices including the Workspace One agent were able to access the applications directly without an additional authentication step.

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.

I've worked with Okta Workforce Identity since 2014, though I just changed my workplace, meaning I left the company where the solution was being used. I did have experience with it within the last twelve months.

Okta Workforce Identity is a stable solution. It's always on, though once there's been some hiccup in the US time zone that didn't affect my company.

Okta Workforce Identity is a scalable solution.

There were times I needed to escalate some questions to the technical support team of Okta Workforce Identity, and on a scale of one to ten, with one being the worst and ten being the best, I would rate support a nine out of ten.

Positive

Setting up Okta Workforce Identity has to be done gradually because you have to change the log-in methods for every application, meaning you need to turn them on. For example, now you'll start to use Okta Workforce Identity for Office 365. Next, you'll use it for Zendesk. You cannot do everything at the same time, so you have to make a gradual plan over a couple of months, then you turn on all of the new applications for authentications to be done with Okta Workforce Identity.

Deploying the solution took two months.

The implementation of Okta Workforce Identity was done in-house because my company had a lot of ready-made integrations with the solution, but sometimes you need to ask for help from the third-party software vendor, particularly to turn on some features, so your third-party software integrates with Okta Workforce Identity, for example, you'd need to have the SSO feature turned on, etc.

The pricing for Okta Workforce Identity could still be improved or made cheaper. It costs from 50 to 100 euros a year per user.

Okta Workforce Identity has different packages you can choose from, and my previous company had all of them, particularly the full Okta suite. We went with the full suite because you can also use it in the new employee onboarding process, so when you get a new employee, you can authorize Okta Workforce Identity to provision all the applications automatically so that when you create the new user and you put that user into a certain user group, then he gets all the applications provisioned automatically. For example, for Microsoft 365, the solution creates the user, puts that user in the right place, and also adds licensing, so my company was using Okta Workforce Identity as well for the onboarding of new employees.

In the organization I previously worked for, I also used VMware Identity Manager, apart from Okta Workforce Identity. Those two solutions work together, and though they have a little bit of competition, VMware Identity Manager and Okta Workforce Identity complement each other. Okta is the master identity solution while with VMware Identity Manager and Workspace ONE, you can create the aspect of the trusted device so that when you have a trusted iOS, Android, Windows, or Mac device, it will check whether it's trusted, via VMware, and then transfer the authentication to Okta Workforce Identity and everything works just smoothly, so Okta knows that this authentication comes from a trusted device and it can pass further without any additional MFA.

Okta Workforce Identity isn't an on-premises solution.

My company had three hundred users of Okta Workforce Identity at the time.

In terms of maintenance, you just need to make configurations on the console. There was no scripting or coding, so you just have to use the console and know what you're doing.

I would recommend Okta Workforce Identity to others who may want to start using it. My advice for new users is that it's important to understand the trusted device and zero trust methodology, so that when you have devices to manage, for example, with Workspace One, and you combine that with Okta Workforce Identity authentication through VMware Identity Manager, you'll get the full picture. This is so you can ensure that everything works together because knowing only the identity and access management without the device management and trust would be just half the story.

I'm rating Okta Workforce Identity nine out of ten.

We use it for API authentication, on-premises clusters as well as cluster access, and cloud cluster access.

We did not have a unified mechanism for accessing resources or a secure way of accessing resources, and Okta solved that problem for us.

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.

It's not compatible with on-premises installations, unless you host it as a SaaS. We were not able to do that. For example, imagine a scenario where the cloud is not available. Then, Okta will not work for you. That use case will readily fail because it doesn't have an on-premises installation that you can use to authenticate or provide identity and access management. If you have a purely on-premises solution that is not connected to the internet, then this will not work. This is one area that can be improved.

I would also like to see more intelligent analysis of the identity and access management from Okta.

We have been using it for the last seven years.

It is fairly stable. However, because it's a SaaS solution, it needs to have connectivity. If the connectivity is down, then Okta Workforce Identity will be down as well.

This is one of the pluses that Okta has. It's easily scalable, both horizontally and vertically.

Right now, we have about 3,500 users.

There was one minor hiccup with technical support, but other than that, the support has been pretty good. I would give them a nine out of ten.

Positive

We used ForgeRock, and we switched to Okta mainly because of the flexibility that Okta provides.

ForgeRock requires on-premises maintenance. Because most of our applications are now on the cloud, Okta is more user-friendly in that sense.

A couple of years ago, it was 70/30, 70 being on-premises. That's why ForgeRock was the choice. However, it's flipped now to 30/70, and Okta is more useful.

We still use ForgeRock because you can do an on-premises hosting for ForgeRock. Okta doesn't have that capability.

The initial setup is very straightforward; it's a very simple setup. There are some areas for which you need some skills. If you have an SOP, you can just follow it. I would give it a four out of five.

We have three people assigned to the solution for deployment and maintenance.

We deployed it using an in-house team. The initial setup did not take much time; it took about one to three weeks.

Okta has fairly competitive pricing.

We evaluated some native cloud services, like AWS and Azure before choosing Okta Workforce Identity. 

We also looked at IBM ISAM, IBM Security Access Management, and Oracle ISAM, but they're very rigid products. That's why we went for Okta. They don't have any flexibility, and the cost was also very high compared to that for Okta.

If your use case is multi-cloud data centers and hybrid cloud architecture, Okta is a solution to go to. It's fairly easy to implement as well. It has federated identity and access management, and it works very well with any type of identification authentication. However, if you have on-premises data centers where there are connectivity problems, then it would be better to avoid Okta.

I would rate Okta Workforce Identity at eight on a scale from one to ten because I've found it easy to implement and easy to learn. That is, the onboarding or the learning curve is less. It also has federated identity and access management mechanisms, where you can apply the various resources and workloads that you have. Also, it has very good interoperability and compatibility. It can easily scale too.

I am using Okta Workforce Identity for identity access management.

Okta Workforce Identity has helped improve our organization by providing customer identity management, customer onboarding, customer identity stores, workforce provisioning. Additionally, single sign-on is one of the primary functions that has been a benefit.

Okta Workforce Identity could improve provisioning it can be made simpler.

They are implementing in one of the newer releases certification, attestation, and some role-mining abilities, but I don't know how far along that's going to be. That's a statement that they said they are going to have in the future.

I have been using Okta Workforce Identity for approximately three years.

Okta Workforce Identity is scalable.

The scalability of Okta Workforce Identity is great. It's a SaaS solution the scalability is one of the built-in expectations with it. It can scale, even though I don't scale it personally with any of the companies I worked with, it can potentially scale to support millions. It's easily scalable.

I rate the support from Okta Workforce Identity a four out of five.

I have previously used Oracle Access Management, Microsoft Azure Active Directory, and ADFS. Those would be the major ones. I've been introduced to small ones, such as PingFederate, but I never used those heavily.

We switched solutions because of the architectural design. We chose Okta Workforce Identity for external customers, it's a customer identity platform that we decided to go with.

The initial setup of Okta Workforce Identity is straightforward. I was able to get an environment ready within half a day.

I rate the initial setup experience of Okta Workforce Identity a four out of five. 

I have used an integrator and have done the implementation myself for Okta Workforce Identity.

Okta Workforce Identity scales up by the user, and then by the service that you're purchasing.

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

I rate the price of Okta Workforce Identity a three out of five.

I rate Okta Workforce Identity an eight out of ten.

We've been using this solution for SSO and consolidation of IDs.

This solution brought us the SSO perspective, and this is the main reason we're using it.

The only thing I like about Okta Workforce Identity compared to other solutions in the market is that it's an easy resource that you can get, even if you're working with many users, but there is a lot to learn about it.

There are many things that Okta has to improve on. I understand that Okta has a lot of apps, like any other provider, e.g. Microsoft apps, IDP apps, or cloud identity apps.

The problem with Okta is that they create the app and they never update. In this fast-paced industry where versions keep getting updated, Okta is really slow at times.

None of the Okta applications that they create, for example, in my case: I have used the cloud identity of Microsoft apps and now I'm using the off tabs. What I found is none of the single Okta apps that we have worked and did not create an issue. They are not fully mature. So it's that aspect that can be improved, which Okta is investigating. Their application support and not having updates for those applications also need to be improved. These are the things that surprised me and I was not able to understand from Okta.

Okta's customer support should be improved.

Okta should work with certain providers, e.g. the Google cloud, the AWS cloud, the Microsoft cloud, and they should evaluate the integration point because what happens is if your organization has SSO which relies on Okta, all of these three clouds and the Okta app are far from perfect. You are not able to get the right setup based on how your security is trying to define it vs what the application can support. You'll end up using the default interface Okta provides with those apps.

I understand Okta could say that if they shouldn't worry about it because if AWS wanted to support Okta, then AWS should be the one providing us the app and support, but Okta should try to understand the users, do surveys from the different automation using Okta, and use different apps because those apps are very critical. They are far from perfect, so Okta has the worst implementation.

I've used this solution in the last 12 months. We've been using it for six years.

This solution is stable and reliable. We didn't find the solution itself hard to use.

The scalability of this solution is bad. Scalability has two or three different meanings to it.

Is it scalable from the infrastructure side of it? The answer is yes.

Is this scalable from the business perspective? The answer is no. For example, the B2B and the B2C solutions that others provide, those aspects in Okta are completely lacking.

For example, if I have the Microsoft Azure Active Directory, I have the B2C, B2B, and the phase rate, so I have a way to not only support my enterprise but my end customers in a very fast manner. In the case of Okta, that whole path is a nightmare to work with.

I didn't like Okta's support. They say they have very good support, but the moment you create a ticket, they will tell you that they provide the app, but they cannot provide support because we connected the app to another environment, or to another side of the spectrum. This seemed very odd to me.

First, we are using the application you specified, then you say you cannot support this application just because the value provided is outside of this application, so you cannot troubleshoot or help us to troubleshoot if we open a ticket. Every single time it's a chicken and egg type of situation. From that perspective, Okta's support is horrible.

The setup was straightforward. Nowadays, all the other IDPs are the same way, too. I didn't find a single IDP that had no experience at the level, and all of them can stand up at the same time, within the same time frame.

With Okta, on the other hand, the requirement to have the ID server in between, whether it's the cloud-based ID server specified, or the on-prem base, like ours: It's on-prem, but what I found was that we were not able to do it even after following all the guidance unless we had a dedicated Okta person to help us do it. It was a different situation with Microsoft and cloud IDP which were easy to set up, as we were able to do it ourselves just by following the documentation.

We implemented the solution through an integrator consultant. They are fine. They are doing the job on a daily basis.

This solution is costly.

With Microsoft, you get the exact same information that Okta gives out of the box: free, because that's what Microsoft does, and even if I compare to other cloud IDPs, with Okta, access may offer free access for startups, and if you have fewer users, it's okay. Pricing is decent. The moment you talk about the enterprise level, for example, we were talking about implementing Okta across the US with multiple customers, and the cost they gave us was two million dollars. The cost is not justified for the single assets of this solution, so Okta is bad in those terms.

We've been evaluating Microsoft Azure Active Directory. It's still in the POC phase, and it's been three or four months. We have very particular requirements, e.g. a mix of multiple IDPs with Okta, and Azure Active Directory is one of them, but that is the only one where we don't have the solution. We are trying to do the POCs first to ensure that they are able to meet our needs.

The reports I downloaded were very informative. The things that we were trying to do is generally the One ID and software entitlement. Our customers find them more useful than the Microsoft Azure side of it. They know that the functionality exists and they are able to use that functionality, but the intuitive nature of managing the entitlement was not there. We also had a requirement where we wanted to mix the Okta in between, for the SSO, so I was trying to collect as much information as I can get and that information was helpful.

Whenever you search for the Okta documentation, for example, if we search for cloud IDP and Microsoft-related documentation, it's only on Microsoft's site we get the help we need, including help from the community. Okta's community, when you Google it, is lacking because it only contains help or information about Okta products because Okta users are only able to use the product in a standard way.

This surprised me especially because Okta has such a good name, but the bottom line is, if you ask me as a decision-maker or the one who influences decisions in our organization, if I was going to choose Okta as our SSO provider, my answer will be flat NO.

The initial implementation of this solution took three months. It's a very simple and standard implementation, so that's never been a problem.

A hundred users are currently using this solution in our organization. It doesn't require heavy maintenance.

Working with Okta can be restrictive, and this is where Okta doesn't shine.

This solution is being used extensively in our organization. Increasing its usage will depend on whether they are able to convince the Infotech folks, and that's what's happening.

The advice I would give to others looking into implementing this solution is for them to first try to understand it. They should not confine themselves to selecting Okta, thinking that it's the end solution. They should look at their future needs too because once they implement Okta without considering their future needs, they will have to do a lot of hacks and tricks. Before they even delve into Okta, they have to first think about their future and how much this solution will cost in the long run.

This solution meets the need, but that's all, so I'm rating it a six out of ten.