Microsoft Entra External ID vs. Microsoft Entra ID

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Microsoft Entra External ID
Score 9.9 out of 10
N/A
Microsoft Entra External ID (formerly Azure Active Directory B2C, or alternately, Azure Active Directory External Identities) provides business-to-customer identity as a service. Customers can use their preferred social, enterprise, or local account identities to get single sign-on access to applications and APIs.
$0
per month per active users
Microsoft Entra ID
Score 8.7 out of 10
N/A
Microsoft Entra ID (formerly Microsoft Azure Active Directory or Azure AD) is a cloud-based identity and access management (IAM) solution supporting restricted access to applications with Azure Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) built-in, single sign-on (SSO), B2B collaboration controls, self-service password, and integration with Microsoft productivity and cloud storage (Office 365, OneDrive, etc) as well as 3rd party services.
$6
per user/per month
Pricing
Microsoft Entra External IDMicrosoft Entra ID
Editions & Modules
Premium P1 (for More than 50,000 MAU)
$0.00325
per month per active users
Premium P2 (for More than 50,000 MAU)
$0.01625
per month per active users
Premium P1
$6.00
per user/per month
Premium P2
$9.00
per user/per month
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Microsoft Entra External IDMicrosoft Entra ID
Free Trial
YesYes
Free/Freemium Version
YesYes
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional DetailsA flat fee of $0.03 is billed for each SMS/Phone-based multi-factor authentication attempt.
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
Microsoft Entra External IDMicrosoft Entra ID
Features
Microsoft Entra External IDMicrosoft Entra ID
Identity Management
Comparison of Identity Management features of Product A and Product B
Microsoft Entra External ID
-
Ratings
Microsoft Entra ID
8.7
Ratings
7% above category average
ID-Management Access Control00 Ratings8.90 Ratings
ID Management Single-Sign On (SSO)00 Ratings9.20 Ratings
Multi-Factor Authentication00 Ratings9.30 Ratings
Password Management00 Ratings8.80 Ratings
Account Provisioning and De-provisioning00 Ratings8.90 Ratings
ID Management Workflow Automation00 Ratings7.50 Ratings
ID Risk Management00 Ratings8.10 Ratings
Best Alternatives
Microsoft Entra External IDMicrosoft Entra ID
Small Businesses
WatchGuard AuthPoint
WatchGuard AuthPoint
Score 9.1 out of 10
WatchGuard AuthPoint
WatchGuard AuthPoint
Score 9.1 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
OneLogin by One Identity
OneLogin by One Identity
Score 9.6 out of 10
OneLogin by One Identity
OneLogin by One Identity
Score 9.6 out of 10
Enterprises
OneLogin by One Identity
OneLogin by One Identity
Score 9.6 out of 10
OneLogin by One Identity
OneLogin by One Identity
Score 9.6 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
Microsoft Entra External IDMicrosoft Entra ID
Likelihood to Recommend
8.9
(0 ratings)
9.0
(0 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
-
(0 ratings)
9.5
(0 ratings)
Usability
-
(0 ratings)
7.4
(0 ratings)
Availability
-
(0 ratings)
9.0
(0 ratings)
Performance
-
(0 ratings)
9.0
(0 ratings)
Support Rating
-
(0 ratings)
7.1
(0 ratings)
Online Training
-
(0 ratings)
5.0
(0 ratings)
Implementation Rating
-
(0 ratings)
9.7
(0 ratings)
Configurability
-
(0 ratings)
8.0
(0 ratings)
Product Scalability
-
(0 ratings)
9.0
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
Microsoft Entra External IDMicrosoft Entra ID
Likelihood to Recommend
It is not easy to calculate the actual ROI due to the difficult quantification of all factors, but it certainly contributed a lot in protecting, monitoring and controlling access to our system. It also made it much easier to detect vulnerable external users with simple and "easy to hack" passwords they use on multiple apps.
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For one, a significant factor for us is that it is integrated with HelloID, which gives us, as the IT department, a lot of time back because we don’t need to create user accounts manually. It is great for the roles we have defined, as they can be used repeatedly. A great feature is that guest accounts can be created for external users; we only need to be in a closed area of your domain.
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Pros
  • One of the things that Microsoft Entra External ID does really well is creating user logins, accounts and profile. It is very easy to create them, manage them and delete them. It is fast and reliant.
  • Limit access or authorization feature. We can allow different levels of authorization and access. So that not all the employees would have access to all the data. Only some relaible employees would have access and power to change anything.
  • Mutli factor authentication feature is also a really good feature to secure data. Even overseas vendors need MFS to login which gives double protection to our data.
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  • It addresses the issue of identity management very well with respect to putting in that multi authentication.
  • It can also support with respect to we can push these policies into another product that is not Microsoft, but it needs that SSO so we can have one account going into multi different accounts. I think that's the biggest pros and the easy use of Microsoft 365 also is one of those pros also in terms of administration.
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Cons
  • Troubleshooting diagnostic logs effectively requires VS Code
  • Group and role management requires additional effort
  • The programming model (XML) could use some developer experience love
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  • Well, I'm an active ad admin, so there's a lot of features in active directory that Entra ID seems to be just adding now. We're kind of figuring out that the policies are different than Entra ID that they were in active directory and we're finding other products to do that, like Azure policy. Some things I'm used to seeing in identity products or like active directory aren't in Entra iID, but are doing good job of managing stuff that it does so far.
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Likelihood to Renew
No answers on this topic
Entra ID is a vital part of our Identity management/administration. With the integrations it has to other Microsoft products, setup and configuration is a breeze. Additionally, Microsoft has been around a long time and have the resources to ensure this product is stable and secure for many years to come. We know it will evolve with time to provide us what we need as technology changes.
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Usability
I find it easy to use. The usability is great. Every department uses it for different purposes. Everyone access information relevant to them. Since we've started to use this we have seen less security incidents.
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Very easily usable. It could be easier to use. Implementation was kind of tricky. We do run a hybrid environment, so we're syncing a local active directory instance with Entra ID, so that could be a little tricky. But outside of that, if you're not running a hybrid deployment or a version of Entra ID usually, it's pretty straightforward.
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Reliability and Availability
No answers on this topic
There has been a handful of outages but they have been either minimal or rarely severe
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Performance
No answers on this topic
I could probably rate this a 10 but I'm always conservative on giving out perfect scored bt performance has not been a problem for us using Entra ID.
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Support Rating
No answers on this topic
Microsoft has offered Azure Active Directory as a solution for a couple of decades now, so they have seen and anticipated almost any issue that an organization may face and can therefore help. The cloud offering of Azure Active Directory offers some additional "self healing" or monitoring services that can minimize the need for a service call. However, as with most large companies supporting a fast growing market, there may be some gaps in service knowledge (and particularly processing) from the front line / tier one staff as they follow a corporate script at first contact.
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Online Training
No answers on this topic
Most training was internally produced
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Implementation Rating
No answers on this topic
Make sure you use a good partner. Our implementation was a bit longer and more problematic than we expected. Our partner got it done, but, in my opinion, some of their inexperience and staffing issues were evident.
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Alternatives Considered
The best selling points for Azure Active Directory B2C that stand out from the competition are:
  • Pricing, both at small and very large scale (and in between), is hard to beat
  • The seamless integration with Azure should make Azure Active Directory B2C the first choice of CIAM platform for anyone building on Azure
  • Full compatibility with Azure AD's audit log format means Azure Active Directory B2C can be easily integrated into your SIEM tooling
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Microsoft Entra ID is not as stand-alone product as competitors like Okta. It may lack some of the features that competing products have but on the other hand it integrates both technically and license wise with other Microsoft cloud services and is easy to deploy. It is also the easiest way to extend identity management to the cloud if you already have Microsoft Active Directory in use.
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Scalability
No answers on this topic
Scalability is pretty trival for Entra ID. It's not difficult to manage a few or many accounts.
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Return on Investment
  • Having monthly active users billing was cost-effective.
  • Helped with the IT support that was already managing the Azure platform of the company; this helped to manage the costs better and optimize them.
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  • I don't know if I can really quantify that. It's one of those products that just exists and so there's not a whole lot of changes that we need to make with the product. And so I guess in terms of value, what we get is we don't have to worry about the identity management piece. We know that that's taken care of.
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ScreenShots