Amazon Cognito vs. Okta

Well Suited

1. B2C mobile and web apps with a high number of users.
2. Cheaper and cost-effective.
3. If the other pieces of the infra are already using AWS services like Lambda, S3, Pinpoint, etc.

Not Suited For:

1. Advanced use-cases (Biometrics based authentication) Email, and other MFA channels.
2. For any use-cases needing SCIM.
3. Customized flows of SSO, and MFA will need a layer on Lambda and other AWS services.

Incentivized

Should be well-suited for a SaaS business organisation as they have a lot of internal applications and need a role-based authentication system between the various teams, improving security and audit log system to account for any breaches. It integrates well with internal applications such as Salesforce and Oracle. Best when need of SSO.

Incentivized

• Strong integration with React.js and client-side applications
• Easy to bridge Cognito identities with the rest of the AWS ecosystem
• Easy to store user profile data directly in Cognito rather than having to build additional services/endpoints
• Easy integration with AWS Lambda to extend and add sophistication to the service

Incentivized

• Centralized control of enterprise passwords
• Extensive customization of acceptable password criteria
• One system for Identity and Access Management to learn
• Scalable throughout the university for all central services
• Uniform login experience for students, faculty, and staff
• Single point of response to address termination of access
• Ability to use FastPass for lower priority systems
• Excellent support of multi-factor requirements

Incentivized

• SCIM implementation is not present.
• B2B SaaS use-cases are very hard to configure. More suitable or B2C use-cases.
• Needs more recipes, plugins, SDK's.
• 2FA with Email as an OTP channel is not supported.
• 2 FA using biometrics is not available; can be customised using lambda.

Incentivized

• I'm not sure it's really a room for improvement thing, but due to the granularity offered by Okta, sometimes it can be challenging to find exactly what you're looking for.
• There was an instance in which we had issues getting SAML configured for an application. I feel this challenge was mostly user error (on our part) because we didn't realize the SAML instructions were SPECIFIC to each app integration and changed (codes) each time. We attempted to mirror the settings/configurations of an existing app (same app, but different domain). I think having a note somewhere that indicated that the instructions were unique to each integration would have saved us a bit of time. Again, I'm not sure this is really an issue with Okta though, more of a user learning curve thing.
• Sometimes searching for things is a challenge (without the "Rockstar" add-in). For example, if you have a user group called "Okta_users_everyone", searching for "everyone" will not find it. You have to search for the beginning of the object name (not just any part of it). The ability to search partial or wildcard would greatly enhance search functionality.

Incentivized

Okta has a passion to provide secure and scalable identity solution. Their passion has come across as advocacy in a way that has deepened my knowledge of the field of authentication. I took identity for granted before but after seeing features such as external authentication I know that Okta can enable my business to reach new heights

Amazon Cognito is easy to use and implement if you don't need to implement custom policies. But if your security team requires something outside the box, then implementation becomes complicated and you risk wasting time. There is no option for customizable regex for passwords, which is a major deficiency. The standard password policy, allow to choose the length of the password, if it should contains at least one number, one special character, one uppercase letter and one lowercase letter.

Incentivized

Some of its features are great and some are slightly complex and not easy without vendor support.

Incentivized

The Okta Identity Cloud advertises 4 9's of reliability and I would go as far to say that it may even do better than that. As a true Global organization that operates in just about every region of the world, we have yet to have an issue with The Okta Identity Cloud that has impacted our business operations.

Incentivized

From my perspective, for the things that my group uses it for, Okta is very fast. It is as least as fast as the local password database methods that it replaces on our campus enterprise services. I do not believe that it slows anything down at all. In fact, not having to think too much about the login, because they all look the same, probably speeds things up somewhat.

Incentivized

Community support is excellent, many times even better and quicker then the offical AWS support. I really cannot recommend community support enough! Apart from that the service is relativily easy to use and does not have a huge learning curve. Examples are easy to follow and will help you start using the service.

Incentivized

We've had a few support cases over the years and every case has been handled by the Okta support team beautifully. We received clear answers to questions we had regarding setup and even were provided simple to follow guides on how to setup their product to use with custom applications.

Incentivized

They are ideal tools to create a secure and unique login experience for our applications. Thanks to its API authorization, Amazon Cognito ensures connections to applications that are secure.It is easy to use and provides easy access to files and applications that you need to complete your goal.

Incentivized

Okta is far superior in terms of integrations, user interface, automation, and connectivity. Additionally, Okta offers better support and availability, and a more robust solution across every capacity Entra competes in. Okta simply works, whereas Microsoft Entra has a large overhead that is difficult to use when configuring things.

Incentivized

Being a cloud native application, The Okta Identity Cloud is extremely scalable and easy to setup. By integrating into existing directories and applications via standard techniques and protocols, it is very easy to both initially setup and add additional users as required. Once all the necessary integrations are setup, it's a simple rinse and repeat process to onboard additional users (which can be automated with imports as well)

Incentivized

• Amazon Cognito has had a positive impact on our business by allowing us to develop services that require user sign-up and sign-in more rapidly. Not only do we not need to build or maintain these features, but Cognito's implementation is also better than what we would be justified in building ourselves.
• Amazon Cognito makes user management easy. This reduces the time we have to spend supporting users. Non-technical product managers can even use the AWS Console to manage users without requiring support from developers.
• Amazon Cognito is likely more secure than what would be built in-house; a portion of our attack surface is now managed by Amazon.

Incentivized

• Reduces password fatigue and keeps all my apps together in a central location for easy access throughout the day. Adding new apps is simple.
• I am more productive by using the centralized app's portal rather than logging in to lots of different applications.
• Nothing is automated through OKTA but it does improve our security.

Incentivized