FreeRADIUS vs. Microsoft Entra ID

FreeRADIUS is completely scalable and supports both large and small user databases. Because it doesn't take up a lot of server resources, FreeRADIUS is well-suited for organizations with small budgets (it's in the name!) and limited networking hardware. While there is a port of it for Windows, FreeRADIUS is native to Linux so that would be a limitation for many companies who don't use it.

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.

Incentivized

• FreeRADIUS is easy to configure
• It is fast a lightweight footprint on the server
• FreeRADIUS works universally with other systems that support radius authentication

• 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.

Incentivized

• FreeRADIUS requires a 3rd party interface to make it easier to access (we use Daloradius) - it would nice if it was built in.
• Installation and configuration are pretty easy and straightforward but does require connecting to a database which can be cumbersome.

• Probably the most primary thing is just the interface itself. It's frequently changing and so oftentimes we kind of have to go back and redocument our processes for our IT staff because the steps that they would take to perform a task one month. Now it's a totally different staff, new dashboard, even a new name for the product or the feature. So it would be nice if that stuff was a little bit more consistent.

Incentivized

MSFT Entra ID has been essential for managing our geographically dispersed team. We're confident that it will scale with us as grow, and we'll be able to take advantage of additional security and ID management features as they become necessary. Being able to centrally manage our user access from anywhere with a small support team is such a relief.

Incentivized

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.

Incentivized

There has been a handful of outages but they have been either minimal or rarely severe

Incentivized

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.

Incentivized

I have not needed to engage support for anything at this time. I have been able to find the answers either online or in a knowledgebase. I tried to skip the question but it would not let me, so I rated a 9 based on other interactions with Microsoft support I have had

Incentivized

Most training was internally produced

Incentivized

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.

Incentivized

We've used other Microsoft products and we've also used some standalone products, like each application you can have its own identity, so we've looked at some of those too, but we try to use the Entra ID as much as possible because it offers a wider range of reliability.

Incentivized

The features are getting addresses per requirements and their value for Money. The proposed ROI and actual ROI build confidence.

Scalability is pretty trival for Entra ID. It's not difficult to manage a few or many accounts.

Incentivized

Microsoft Professional Services' technical knowledge is appreciable as consultants design the solution as per customer requirements. Mapping of features per user specifications and assisting Customer IT engineers to implement so they can manage and administer the services.

• We previously used Microsoft Network Policy Server for our RADIUS authentication which works ok but was pretty clunky and requires Windows Server. Switching to FreeRADIUS brought our cost down to zero.
• Because FreeRADIUS works natively in Linux it's easy to setup and works with all distros.
• FreeRADIUS allows us to have user authentication for wifi which is much more secure than a simple shared password solution.

• I think it's had positive. It's enabled us to make authentication easier and more streamlined across the organization from frontline workers to back office workers.
• It's allowed us to really adopt authentication policies and methods that suit that user and their work environment.

Incentivized