ManageEngine ADManager Plus vs. Microsoft Entra External ID

The interface has really improved and modernized over the years. It integrates perfectly with Active Directory and can do just about anything you can imagine. It's speedy, too—large tasks don't take long at all. I've used this product for many, many years (over a decade) and have rarely needed support, but when I have reached out for assistance, they've been helpful. The price is fantastic for what you get. It can seem like a one-trick pony at first, but the more you use it, the more you realize what else you can do with it. ADManager Plus is chock-full of tools that you'd think Microsoft would include out of the box, but after 25+ years of Active Directory, it's clear they have no interest in doing so. ADManager Plus fills all the gaps left by Microsoft. Simple mass imports with automatic OU assignments, mass changes to existing accounts, etc. Some of this can be done through PowerShell, sure, but this makes it easy.

Incentivized

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.

• It is very good in the bulk user creation. With this tool, we can create a number of users in just a few minutes rather than following a long old process.
• It is good for bulk user account modification. You can select a lot of users and make changes as per the requirements.
• ManageEngine ADManager Plus is helping us a lot in the report generation of user accounts, passwords, groups, and other reports that are helping us a lot.
• This tool also helps us with mailbox creation and shared mailbox creation

Incentivized

• 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.

Incentivized

• They need to improve their report in terms of modification, like you will not get a lot of customization options in the report.
• In the password report if you are applying filter in Days since password last set and selecting the password change date from day 0 and again you want to select the Account status as Enable then you cannot do this.
• If you have more than 1 domain and you are trying to modify users in both domains in a single attempt, you cannot do this.

Incentivized

• Troubleshooting diagnostic logs effectively requires VS Code
• Group and role management requires additional effort
• The programming model (XML) could use some developer experience love

Incentivized

We are very satfisfied with the software and when time permits, we hope to explore additional features we are not using. It has a lot of we ae not currently using due to staffing shortages.

Incentivized

It is very easy to use and provides so many functions we can do in Active Directory that's laid out in a nice UI. The bulk management and reporting features allows us to make changes and gather information from AD infinitely more effective that if we just used AD and PowerShell commands.

Incentivized

Microsoft Entra External ID is an all round solid product, and certainly delivers the solution to our needs well. Through use we found that Pupil's become 'experts in avoidance', if they can forget their login details or indeed their device used for MFA, they will and then use that as the excuse for not accessing/completing their assignments. If more MFA options were available (such as delegated MFA) this would really help iron out our entire end user experiences

Incentivized

Yes, it loads very quickly and moving between pages is very fast

Incentivized

This is one of their lacking points... Every time I have needed support the first thing they want to see is our log files. And then it can take days or weeks to hear back from them and sometimes you have to follow up yourself or they will just close your request. If you can actually get someone on the phone or a sessions scheduled to troubleshoot, sometimes you'll be lucky enough to solve your problem. We used to have a major new hire automation running in ADManager and it broke after updating the software. We went back and forth with them for a month or so and they were not able to resolve the issue, I ended up writing a PowerShell script and scheduling it to do the work that was being done before. This also allowed me to make the automation better than ADManager allowed.

Incentivized

We decided to use ManageEngine ADManager Plus due to the compatibility it had with our systems. We run a hybrid environment and ManageEngine ADManager Plus was the system that fit into our infrastructure the best. It also provides the most opportunity for growth in the way we want and does not require us to build on systems we are not yet ready to implement.

For us as we already used microsoft platforms it made perfect sense to remain within one eco system rather than split external ID systems if we could. We did however look closely at AWS as a comparison and chose Microsoft Entra External ID based on our end users (familiarity) with microsoft authentication and deployment routines. We also found that Microsoft gave more sovereignty assurances with our data.

Incentivized

We are currently deploying on 1 department

Incentivized

• The built-in reports and queries are invaluable. You simply won't have this information in a vanilla AD environment.
• The ease that you can access the information you need about your environment is outstanding. You can access the information you need quickly so you can make better decisions on managing your business.
• The ability to easily designate techs with limited access is great. This offloads menial administration duties from your higher level techs so your not paying high level folks to do redundant tasks.

Incentivized

• 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.

Incentivized