Microsoft Entra External ID vs. Microsoft Entra ID

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Microsoft Entra External ID
Score 9.3 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 8.9 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
9.4
3 Ratings
13% above category average
Microsoft Entra ID
8.5
116 Ratings
3% above category average
ID-Management Access Control9.33 Ratings8.9114 Ratings
ID Management Single-Sign On (SSO)9.33 Ratings9.2114 Ratings
Multi-Factor Authentication9.03 Ratings9.1115 Ratings
Password Management10.03 Ratings8.1109 Ratings
Account Provisioning and De-provisioning10.03 Ratings8.4108 Ratings
ID Management Workflow Automation8.73 Ratings7.887 Ratings
ID Risk Management9.33 Ratings8.091 Ratings
Best Alternatives
Microsoft Entra External IDMicrosoft Entra ID
Small Businesses
Dashlane Password Manager
Dashlane Password Manager
Score 9.1 out of 10
Dashlane Password Manager
Dashlane Password Manager
Score 9.1 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
RSA Access Manager (Discontinued)
RSA Access Manager (Discontinued)
Score 10.0 out of 10
RSA Access Manager (Discontinued)
RSA Access Manager (Discontinued)
Score 10.0 out of 10
Enterprises
RSA Access Manager (Discontinued)
RSA Access Manager (Discontinued)
Score 10.0 out of 10
RSA Access Manager (Discontinued)
RSA Access Manager (Discontinued)
Score 10.0 out of 10
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User Ratings
Microsoft Entra External IDMicrosoft Entra ID
Likelihood to Recommend
10.0
(7 ratings)
8.9
(170 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
-
(0 ratings)
9.7
(16 ratings)
Usability
10.0
(1 ratings)
8.8
(28 ratings)
Availability
-
(0 ratings)
9.0
(1 ratings)
Performance
-
(0 ratings)
9.0
(1 ratings)
Support Rating
-
(0 ratings)
7.1
(21 ratings)
Online Training
-
(0 ratings)
5.0
(1 ratings)
Implementation Rating
-
(0 ratings)
9.7
(3 ratings)
Configurability
-
(0 ratings)
8.0
(1 ratings)
Contract Terms and Pricing Model
-
(0 ratings)
7.4
(2 ratings)
Product Scalability
-
(0 ratings)
9.0
(1 ratings)
Professional Services
-
(0 ratings)
9.0
(1 ratings)
User Testimonials
Microsoft Entra External IDMicrosoft Entra ID
Likelihood to Recommend
Microsoft
In our organisation we use Microsoft Entra External ID primarily to enable non-attenders to remotely login to our tenant and access pre-prepared educational resources. As well as access to tutors, pupils can also communicate with centralised staff who can support them to gain an education. Utilising our external tenant configuration we can develop and deploy our own in house apps to unpin this support intervention.
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Microsoft
If you have a mixed solution, such as different types of devices with different types of operating systems, it could be more complicated. But if you have already decided that your company will be a Microsoft company in terms of everything internally running with Microsoft software, like the operating system, Windows 11, then this is probably the best way to use it. So if you have mixed or hybrid solutions or scenarios, maybe it's not exactly what you mean.
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Pros
Microsoft
  • 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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Microsoft
  • Many people at our company work remotely, including the sales and procurement teams. So people usually travel from one country to another country. Some people travel to Australia or some people travel to Canada based on the business requirements. So we usually audit the sign-in logs and verify whether the user is valid while they're using our company's email ID to perform their day-to-day operations.
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Cons
Microsoft
  • 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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Microsoft
  • I say "cost" on a per-user basis for smaller organizations, which is why Microsoft has small-business programs. I'm trying to figure out if anything is uniquely gripping. I guess transitions to and from, but to be honest, that's where we live. The difficulty of adopting Microsoft Entra ID when you didn't start there as an organization is a little bit sizable, but that's the case with any identity provider. It's not anything endemic to Microsoft Entra ID. It works. It's efficient.
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Likelihood to Renew
Microsoft
No answers on this topic
Microsoft
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.
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Usability
Microsoft
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
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Microsoft
Simply because of what I mentioned earlier, the feature set sort of keeps changing and they do a lot of, they integrated with a lot of the other tools and so for users who are not as well seasoned, it may be a little bit more complicated for them to begin working within the tool.
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Reliability and Availability
Microsoft
No answers on this topic
Microsoft
There has been a handful of outages but they have been either minimal or rarely severe
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Performance
Microsoft
No answers on this topic
Microsoft
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
Microsoft
No answers on this topic
Microsoft
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
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Online Training
Microsoft
No answers on this topic
Microsoft
Most training was internally produced
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Implementation Rating
Microsoft
No answers on this topic
Microsoft
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
Microsoft
I really enjoy how simple it is to connect this Active Directory with other Microsoft Products to collaborate with colleagues and clients.
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Microsoft
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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Contract Terms and Pricing Model
Microsoft
No answers on this topic
Microsoft
The features are getting addresses per requirements and their value for Money. The proposed ROI and actual ROI build confidence.
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Scalability
Microsoft
No answers on this topic
Microsoft
Scalability is pretty trival for Entra ID. It's not difficult to manage a few or many accounts.
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Professional Services
Microsoft
No answers on this topic
Microsoft
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.
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Return on Investment
Microsoft
  • 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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Microsoft
  • I think managing costs was probably the biggest one as a nonprofit. We're always worried about the financial impact that any product can have. And as licenses change or they are shut down, migrating to the proper product without going over budget is always something we are concerned about. But for the most part, it's been positive. Microsoft works for us as nonprofits to make sure that we get very fair pricing.
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ScreenShots