Microsoft Entra External ID vs. Microsoft Entra ID

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Microsoft Entra External ID
Score 9.2 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
9.3
1 Ratings
12% above category average
Microsoft Entra ID
8.5
114 Ratings
3% above category average
ID-Management Access Control10.01 Ratings8.9112 Ratings
ID Management Single-Sign On (SSO)9.01 Ratings9.1112 Ratings
Multi-Factor Authentication10.01 Ratings9.1113 Ratings
Password Management10.01 Ratings8.2107 Ratings
Account Provisioning and De-provisioning10.01 Ratings8.4106 Ratings
ID Management Workflow Automation7.01 Ratings7.785 Ratings
ID Risk Management9.01 Ratings7.989 Ratings
Best Alternatives
Microsoft Entra External IDMicrosoft Entra ID
Small Businesses
Dashlane Password Manager
Dashlane Password Manager
Score 9.0 out of 10
Dashlane Password Manager
Dashlane Password Manager
Score 9.0 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
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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)
9.6
(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)
9.6
(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
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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Microsoft
Microsoft Entra ID provides powerful and reliable identity and access management capabilities that enhance secure authentication and authorization for cloud systems. Offer modern security features, including MFA, conditional access, and threat intelligence, to protect identities and prevent unauthorized access. Single Sign-On allows us to access multiple apps with just a single login.
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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
  • Single Sign-on helps ease the user experience, allowing users to avoid typing multiple passwords.
  • The identity and management are straightforward to use and easy to connect to other applications, as well as third-party applications.
  • The support of remote work. Nowadays, many people work from home and need to access their accounts. Microsoft Enterprise ID gives secure access to the company data.
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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
  • For larger organizations the policy management user interface gets complex
  • Security group nesting limitations - you cannot always nest groups within groups depending on the group types and use case
  • Price gets high if you need the enterprise or P2 premium licenses
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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
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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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
Yeah, so basically that product to be honest, was more of a getting comfortable with cloud identification management. So that was a product I used. It has all the policies for desktops and doing updates and all that central directory identity provisioning stuff for users. Users and I will have an advantage because right now you get it from the time you get email, you get it, it is there, right? I mean you don't have to pay for anything. And then Microsoft, depending on your interest file license you have Access to Defender and all of those other nice products that compliment Entra ID. So I think that Entra ID is more rich. There's more potential as the business scales if that other product, you can't really scale as much as it was good because I deal with a lot of small medium size enterprises. I do a lot of more consulting type firms. They don't have more than 20 consultants and they just need a system whether it's for their legal activities, finance activities, et cetera. But in terms of having an email is very important to so many companies. So it's so easy to use the Entra ID and easy to expand more value for money for clients.
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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 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.
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ScreenShots