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
Okta
Score 8.8 out of 10
N/A
Okta is an enterprise grade identity management service, built in the cloud. IT can manage access across any application, person or device. Whether the people are employees, partners or customers or whether the applications are in the cloud, on premises or on a mobile device, Okta helps IT become more secure and maintain compliance. The Okta service provides directory services, single sign-on, authentication, provisioning, workflow, and built in reporting. ment systems.
$2
Per User Per Month
Pricing
Microsoft Entra External ID
Okta
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
Single Sign on
$2.00
Per User Per Month
Multi Factor Authentication
$3.00
Per User Per Month
Single Sign on Adaptive
$5.00
Per User Per Month
Multi Factor Authentication Adaptive
$6.00
Per User Per Month
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Microsoft Entra External ID
Okta
Free Trial
Yes
Yes
Free/Freemium Version
Yes
Yes
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
No
Yes
Entry-level Setup Fee
No setup fee
No setup fee
Additional Details
A flat fee of $0.03 is billed for each SMS/Phone-based multi-factor authentication attempt.
Browse products and price points that make the most sense for your organization on the Okta website.
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 has extensive compatibility and rich feature set of integrating with a wide array of core systems and SaaS platforms. Daily I utilize Okta's user-friendly central hub to simplify access the numerous applications we utilize within my company (Google Workspace, Slack, Zoom, Salesforce, Microsoft Office 365, among many others.)
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
With respective to user interface and license cost, we thought The Okta Identity Cloud was better than other tools for use. Their customization of license was another reason for us to go with The Okta Identity Cloud over other tools.
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)
