Microsoft Entra External ID vs. Onfido

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.

Incentivized

Onfido is well suited for integrations within a mobile app for automated document processing and validation e.g. driver's licenses, passports etc. Onfido is less well suited for web applications since the quality and accuracy of the checks is very dependent on the quality of the image captured which in general is less high quality from a webcam.

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

• Facial recognition of driver's license information
• Easy to integrate SDK
• Certified by governing bodies e.g soc 2 type 2 compliant

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

• Dashboard - current analytics are very high level pass, consider, fail - would like a more detailed breakdown of reasons why consider / fail aggregated in an easy to view format.
• Speed consistency - sometimes Onfido checks are very fast, sometimes it takes a lot longer
• OCR - we had issues with OCR data quality and had to add a step for users to verify information captured via OCR from Driver's Licenses.

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

I really enjoy how simple it is to connect this Active Directory with other Microsoft Products to collaborate with colleagues and clients.

Incentivized

Ultimately went with Onfido due to previous experience with applications & products that had worked with Onfido and from research Onfido appeared to be one of the main providers in the space providing reassurance internally on use of relatively new technology. Onfido security and compliance was also standout helping pass internal audits by cybersecurity and legal. Downside with Onfido is that the pricing model is complex and relies on accurate predictions of platform/user growth to secure the best price-per-check which is challenging in a startup environment.

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

• Strong ROI compared to manual alternatives
• Slightly unclear how Onfido ROI would be better/worse than competitors in the space - a lot of similar offerings out there

Incentivized