We performed a comparison between AWS Directory Service and Microsoft Entra ID based on real PeerSpot user reviews.
Find out in this report how the two Identity and Access Management as a Service (IDaaS) (IAMaaS) solutions compare in terms of features, pricing, service and support, easy of deployment, and ROI."AWS Directory Service is secure."
"AWS handles everything on the backend requiring minimal legwork from our team. We only require a dedicated database administrator while depending on Amazon for RDS."
"Two-step authentication is very useful and important."
"We can provide specific access to people based on what they need from our accounts."
"The most valuable feature of AWS Directory Service is cost-cutting features."
"I like the manageability. Activate Connect makes it easier to assign information and to manage the resources in the network."
"AWS has eliminated the downtime we waste when our on-premises resources go down."
"The most valuable feature is ease of use."
"The most valuable feature is the conditional access policies. This gives us the ability to restrict who can access which applications or the portal in specific ways."
"Application integration is easy. MFA and password self-service have reduced most of the supportive work of IT. We use multi-factor authentication. Every access from a user is through multi-factor authentication. There is no legacy authentication. We have blocked legacy authentication methods. For people who use the MDM on mobile, we push our application through Intune. In a hybrid environment, users can work from anywhere. With Intune, we can push policies and secure the data."
"The ability to speed up ability is an asset."
"The best feature is the single sign-on provision for the various type of users."
"Coming from a traditional on-premises Active Directory infrastructure, it is purely a SaaS platform. It is global. It is evergreen. It is always evolving. It is core to the Microsoft Ecosystem."
"The interface is well laid out and it is easy to navigate."
"The most valuable feature of Microsoft Entra ID is its security options, where we can provide highly effective security for user accounts during authentication."
"Very stable and scalable IAM service with good SSO and authentication features."
"I would like to see better integration with other business solutions."
"AWS Directory Service needs to improve processing."
"Can be improved by including on-premises access for services through Identity Access Management."
"The group policy can be improved."
"Our only complaint is that you cannot integrate your Exchange server. Or, if you are planning to install an Exchange server on your Amazon EC2 instance, then you need to configure Active Directory on EC2 instance. We would like for this limitation to be lifted."
"AWS could improve the number of regions. Azure has passed them. The ned more consistency, as far as the Northeast is concerned."
"To get CloudWatch to monitor your memory and storage, you have to do some configuration within your server, which sometimes results in errors."
"We had a problem with the schema uploading and setting up the directory when we are migrating our users from on-premises to cloud infrastructure."
"I think the solution can improve by making the consumption of that data easier for our customers."
"If Microsoft can give us a way to see where this product is running, from a backend perspective, then it would be great."
"Adding a new account can be tricky."
"The downside is that we now have all our eggs in one basket with Microsoft. We have this great authentication and single sign-on, but if Microsoft has an outage in North America or globally, on Outlook or Teams, we're dead in the water... We get some type of hiccup once a quarter."
"The cost of licensing always has room for improvement."
"Microsoft has so many different requirements and priorities that sometimes they don't invest all their energy into the products that you have expectations to investigate."
"Allowing for more customization would be very useful. There is a limited metadata capability. When you look at a user, there are only six pieces of information you can see, but organizations are way more complex, so having that metadata available and being able to use that for dynamic user groups and other policies would be very helpful."
"Its area of improvement is more about the synchronization of accounts and the intervals for that. Sometimes, there're customers with other network challenges, and it takes a while for synchronization to happen to the cloud. There is some component of their on-prem that is delaying things getting to the cloud. The turnaround time for these requests is very time-sensitive. I don't mean this as derogatory for this service, but in my experience, that happens a lot."
AWS Directory Service is ranked 6th in Identity and Access Management as a Service (IDaaS) (IAMaaS) with 12 reviews while Microsoft Entra ID is ranked 1st in Identity and Access Management as a Service (IDaaS) (IAMaaS) with 190 reviews. AWS Directory Service is rated 8.6, while Microsoft Entra ID is rated 8.6. The top reviewer of AWS Directory Service writes "Extends AD identity and management capabilities to AWS resources". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Microsoft Entra ID writes "Allows users to authenticate from home and has excellent integrations in a simple, stable solution". AWS Directory Service is most compared with Microsoft Entra External ID, Google Cloud Identity, Okta Workforce Identity, Omada Identity and SailPoint IdentityIQ, whereas Microsoft Entra ID is most compared with Microsoft Intune, Google Cloud Identity, CyberArk Privileged Access Manager, Yubico YubiKey and Cisco Duo. See our AWS Directory Service vs. Microsoft Entra ID report.
See our list of best Identity and Access Management as a Service (IDaaS) (IAMaaS) vendors.
We monitor all Identity and Access Management as a Service (IDaaS) (IAMaaS) reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.
