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Axiad Conductor vs Microsoft Entra External ID comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Mar 16, 2025

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

ROI

Sentiment score
7.4
Axiad Conductor reduces help desk interactions by 35%, saves labor hours, and cuts user costs by up to 15%.
Sentiment score
6.2
Organizations saved time and costs with Microsoft Entra External ID, despite higher operational costs and less monetary gain.
It has led to cost savings as well as time savings because I can use a single solution for all applications.
Companies can leverage it for setting up external identities without needing to develop their own solutions.
In terms of return on investment, prior to using this product, our company managed our own mail server with all internal authentication happening on premises, resulting in a ROI in the thousands every year.
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
8.3
Axiad Conductor's customer service is praised for responsiveness, expertise, and successful feature integration, though occasional delays occur.
Sentiment score
5.6
Microsoft Entra External ID customer service varies, with slow response, staff changes, and better resource access via enterprise contracts.
The documentation is very thorough, reducing the need for support.
This represents a weak point, as only the largest companies, with sufficient numbers of seats and employees, can rely directly on Microsoft technical support.
We have figured out ways to use open-source tools or alternative solutions to address those restrictions that Microsoft has and make things work.
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
8.1
Axiad Conductor scales well up to 100,000 users but faces cost challenges beyond, maintaining robust and seamless integration.
Sentiment score
8.1
Microsoft Entra External ID is scalable, supports large enterprises well, but may experience latency issues with cloud workloads.
End-user workloads experience increased latency in a cloud environment compared to on-premises resources.
Microsoft Entra External ID is quite scalable, and I would rate its scalability between eight and nine out of ten.
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
8.0
Axiad Conductor is praised for its flawless, stable performance in credential management, with minimal downtime and no unplanned outages.
Sentiment score
7.5
Microsoft Entra External ID is highly rated for stability, with minor issues often due to external factors, ensuring reliability.
I have not encountered any stability issues with Microsoft Entra External ID.
Unless such major incidents occur, it is stable and reliable.
The stability of this solution is very good.
 

Room For Improvement

Users seek Axiad Conductor enhancements, including modern design, Canadian hosting, and FIDO U2F support, amidst macOS update challenges.
Microsoft Entra External ID struggles with high costs, slow synchronization, and complex pricing, affecting integration, alerts, and security.
This is particularly challenging during enterprise agreement renewals, as it's difficult for customers to review costs leading to lengthy negotiations.
Where it could be improved beyond the previous pain points is that every software vendor should have SAML or SCIM integration, and if they don't, I believe they are doing a disservice.
I would like to see a more detailed alert system that provides a summary of why alerts are generated, who is generating them, and the reasons behind it.
 

Setup Cost

Axiad Conductor offers affordable annual pricing with low-cost per-user licensing and efficient management, ensuring lower total ownership costs.
Microsoft Entra External ID becomes costly at scale due to complex pricing and additional integration expenses, despite scalable options.
The cost can be a factor for Microsoft Entra External ID, but in general, it offers a scalable and efficient solution compared to deploying individual solutions.
Microsoft's pricing is complex and difficult to fathom due to a range of different licensing options.
If you need support, then it becomes quite expensive.
 

Valuable Features

Axiad Conductor simplifies authentication management with user-friendly features, efficient onboarding, and seamless integration, crucial for security compliance.
Microsoft Entra External ID enhances access management with easy setup, strong security, federated identities, and seamless integration capabilities for widespread adoption.
It is crucial for hybrid environments, especially for integrating existing on-site infrastructures with cloud-based Active Directory, such as in Office 365 implementations.
The positive impact of Microsoft Entra External ID on my organization is that it enhances ease of use for the administrative side.
Primarily Microsoft Entra External ID SSO is valuable as it works with everything when it comes to integration.
 

Categories and Ranking

Axiad Conductor
Ranking in Identity and Access Management as a Service (IDaaS) (IAMaaS)
13th
Average Rating
9.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.7
Number of Reviews
6
Ranking in other categories
Authentication Systems (12th), Privileged Access Management (PAM) (17th), Passwordless Authentication (3rd), Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) (5th)
Microsoft Entra External ID
Ranking in Identity and Access Management as a Service (IDaaS) (IAMaaS)
11th
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.5
Number of Reviews
10
Ranking in other categories
Customer Identity and Access Management (CIAM) (7th), Microsoft Security Suite (26th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2025, in the Identity and Access Management as a Service (IDaaS) (IAMaaS) category, the mindshare of Axiad Conductor is 0.3%, down from 0.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Microsoft Entra External ID is 1.8%, up from 1.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Identity and Access Management as a Service (IDaaS) (IAMaaS)
 

Featured Reviews

TonyVentura - PeerSpot reviewer
Eliminated the drudgery of having to run our own PKI environment
One of the things that we find the most valuable is not actually a feature, but it's the fact that we are not managing the environment ourselves. Because it is a managed solution in the cloud, it takes away a lot of the drudgery of having to run our own PKI environment. And the product has proven itself to be incredibly flexible and has been able to address all of our pain points. That's why we bought it. And even while we've been going through it, new pain points or challenges keep coming up, and Axiad has been able to deal with all of them. It was very impressive in terms of its utility right from the get-go, and has shown its ongoing utility when we have reached these catch points, issues it has been able to resolve. And when it comes to enrolling a user, it's super easy with One Click Issuance. It's far easier than the solution we replaced. I haven't put a stopwatch on it, but I'm sure it takes less than a minute with Axiad, whereas before it was taking three to five minutes. It's so easy now that we can offload the process to our clients who can self-enroll. Previously, we would have to do the enrollment process because it was so complicated. In addition, it's super simple for deploying and managing authentication devices. Our IT department is rather small, so all the incremental wins that we can get are hugely important to us.
Corrado Vigano - PeerSpot reviewer
Solution integrates well with existing systems while being easy to use
The fact that it is quite integrated into the entire Microsoft environment makes it quite easy to use. Furthermore, Microsoft's reliability in providing a clear roadmap for the solution is very important, especially at a time when cybersecurity is a risk in every company. The solution is easy to reuse and not difficult to find expertise for in the market because it is widespread. It is gaining attention even from partners and from the market on the offering side. This serves as a good starting point for customers who can develop internal competence on the solution. Additionally, the presence of reliable partners who know the solution and can provide internal knowledge is the best aspect for them.
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
22%
Government
12%
Manufacturing Company
9%
University
7%
Computer Software Company
16%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Government
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Axiad Cloud?
The life cycle management of credentials is the aspect that we have found to be the most useful... The differentiator that Axiad provided was the ability to provide users a way to self-serve the up...
What is your primary use case for Axiad Cloud?
Our use case is credential management for one of the business units. Axiad provides credential management for those users, including the creation of new credentials and life cycle management of the...
What advice do you have for others considering Axiad Cloud?
You have to understand the number of users and the number of devices that are going to use the solution. I'm saying that because of my experience with the licensing part. That's my one gripe. If yo...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Microsoft Entra External ID?
The cost totally depends on Azure's pricing structure. If you have sufficient background knowledge about the features and functionality, it can be cost-effective. However, if you need support or as...
What needs improvement with Microsoft Entra External ID?
Integration could be improved when it comes to legacy tools.The support engineers are not as skilled as our engineers. When they say something would not work, or there is no solution, we usually he...
What is your primary use case for Microsoft Entra External ID?
Currently we use some of the AWS ( /products/amazon-aws-reviews ) solutions and Google Solutions and few of Alibaba Cloud ( /products/alibaba-cloud-reviews ). That totally depends on time to time a...
 

Also Known As

Axiad Cloud
Azure Active Directory External Identities
 

Overview

Find out what your peers are saying about Axiad Conductor vs. Microsoft Entra External ID and other solutions. Updated: June 2025.
857,585 professionals have used our research since 2012.