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CyberArk Certificate Manager vs Microsoft Entra ID comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Sep 11, 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
3.3
Venafi reduces outages, automates certificate distribution, saves costs, and improves efficiency with faster installations and reduced manual workload.
Sentiment score
7.5
Adopting Microsoft Entra ID boosted ROI by enhancing security, streamlining operations, and reducing infrastructure and service desk costs.
With Venafi, it wasn't about saving time but achieving functionality that was otherwise impossible, such as distributing certificates without manual intervention.
We leverage existing licensing, like Windows Server or SQL, and hybrid benefits, and our sales and marketing teams benefit from co-selling and partnership advantages.
We get a return from not needing to pay other vendors to do what we already had from Microsoft, which was better than the competition.
By eliminating the need for multiple VPN channels and enabling direct work from Azure servers, we have achieved approximately 30% efficiency savings.
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
5.6
CyberArk Certificate Manager support is efficient but has declined post-acquisition, with users praising services but suggesting improvements.
Sentiment score
6.7
Microsoft Entra ID support receives mixed reviews, with premium support preferred for efficient resolutions and varying response quality.
Inquiries are typically addressed the same day, with most issues, even complex ones, resolved within 24 hours.
Venafi's technical support is excellent, with even their first-tier support being in-house and highly competent.
Their technical support is knowledgeable and helpful, making Venafi stand out among other CyberArk products.
The actual support when you get to that level is a ten out of ten.
There are immediate answers to any issues that arise with great knowledge and a deep understanding of the product and business needs.
They usually try to deflect, buy time, and often do not address the problem immediately.
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
4.9
Venafi is scalable across environments, with strong cloud performance, valued for access control and integration, despite setup challenges.
Sentiment score
7.9
Microsoft Entra ID offers scalable, reliable cloud solutions for organizations, effortlessly supporting varied user counts without performance issues.
This role-based access control enhances scalability and efficiency by providing a focused view of necessary information.
Horizontal scaling is a necessity rather than vertical scaling.
Scalability with Venafi is good; you can definitely use it if you have ten thousand certs, a thousand certs, a million, or a couple million.
We experienced no scalability issues with Microsoft Entra ID.
Its scalability is impressive, aided by Microsoft's efforts to expand its data centers.
When dealing with tens of thousands of objects, it requires proper management and best practices to retrieve only necessary data.
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
5.4
CyberArk Certificate Manager is stable and dependable, with minimal issues and high user satisfaction compared to alternatives.
Sentiment score
7.9
Microsoft Entra ID is highly stable and reliable, with minor disruptions, maintaining strong user confidence and high ratings.
Venafi's stability has been consistently reliable.
Venafi is a stable product. It's definitely more stable than others.
For stability, I'd rate it around six out of ten since we experience some outages despite the investment.
It's a critical solution that we can't do without.
The stability of the solution is very high at 99.999%.
We rarely had significant problems or crashes.
 

Room For Improvement

CyberArk Certificate Manager requires interface improvements, better cloud integration, expanded automation, and enhanced documentation for user-friendly and secure management.
Microsoft Entra ID users seek better documentation, integration, security, cost-effective licensing, intuitive interface, and efficient support service improvements.
Expanding the range of out-of-the-box integrations would significantly improve the user experience.
The yearly DNS verification required by certificate authorities necessitates manual intervention, hindering full automation.
They are pushing for cloud adoption, but we prefer on-premises solutions due to regulatory concerns.
A recent incident we dealt with took four months to resolve with a seven-day deadline, which was quite frustrating.
Synchronization issues occasionally occur, making it challenging to analyze logs and pinpoint the exact problem.
There is a need for better transformation support from on-premises Active Directory policies to the cloud, as Entra ID doesn't cover this sufficiently yet.
 

Setup Cost

Venafi pricing is competitive but complex, with costs for public CA services, requiring a three-year commitment.
Microsoft Entra ID provides scalable, cost-effective pricing with features like P1 and P2, competitive rates, and discounts for specific sectors.
Venafi offers good value for the cost.
The pricing has increased for us, impacting our organization due to its operational expenditure (OPEX).
For our budget, Venafi's cost is moderate. It's not expensive as internal certificate generation is free, and we only pay for the public CA certificate signer and for storage in Venafi.
We are getting our money's worth.
Microsoft sets pricing based on customer demand, adjusting to find the optimal balance between sales volume and profit per unit, similar to how Costco manages product prices.
Most features of Entra ID are part of Microsoft's ecosystem and included in Microsoft 365 bundles, which means there are no additional costs associated with pricing and licensing.
 

Valuable Features

Venafi enhances operational efficiency with certificate discovery, automation, and integration, offering ease of use, compliance, and seamless management.
Microsoft Entra ID enhances security and user experience with robust identity management, integration, and data protection features.
The most valuable feature of Venafi is the automation that helps save time and reduce human error.
It ensures centralized certificate management, which is crucial for compliance and maintaining best practices.
What I like best about Venafi is that it's very easy to get somebody on a call and get any of my questions answered.
We can secure the applications that we are building and make sure that if the application were to be compromised, there is no full access to a customer's environment causing issues and other security concerns.
It's integrated with Microsoft technologies like Authenticator, SSO, and MFA, streamlining operations and creating a seamless environment.
The granular control, such as preventing logins from specific locations, enhances security significantly.
 

Categories and Ranking

CyberArk Certificate Manager
Ranking in Authentication Systems
8th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
5.6
Number of Reviews
13
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Microsoft Entra ID
Ranking in Authentication Systems
1st
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
235
Ranking in other categories
Single Sign-On (SSO) (1st), Identity Management (IM) (2nd), Identity and Access Management as a Service (IDaaS) (IAMaaS) (1st), Access Management (1st), Microsoft Security Suite (2nd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of September 2025, in the Authentication Systems category, the mindshare of CyberArk Certificate Manager is 1.3%, up from 0.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Microsoft Entra ID is 13.8%, down from 18.8% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Authentication Systems Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Microsoft Entra ID13.8%
Venafi1.3%
Other84.9%
Authentication Systems
 

Featured Reviews

Adam Goldstein - PeerSpot reviewer
Automates certificate management across platforms and has enhanced integration support
Venafi's automation capabilities were significant, as they allowed us to automate certificate rotation and deployment effectively. We integrated it with GlobalSign and aimed to automate DNS verification, although challenges remained. Venafi's platform-agnostic nature was beneficial for handling certificates across different systems like IIS, AWS, and Azure. It ensures centralized certificate management, which is crucial for compliance and maintaining best practices. It significantly improved our operational efficiency by automating certificate workflows. This reduced the number of certificates requiring manual management, freeing internal resources from deploying trivial certificates. While some complex certificates still needed manual intervention, automating simpler ones eliminated internal bottlenecks associated with tasks like uploading certificates to Imperva. By automating these processes, we reduced errors, streamlined workflows, and eliminated the need to repeatedly remember and execute complex procedures, ultimately increasing our overall operational efficiency. The automation capabilities are good; when properly configured, it performs as expected.
Bahram Piri - PeerSpot reviewer
Security focus and seamless implementation increase platform productivity
Microsoft Entra ID can be improved in many ways, and there's a big wish list.If we're focusing on security, something that I definitely expect is improvement in the UI and UX for frontline workers. This is important, especially for non-tech savvy individuals. It is something Microsoft Entra ID could do to improve for a wider audience. It's important to focus on the frontline workers since they are non-tech savvy individuals. They are not like those back-office engineering C-level employees who are constantly dealing with computers, and we need to build a specific user experience and user interface for them to handle this stuff. That's something I expect Microsoft to focus on more for Microsoft Entra ID.
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
14%
Computer Software Company
11%
Government
8%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Computer Software Company
13%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Government
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business5
Large Enterprise10
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business80
Midsize Enterprise36
Large Enterprise132
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Venafi?
We use Venafi for PKI certificates.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Venafi?
For our budget, Venafi's cost is moderate. It's not expensive as internal certificate generation is free, and we only pay for the public CA certificate signer and for storage in Venafi. With the to...
What needs improvement with Venafi?
As an end user, I cannot specifically point out improvements, but I believe it would be beneficial to display active certificates in a separate column on the UI, so users can easily find what they ...
How does Duo Security compare with Microsoft Authenticator?
We switched to Duo Security for identity verification. We’d been using a competitor but got the chance to evaluate Duo for 30 days, and we could not be happier. Duo Security is easy to configure a...
What do you like most about Azure Active Directory?
It is very simple. The Active Directory functions are very easy for us. Its integration with anything is very easy. We can easily do third-party multifactor authentication.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Azure Active Directory?
Our experience with the pricing, setup costs, and licensing of Microsoft Entra ID involves leveraging Microsoft 365 E5 licensing, so it's included. Being included in Microsoft licensing makes it mu...
 

Also Known As

Venafi
Azure AD, Azure Active Directory, Azure Active Directory, Microsoft Authenticator
 

Interactive Demo

Demo not available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Surescripts, CME Group, TD Bank Group, Aetna, MoneyGram, Zions Bancorp, Cisco
Microsoft Entre ID is trusted by companies of all sizes and industries including Walmart, Zscaler, Uniper, Amtrak, monday.com, and more.
Find out what your peers are saying about CyberArk Certificate Manager vs. Microsoft Entra ID and other solutions. Updated: September 2025.
867,299 professionals have used our research since 2012.