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CyberArk Certificate Manager vs Microsoft Entra ID comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 14, 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
CyberArk Certificate Manager automates processes, offering efficiency and ROI, despite past misconfiguration causing a major outage.
Sentiment score
7.4
Companies achieve cost savings and enhanced security using Microsoft Entra ID by reducing hardware costs and streamlining operations.
CyberArk Certificate Manager is doing its best with multiple layers of security.
Section Head Cybersecurity at a energy/utilities company with 5,001-10,000 employees
With Venafi, it wasn't about saving time but achieving functionality that was otherwise impossible, such as distributing certificates without manual intervention.
Systems Engineer at a insurance company with 51-200 employees
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.
Cloud Engineer at Med Tech Solutions
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.
Lead Architect, Chief Technology Officer Office at a tech services company with 51-200 employees
By eliminating the need for multiple VPN channels and enabling direct work from Azure servers, we have achieved approximately 30% efficiency savings.
Infrastructure Specialist at Renova AB
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
5.9
CyberArk Certificate Manager support is quick and expert, though some users note delays post-acquisition; mostly positive ratings.
Sentiment score
6.4
Microsoft Entra ID's support varies; premium users often benefit, but experiences largely depend on agent expertise and plan.
Inquiries are typically addressed the same day, with most issues, even complex ones, resolved within 24 hours.
Global Security Systems Consultant at a insurance company with 10,001+ employees
Venafi's technical support is excellent, with even their first-tier support being in-house and highly competent.
Systems Engineer at a insurance company with 51-200 employees
Their technical support is knowledgeable and helpful, making Venafi stand out among other CyberArk products.
Solution Engineer at a comms service provider with 10,001+ employees
The actual support when you get to that level is a ten out of ten.
Senior Consultant at Convergeone
There are immediate answers to any issues that arise with great knowledge and a deep understanding of the product and business needs.
Lead Architect, Chief Technology Officer Office at a tech services company with 51-200 employees
They usually try to deflect, buy time, and often do not address the problem immediately.
Security Engineer at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
5.2
CyberArk Certificate Manager efficiently scales with strong role-based access, effective load balancing, but challenging integrations.
Sentiment score
7.8
Microsoft Entra ID offers seamless scalability and integration, efficiently handling varying user volumes and organizational growth without challenges.
This role-based access control enhances scalability and efficiency by providing a focused view of necessary information.
Global Security Systems Consultant at a insurance company with 10,001+ employees
Horizontal scaling is a necessity rather than vertical scaling.
Solution Engineer at a comms service provider with 10,001+ employees
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.
Senior Security Engineer at a tech services company with 1-10 employees
We experienced no scalability issues with Microsoft Entra ID.
Technical architect at a computer software company with 10,001+ employees
Its scalability is impressive, aided by Microsoft's efforts to expand its data centers.
Cloud Architect at Palmer College of Chiropractic-Davenport
When dealing with tens of thousands of objects, it requires proper management and best practices to retrieve only necessary data.
Senior Developer at a manufacturing company with 10,001+ employees
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
5.6
CyberArk Certificate Manager is mostly stable, with minor issues, achieving user stability ratings of six to nine out of ten.
Sentiment score
7.8
Microsoft Entra ID is highly reliable, with users praising its stability, low downtime, and swift issue resolution.
Venafi's stability has been consistently reliable.
Global Security Systems Consultant at a insurance company with 10,001+ employees
Venafi is a stable product. It's definitely more stable than others.
Senior Security Engineer at a tech services company with 1-10 employees
I observed that in the last year, CyberArk Certificate Manager was down two to three times without any notification.
Certified Ethical Hacker at Skillogic
It's a critical solution that we can't do without.
Cloud Principal & Infrastructure Specialist at a financial services firm with 1,001-5,000 employees
I haven't experienced any downtime, crashes, or performance issues with Microsoft Entra ID.
Director, Modern Workplace at a legal firm with 1,001-5,000 employees
The stability of the solution is very high at 99.999%.
Senior Consultant at Convergeone
 

Room For Improvement

CyberArk Certificate Manager needs enhanced integration, automation, and user support, with significant user experience and feature improvements required.
Microsoft Entra ID needs improved promotion, documentation, usability, integration, and support for biometric authentication, onboarding, and multi-platform environments.
Expanding the range of out-of-the-box integrations would significantly improve the user experience.
Global Security Systems Consultant at a insurance company with 10,001+ employees
The yearly DNS verification required by certificate authorities necessitates manual intervention, hindering full automation.
Systems Engineer at a insurance company with 51-200 employees
They are pushing for cloud adoption, but we prefer on-premises solutions due to regulatory concerns.
Solution Engineer at a comms service provider with 10,001+ employees
A recent incident we dealt with took four months to resolve with a seven-day deadline, which was quite frustrating.
Cloud Principal & Infrastructure Specialist at a financial services firm with 1,001-5,000 employees
Synchronization issues occasionally occur, making it challenging to analyze logs and pinpoint the exact problem.
Senior Nutrition Officer at a manufacturing company with 10,001+ employees
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.
Sales Representative at a comms service provider with 10,001+ employees
 

Setup Cost

CyberArk Certificate Manager offers complex yet competitive pricing, regarded as costly but justified for its quality and performance.
Microsoft Entra ID offers scalable pricing with integrated options in Microsoft 365, providing cost-efficient identity management for enterprises.
Venafi offers good value for the cost.
Global Security Systems Consultant at a insurance company with 10,001+ employees
The pricing has increased for us, impacting our organization due to its operational expenditure (OPEX).
Solution Engineer at a comms service provider with 10,001+ employees
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.
Software Development Engineer 2 at Expedia Group
We are getting our money's worth.
Cloud Architect at Palmer College of Chiropractic-Davenport
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.
Owner at Alopex ONE UG
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.
Senior Consultant at Convergeone
 

Valuable Features

CyberArk Certificate Manager excels in automated certificate management, integration, error reduction, and privileged access, enhancing efficiency and usability.
Microsoft Entra ID offers seamless integration, multifactor authentication, and centralized management with enhanced security and user-friendly administration.
The most valuable feature of Venafi is the automation that helps save time and reduce human error.
Global Security Systems Consultant at a insurance company with 10,001+ employees
It ensures centralized certificate management, which is crucial for compliance and maintaining best practices.
Systems Engineer at a insurance company with 51-200 employees
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.
Senior Security Engineer at a tech services company with 1-10 employees
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.
Senior Consultant at Convergeone
It's integrated with Microsoft technologies like Authenticator, SSO, and MFA, streamlining operations and creating a seamless environment.
Vice President, Sales & Cloud at Aztek
The granular control, such as preventing logins from specific locations, enhances security significantly.
Cloud Architect at Palmer College of Chiropractic-Davenport
 

Categories and Ranking

CyberArk Certificate Manager
Ranking in Authentication Systems
8th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
5.7
Number of Reviews
15
Ranking in other categories
Certificate Management Software (3rd)
Microsoft Entra ID
Ranking in Authentication Systems
1st
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
266
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 January 2026, in the Authentication Systems category, the mindshare of CyberArk Certificate Manager is 1.8%, up from 0.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Microsoft Entra ID is 8.2%, down from 16.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Authentication Systems Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Microsoft Entra ID8.2%
CyberArk Certificate Manager1.8%
Other90.0%
Authentication Systems
 

Featured Reviews

Karthik Kashyap T H - PeerSpot reviewer
Lead Engineer at a retailer with 10,001+ employees
Eliminates certificate expiration outages and offers good customization and reporting capabilities
Even though it allows for email editing, until version 23.1, you had to log on to the server, and the console itself used to take a lot of time. That has changed from the last release onwards. When you're defining the flow, there are some areas that can probably cause confusion to the users. If you want to rename the default field, you cannot rename it, which caused a lot of confusion during the initial days until everyone got settled in. Allowing the renaming or updating of the default field is something Certificate Manager can improve on. Certificate Manager has both the on-prem and the cloud versions, but the on-prem version is far more mature than the cloud version, which lacks a lot of features that the on-prem version offers, at least when we did the POC and evaluated the product. The maturity of the cloud version needs improvement. Additionally, when considering the on-prem version, there is a minor glitch in the system. When an administrator makes changes, they have flexibility regarding the approval flow. When dealing with a certificate that requires approval from several different teams, there is a minor glitch in the system where the name of the approver does not appear. This is a bug that we are currently addressing. Additionally, there is room for improvement in key management. Changing the default account name is not a straightforward process; it can be quite tedious. This is an area where improvements could be made. If there is a particular workflow that we want to tweak, right now, we can achieve it only via a PowerShell script. It would be great if they could also support a small Python script or anything to expand their scripting or adaptable workflow code base. Even though we can call another script from a PowerShell script, if someone doesn't have knowledge of PowerShell, that would be challenging.
JP
Senior Information Security Engineer at a financial services firm with 1,001-5,000 employees
Implementing seamless integration boosts secure access and supports Zero Trust
What I appreciate the most about Microsoft Entra ID is that it integrates seamlessly with all the Defender products and is easy to use. Microsoft Entra ID's integration capabilities influence our Zero Trust model by allowing us to enforce our Zero Trust model. Conditional access policies allow us to leverage Microsoft Entra ID to verify that devices signing in to our cloud services are coming from registered devices, and that people are passing all the other requirements we have in order to complete sign-on or conditional access policies. Since implementing Microsoft Entra ID, I've observed changes in the frequency and nature of identity-related security incidents. The organization already had it implemented when I arrived, and I've been working to enhance it. Better configuration of Microsoft Entra ID has allowed us to better protect our organization from threats. Having it alone isn't a solution, but ensuring proper configuration goes a long way in preventing future compromises. My company's approach to defending against token theft and nation-state attacks has evolved since implementing Microsoft Entra ID. We haven't experienced any known compromises from nation-state attacks, and implementing newer features gives me more confidence in our protection. Regarding device-bound passkeys in Microsoft Authenticator and our approach to phishing-resistant authentication, we are currently implementing Microsoft Entra ID certificate-based authentication. Adding a strong form of MFA is important as we found it to be the most cost-effective way. While other solutions might be equally or more secure, they are significantly more expensive. Having worked as an IT consultant mainly with the Microsoft stack across various industries, I have experience with different identity management solutions. Microsoft Entra ID remains the best option. The major advantages when comparing it to Okta include integration with Defender products, Defender for Identities' integration with conditional access policies, and insider threat management integration for blocking sign-ins based on risk factors. The enhancement of Microsoft Entra ID's implementation is relatively straightforward. My main concern is the occasional lack of documentation and the frequency of changes, which can make feature location challenging.
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
13%
Computer Software Company
10%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Insurance Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Computer Software Company
10%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business6
Large Enterprise12
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business85
Midsize Enterprise38
Large Enterprise155
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Venafi?
The pricing is minimal compared to other platforms. There are no problems regarding pricing.
What needs improvement with Venafi?
It would be better if they could notify each member whenever any ongoing activity is happening. I have been using it for the past four years, and I haven't received any messages about issues on Cyb...
What advice do you have for others considering Venafi?
I didn't notice any time saved on satisfying the compliance requirements. To safeguard the infrastructure from any attacks, I suggest that everyone should maintain individual certificates for their...
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?
My experience with the pricing, setup costs, and licensing of Microsoft Entra ID is that it is decent.
 

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: December 2025.
880,490 professionals have used our research since 2012.