Microsoft Entra External ID vs Microsoft Purview eDiscovery comparison

Microsoft Entra External ID vs. Microsoft Purview eDiscovery

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Review summaries and opinions

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

Categories and Ranking

Microsoft Entra External ID

Ranking in Microsoft Security Suite

26th

Average Rating

7.6

Reviews Sentiment

6.7

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Identity and Access Management as a Service (IDaaS) (IAMaaS) (13th), Customer Identity and Access Management (CIAM) (7th)

Microsoft Purview eDiscovery

Ranking in Microsoft Security Suite

24th

Average Rating

7.6

Reviews Sentiment

7.5

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

eDiscovery (2nd)

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2025, in the Microsoft Security Suite category, the mindshare of Microsoft Entra External ID is 0.7%, up from 0.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Microsoft Purview eDiscovery is 0.7%, down from 0.9% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Microsoft Security Suite

Featured Reviews

Corrado Vigano

Sales Manager - Program Manger at Altitudo srl

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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Frank Radeck

Director, IT Infrastructure & Cloud Technology at a legal firm with 501-1,000 employees

Tasks that took an entire day before we implemented the solution now take just 30 minutes.

The most valuable feature of Microsoft Purview eDiscovery is its ability to search across various platforms, including Exchange, SharePoint, Teams, and OneDrive. It enables a streamlined, unified process for searching across these platforms. It is critical for Purview to be able to connect to iOS, Mac, and Android devices and data in other SaaS apps. From a support perspective, I can do things while I'm eating lunch or something else. It's more dynamic and responsive. I think everybody appreciates it. We're not tied to one device. Purview's multi-cloud capabilities are also essential for the same reasons. Keeping everything under one umbrella further increases the time savings. Purview accounts for critical regulations from around the world. This is crucial because we hold ourselves accountable to standards and need to align with them. Working at a law firm, we have clients who dictate to us what standards they expect. The visibility is excellent. As we move more things into the cloud, more opportunities exist to put everything under one umbrella.

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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"I have not encountered any stability issues with Microsoft Entra External ID."

"The single sign-on access is the most useful feature we use."

"The fact that it is quite integrated into the entire Microsoft environment makes it quite easy to use."

"It's similar to using a Microsoft account to create accounts on other websites. We are also using Microsoft Entra to monitor which applications our guests are using. This allows us to filter, block, or adjust permissions for these applications as needed for our collaborators."

"The most valuable feature for me is the firewall capabilities."

"It's quite easy to manage and monitor."

"The most valuable feature for me is the firewall capabilities."

"The most beneficial feature for us is the ease of setup. With about five clicks, we can generate unique IDs and keys and set up in less than 30 minutes. We can also generate these for multiple years simultaneously, which is convenient."

More Microsoft Entra External ID pros

"Tasks that took an entire day before we implemented Purview now take just 30 minutes."

"The return on investment is saving the equivalent of one or two full-time IT department employees and a few hours per week for legal staff."

"Microsoft Purview eDiscovery has saved me personally a lot of time because I can query it, and it touches everything we have as a full Microsoft shop."

"I think eDiscovery Premium has made dealing with data from Teams much more accessible than any other platform."

"The machine learning wasn't half bad. I really like that part. I thought it was novel. It pretty much automated it, once you trained the model."

"The most valuable feature of Microsoft Purview eDiscovery is its ability to search across various platforms, including Exchange, SharePoint, Teams, and OneDrive. It enables a streamlined, unified process for searching across these platforms."

"The ability to query everything that's in Microsoft and send links or add people, like managers, to review the documents is valuable. It's easy as I don't have to download and email anything. I just add them as a reviewer, and they can access it from there."

"The tool has been beneficial. Some of our previous users left the organization without sharing the information they had at a personal level. This information was related to the organization, and they didn't disclose it. Thanks to the product, it's easy for me to search and find out what communication a specific user has done, whether it's from SharePoint or any other platform. With Microsoft Purview eDiscovery, we can easily retrieve and restore this data."

More Microsoft Purview eDiscovery pros

Cons

"There is room for improvement in AI technology for Microsoft Entra External ID, particularly in providing detailed alerts."

"A common concern among the customers I visit is the unpredictability of Microsoft's costs at every renewal. This is really bothersome for the customer, and I would say it is the worst element I have seen in these years."

"The cost is very high."

"I would like to see faster synchronization."

"Microsoft's pricing is complex and difficult to fathom due to a range of different licensing options."

"The problem with Microsoft products is that they often cater to enterprise-level needs, which can be too costly for medium-sized businesses."

"Technical support needs improvement."

"The quality of Microsoft customer support varies. With an enterprise contract, good resources are usually provided, especially in regions like Saudi Arabia or UAE. However, we have faced challenges with support quality, especially in some subcontinent areas where the resources might not be as experienced."

More Microsoft Entra External ID cons

"I would suggest adding more platforms. Currently, it's compatible with OneDrive, Teams, SharePoint, and Exchange. Adding more features, as Microsoft continues to expand their cloud offerings, would be beneficial. Exploring options like Azure Files might be an avenue for improvement."

"It has been one of the most solid tools I have worked with. However, Purview Data Loss Protection for remediating policy violations needs refinement, for example, in defining what constitutes a credit card because that is where I get the most false positives."

"The sorting and filtering of the result data need improvement, and the interface for writing queries is not user-friendly for business users."

"I would suggest adding more platforms."

"The sorting and filtering of the result data need improvement, and the interface for writing queries is not user-friendly for business users. We still need all the backend stuff. We have to use Graph API to interface with everything and create custom interfaces on the front end to make it easier for the end users, which is costly. The reporting, sorting, and filtering capabilities that other products have aren't available natively in Purview."

"The query language can be time-consuming to figure out if you don't know it initially. While there are options with dropdowns to select criteria, having a natural language feature would be beneficial. Copilot is expected to add such functionality in the future."

"We find that many critical functions are available only to E5 license holders. It would be beneficial to have more options available for E3 customers. Enhanced Teams functionalities and better capture of text message data, both SMS and MMS, would also be improvements."

"The query language can be time-consuming to figure out if you don't know it initially."

More Microsoft Purview eDiscovery cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"We don't pay separately for Microsoft Entra External ID as it's part of our Microsoft Exchange subscription."

"The pricing and licensing with Microsoft can be complex, and licensing is known to be a challenge because it changes frequently. While the licensing for Purview is not as tricky as other Microsoft products, navigating licenses since the shift to E3 and E5 plans has been a task, as individual licenses must now be purchased separately."

"The costs associated with E5 licensing are currently expensive for us, so we use the E3 license, which comes with fewer features and functionalities."

"Microsoft Purview eDiscovery comes as part of Microsoft 365 licenses."

"In the positions that I've had through contracting over the years, I've heard talk of it being overpriced and underperforming compared to its competitors."

"With the full bundle, pricing is not a significant concern. As an M3, I find the Purview pricing of 1250 per user worthwhile."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

15%

Financial Services Firm

12%

Manufacturing Company

10%

Government

Financial Services Firm

14%

Government

12%

Computer Software Company

11%

University

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Microsoft Entra External ID?

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.

What needs improvement with Microsoft Entra External ID?

Some areas where Microsoft Entra External ID could improve include cost and enhanced security for integration with federated logins like LinkedIn and Gmail.

What is your primary use case for Microsoft Entra External ID?

I am working on a project for a university where we are trying to create a digital twin of a coral reef restoration project in Saudi Arabia. This involves using a big data platform and developing a...

What do you like most about Microsoft Purview eDiscovery?

The tool has been beneficial. Some of our previous users left the organization without sharing the information they had at a personal level. This information was related to the organization, and th...

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Microsoft Purview eDiscovery?

The setup process was very straightforward. We acquired pricing through our reseller in NASDAQ, eliminating the need to search for prices ourselves.

What needs improvement with Microsoft Purview eDiscovery?

The query language can be time-consuming to figure out if you don't know it initially. While there are options with dropdowns to select criteria, having a natural language feature would be benefici...

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Product Reports

Microsoft Entra External ID

Download Microsoft Entra External ID product report

Microsoft Purview eDiscovery

Download Microsoft Purview eDiscovery product report

Also Known As

Azure Active Directory External Identities

No data available

Overview

Microsoft Entra External ID, part of Microsoft Entra, provides highly secure digital experiences for partners, customers, citizens, patients, or any users outside your organization with customization controls. Combine external identities and user directories in one portal to seamlessly manage access across the organization.

Microsoft Entra External ID refers to all the ways you can securely interact with users outside of your organization. If you want to collaborate with partners, distributors, suppliers, or vendors, you can share your resources and define how your internal users can access external organizations. If you're a developer creating consumer-facing apps, you can manage your customers' identity experiences.

With External ID, external users can "bring their own identities." Whether they have a corporate or government-issued digital identity, or an unmanaged social identity like Google or Facebook, they can use their own credentials to sign in. The external user’s identity provider manages their identity, and you manage access to your apps with Entra ID or Entra External ID to keep your resources protected.

The following capabilities make up External ID:

B2B collaboration - Collaborate with external users by letting them use their preferred identity to sign in to your Microsoft applications or other enterprise applications (SaaS apps, custom-developed apps, etc.). B2B collaboration users are represented in your directory, typically as guest users.
B2B direct connect - Establish a mutual, two-way trust with another Azure AD organization for seamless collaboration. B2B direct connect currently supports Teams shared channels, enabling external users to access your resources from within their home instances of Teams. B2B direct connect users aren't represented in your directory, but they're visible from within the Teams shared channel and can be monitored in Teams admin center reports.
Azure AD B2C - Publish modern SaaS apps or custom-developed apps (excluding Microsoft apps) to consumers and customers, while using Azure AD B2C for identity and access management.

Microsoft

Efficiently respond to legal matters or internal investigations with intelligent capabilities that reduce data to only what’s relevant. Discover data where it lives. Discover and collect data in place, within your Microsoft Purview boundary. Manage workflows efficiently. Streamline your eDiscovery process with an end-to-end workflow from one platform. Accelerate your process. Get insights quickly with built-in capabilities, reducing review time and costs.

To learn more about our solution, ask questions, and share feedback, join our Microsoft Security, Compliance and Identity Community.

Microsoft

Microsoft Entra External ID vs. Microsoft Purview eDiscovery