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Microsoft Entra ID vs Venafi comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Aug 11, 2024

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
7.5
Microsoft Entra ID improves efficiency and security, reduces costs, and enhances performance with integrated security and automated identity management.
Sentiment score
3.1
Venafi enhances certificate management efficiency, reduces outages, and justifies higher costs with valuable automation and reporting capabilities.
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.
The return on investment comes from not needing as many IT staff to manage and verify user identity and ensuring seamless device connection without needing to administer device compliance manually.
With Venafi, it wasn't about saving time but achieving functionality that was otherwise impossible, such as distributing certificates without manual intervention.
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
6.7
Microsoft Entra ID support is generally positive but quality varies; premium options offer faster and more expert assistance.
Sentiment score
6.6
Venafi's support is knowledgeable and efficient but limited by US focus and recent acquisition impacts on response quality.
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.
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.
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
7.9
Microsoft Entra ID offers seamless scalability and integration, effectively supporting diverse and large-scale enterprise operations globally.
Sentiment score
5.1
Venafi effectively scales for enterprises, supporting thousands of users with robust certificate management, despite some integration and installation challenges.
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.
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.
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
7.9
Microsoft Entra ID is praised for its stability and reliability, despite minor MFA issues and occasional sluggish response times.
Sentiment score
5.8
Venafi is reliable with minor issues and rare outages, varying stability ratings show overall satisfaction and minor improvement needs.
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.
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.
 

Room For Improvement

Microsoft Entra ID requires better documentation, integration, user interfaces, pricing clarity, support, stability, and enhanced features for improved functionality.
Venafi needs improved user-friendliness, better cloud integration, enhanced automation and support, and clearer documentation for robust access management.
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.
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.
 

Setup Cost

Microsoft Entra ID offers flexible user-based pricing and licensing tiers, with discounts for educational and nonprofit organizations.
Venafi's pricing is seen as competitive yet variable, offering strong value for enterprise buyers within budget limitations.
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.
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.
 

Valuable Features

Microsoft Entra ID enhances security and efficiency with features like single sign-on, multi-factor authentication, and seamless third-party integration.
Venafi offers automated certificate management, integration with major systems, customization, and reliable support, enhancing efficiency and user experience.
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.
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.
 

Categories and Ranking

Microsoft Entra ID
Ranking in Authentication Systems
1st
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
234
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)
Venafi
Ranking in Authentication Systems
10th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
5.8
Number of Reviews
11
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2025, in the Authentication Systems category, the mindshare of Microsoft Entra ID is 14.8%, down from 19.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Venafi is 1.2%, up from 0.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Authentication Systems
 

Featured Reviews

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.
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.
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
14%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Government
8%
Financial Services Firm
15%
Insurance Company
8%
Computer Software Company
8%
Manufacturing Company
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

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...
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?
The access management for Venafi is very difficult. If a specific team needs to access certain parts of the certificates, they need to contact the admin, which is complex. For that reason, we built...
 

Also Known As

Azure AD, Azure Active Directory, Azure Active Directory, Microsoft Authenticator
No data available
 

Interactive Demo

Demo not available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Microsoft Entre ID is trusted by companies of all sizes and industries including Walmart, Zscaler, Uniper, Amtrak, monday.com, and more.
Surescripts, CME Group, TD Bank Group, Aetna, MoneyGram, Zions Bancorp, Cisco
Find out what your peers are saying about Microsoft Entra ID vs. Venafi and other solutions. Updated: July 2025.
864,053 professionals have used our research since 2012.