Microsoft Entra (formerly Azure Active Directory) is an integrated security and identity management suite designed by Microsoft. It focuses on securing access across digital environments, facilitating identity verification, and ensuring compliance with regulations.
Through a unified management platform, Entra can help enhance an organization’s security posture by providing identity and access management solutions for both users and applications, regardless of where they are hosted.
Central to Entra’s capabilities is its focus on zero-trust principles, aiming to verify every access request, even from internal sources, as if it originates from an open network. This approach minimizes the reliance on traditional security perimeters and instead emphasizes user and device verification, least privilege access, and micro-segmentation principles.
We’ll cover pricing for the following Entra products:
Entra ID offers a free tier and three paid options.
The Microsoft Entra ID Free tier is an entry-level offering provided at no cost. It integrates with Microsoft’s cloud services, such as Azure and Microsoft 365, offering basic identity and access management capabilities.
The free tier provides features such as authentication, enabling verification of user identities, and single sign-on, which allows users to access multiple applications with one set of credentials. However, the free tier lacks Entra’s more advanced security and management features.
The P1 tier of Microsoft Entra ID, priced at $6.00 per user per month, is available standalone or bundled with Microsoft 365 E3 and Business Premium packages, excluding Teams.
The P1 tier includes all features of the Free tier, plus advanced administration capabilities for managing identities across on-premises and cloud environments, a feature known as hybrid identity. End-user self-service permits users to perform certain account management tasks, reducing the workload on IT departments.
The P1 tier also offers multifactor authentication and conditional access, which are useful for enhancing security. These features require users to provide additional verification factors before accessing resources and allow businesses to implement policies that define under what conditions access to resources is permitted.
At $9.00 per user per month, the P2 tier is the most comprehensive package offered by Microsoft Entra ID, targeting enterprise customers needing a full suite of identity and access management tools. Like P1, it is available standalone or bundled with Microsoft 365 E3 and Business Premium packages, excluding Teams.
In addition to P1 features, it adds identity protection to safeguard user identities with automated threat detection and remediation. Event logging and reporting are important for compliance and security monitoring, enabling organizations to track access and detect anomalies.
This tier is suitable for organizations with stringent security requirements that necessitate detailed audit capabilities and advanced threat protection measures.
Priced at $7.00 per user per month, the Microsoft Entra ID Governance tier specializes in identity governance. This add-on is available to customers who already subscribe to P1 or P2 tiers. It allows organizations to define and enforce policies regarding how identities are managed and used. This includes specifying who can access resources, under what conditions, and with what level of privileges.
The Governance tier is useful for organizations that require sophisticated control over their identity lifecycle management, policy enforcement, and ensuring that access rights are in line with regulatory requirements and business policies. It helps enterprises focus on minimizing security risks associated with identity management and ensuring compliance with internal and external regulations.
Microsoft offers a standard, enterprise, and premium tier for Entra Domain Services. Each of these tiers is billed hourly and includes a standard load balancer and IP to facilitate the operation of Microsoft Entra Domain Services.
The standard tier is the starting level of Microsoft Entra Domain Services, priced at $109.50 per month per set. It is designed to handle an authentication load of up to 3,000 peak requests per hour and supports up to 25,000 directory objects. Backup operations for this tier are scheduled every five days.
This tier does not include additional features such as replicas or extra synchronization options, making it suitable for smaller organizations with modest requirements for domain services.
Priced at $292 per month per set, the enterprise tier accommodates a larger scale of operations. It supports an authentication load between 3,000 to 10,000 peak requests per hour and up to 100,000 directory objects. Backups are performed more frequently—every three days.
Additionally, this tier includes the option for replicas, allowing for greater resilience and availability of the directory services. This tier is tailored for medium-sized businesses that require a more robust directory service with enhanced availability.
The premium tier is the most advanced and costly option at $1,168 per month per set. It is capable of supporting an authentication load from 10,000 to 70,000 peak requests per hour and allows for up to 500,000 directory objects. Backups occur daily, offering the highest level of data protection.
This tier provides both replicas and extra synchronization options, ensuring maximum uptime and flexibility in synchronization processes. This is suitable for large enterprises with extensive domain service needs and a demand for the highest level of performance and reliability.
Let’s review pricing for other Microsoft Entra products:
Priced at $10.40 per resource per month, Microsoft Entra Permissions Management is a standalone service that facilitates risk management across identities, permissions, and resources. It automates the enforcement of the least privilege policy across multi-cloud infrastructures, supporting resources across Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud Platform (GCP).
This service helps prevent breaches by safeguarding against misuse and malicious exploitation of permissions. Licensing for Permissions Management is required only for billable resources in each cloud provider.
Microsoft Entra Verified ID is a service offered at no additional cost with any Microsoft Entra ID subscription, including the free tier. This product enables organizations to verify and issue credentials related to unique identity attributes, thereby empowering users with ownership of their digital credentials and increasing visibility.
It is designed to reduce organizational risk, streamline the audit process, and provide developers with tools for creating user-centric, serverless applications. It promotes decentralized identity, encouraging quick onboarding and immediate use through the Microsoft Entra admin center.
Microsoft Entra Workload ID is available at $3.00 per workload identity per month. This standalone product focuses on controlling access to workload identities through adaptive policies. It aims to minimize risk exposure from lost or stolen identities or credentials and provides a comprehensive health-check view of workload identities.
Workload ID is tailored for businesses that need a dedicated solution for managing the identities associated with their workloads, ensuring that access controls are adaptive and risks are minimized through regular health assessments.
When evaluating Microsoft Entra for your organization, you should be aware of the following limitations:
Businesses with complex multi-tenant environments may find the management features insufficient for their needs. Directory limitations can affect scalability and flexibility, especially for large enterprises with extensive user bases and sophisticated identity management requirements.
These limitations necessitate careful planning and possibly additional investment in supplementary tools or services. For businesses with intricate directory structures, this can introduce challenges in deployment and ongoing management.
Synchronization between on-premises directories and Entra can experience delays, impacting user access and potentially security. In environments where timely access is critical, these delays can disrupt operations and hinder productivity. While Microsoft is continuously improving synchronization capabilities, it remains an area requiring attention and planning.
The complexity of navigating and integrating Microsoft Entra with other services can be a challenge, especially for organizations with limited IT resources. While Entra offers a comprehensive suite of identity and security features, maximizing its potential requires technical expertise and familiarity with Microsoft ecosystems.
Microsoft Entra’s capabilities in business-to-business Customer Identity and Access Management (CIAM) are limited compared to dedicated CIAM solutions. Organizations with complex B2B requirements might find Entra’s offerings insufficient, necessitating additional third-party solutions to fill the gaps.
The cost of advanced features in Microsoft Entra can be a significant consideration for organizations, with some capabilities locked behind paid subscriptions. This pricing model can escalate costs, particularly for larger organizations, potentially making these features inaccessible for companies with limited budgets.
Microsoft Entra’s effectiveness is predominantly within its own ecosystem, managing Microsoft-related identities and accesses. This specificity can be a limitation for companies that use a variety of software solutions or operate in hybrid IT environments. While it integrates seamlessly with Microsoft products, its ability to manage access across non-Microsoft platforms is limited.
Frontegg is a user management solution with several advantages that cater to modern business needs more effectively than Microsoft Entra. Here’s why Frontegg stands out:
In summary, Frontegg provides a versatile and user-centric alternative to Microsoft Entra ID, with strong features in SSO integration, role management, multi-tenancy, security, and user self-service. These capabilities make it a compelling choice for organizations looking to enhance their identity and access management systems with a modern, efficient, and secure solution.
START FOR FREE
