Akamai Enterprise Application Access vs Microsoft Entra ID comparison

Akamai and Microsoft are both solutions in the Access Management category. Akamai is ranked #22, while Microsoft is ranked #1 with an average rating of 8.7. Akamai holds a 0.5% mindshare in AM, compared to Microsoft’s 28.2% mindshare. Additionally, 100% of Akamai users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 94% of Microsoft users who would recommend it.

Akamai Enterprise Applicati...

Read 3 Akamai Enterprise Application Access reviews

195 Views
148 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

Microsoft Entra ID

Read 219 Microsoft Entra ID reviews

8,628 Views
6,437 Comparison Views

94% willing to recommend

Akamai Enterprise Applicati...

Microsoft Entra ID

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Aug 11, 2024

Akamai Enterprise Application Access and Microsoft Entra ID are compared to determine superiority in access management solutions. Microsoft Entra ID benefits from advanced feature sets while Akamai offers competitive pricing and superior customer service.

Features: Akamai Enterprise Application Access is strong in robust security, seamless access, and integration capabilities. Microsoft Entra ID offers advanced identity management, comprehensive compliance features, and an extensive range of tools.

Room for Improvement: Akamai could improve user documentation, reporting capabilities, and user guidance. Microsoft Entra ID needs simplification in initial setup, better analytics, and a more streamlined process.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Akamai Enterprise Application Access is favored for straightforward deployment and responsive support. Microsoft Entra ID has a more complex deployment but benefits from robust customer service post-deployment.

Pricing and ROI: Akamai's pricing is competitive with quicker ROI. Microsoft Entra ID is pricier but offers extensive features that justify the cost with good long-term ROI.

To learn more, read our detailed Akamai Enterprise Application Access vs. Microsoft Entra ID Report (Updated: March 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Akamai Enterprise Application Access vs. Microsoft Entra ID

March 2025

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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

Akamai Enterprise Applicati...

Ranking in Access Management

22nd

Average Rating

9.0

Reviews Sentiment

7.3

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Cloud Access Security Brokers (CASB) (18th), ZTNA as a Service (20th), Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) (26th)

Microsoft Entra ID

Ranking in Access Management

1st

Average Rating

8.6

Reviews Sentiment

7.1

Number of Reviews

219

Ranking in other categories

Single Sign-On (SSO) (1st), Authentication Systems (1st), Identity Management (IM) (1st), Identity and Access Management as a Service (IDaaS) (IAMaaS) (1st), Microsoft Security Suite (2nd)

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2025, in the Access Management category, the mindshare of Akamai Enterprise Application Access is 0.5%, down from 0.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Microsoft Entra ID is 28.2%, up from 23.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Access Management

Featured Reviews

Bill Lee

Cloud Architecture Consultant at Metaage

Very scalable, convenient, and stable protection against attacks

Our company uses the solution as a cloud perimeter and VPN. We don't need to use on-premises devices to open firewalls to inbound or outbound traffic. The solution is very convenient and stable because you don't have to worry about attacks to public IPs or public networks. The solution has two…

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Aaron Liang

System engineer at a energy/utilities company with 501-1,000 employees

Has significantly improved secure access to applications and resources in our environment

Microsoft Entra ID has helped by simplifying our management of permissions for APIs. We are not directly exposing credentials, as we use tokens instead. It has made management easier and more secure, especially in a multi-user environment. The implementation of Microsoft Entra ID significantly improved secure access to applications and resources in our environment, primarily through the widespread use of single-sign-on. Managing API permissions became much easier, as application registration often involves calling an API to utilize services without directly exposing credentials, relying instead on token-based authentication. This streamlined approach benefits end-users by simplifying access while remaining transparent to them. Ultimately, my role focuses on ensuring a smooth and user-friendly experience, even if the underlying technology remains unseen by the end-users. Our company strongly emphasizes passwordless authentication, primarily through device-bound passkeys in Microsoft Authenticator. While administrators with high-privileged accounts utilize YubiKeys and passwords for tasks like accessing Microsoft Graph, we are actively transitioning all other users towards passwordless methods such as Windows Hello biometrics. This approach streamlines authentication and enhances security. Though initial deployment in 2022 presented challenges due to hardware limitations and the lingering effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, the technology has significantly improved and provides a simple and effective user experience.

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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

"Application Access's most valuable feature is the accessibility of enterprise tech protection."

"The capability of Akamai Enterprise Application Access is what you're looking for, it's giving you the service that you're looking for. It's simple and doesn't use an agent. It uses LCSD responders, and they have a lot of services around the globe. That's the reason that we were very interested in using it because it has a lot of coverage. This is because it's under the GDS umbrella."

"The solution is very convenient and stable because you don't have to worry about attacks to public IPs or public networks."

"The tool's most valuable feature is conditional access."

"The most valuable feature is the conditional access policies. This gives us the ability to restrict who can access which applications or the portal in specific ways."

"The technical support is pretty good."

"The visibility and control for permission management are excellent."

"Overall the solution functions very well, such as the ability to access it from the cloud."

"The features I find most valuable are conditional access, privilege management, and dynamic groups."

"Microsoft Entra ID Protection and Microsoft Sentinel are both excellent monitoring features for Microsoft Entra ID."

"It can be used to grant access at a granular level. It provides secure access and many ways to offer security to your user resources. It provides a good level of security for any access on Azure. It gives you options like multi-factor authentication where apart from your password, you can use other factors for authentication, such as a code is sent to your phone or the authenticator app that you can use login."

More Microsoft Entra ID pros

Cons

"The technical enablement sessions are quite limited, and Akamai could help by providing more of them."

"The solution has two agents so should combine its enterprise application and security access into one agent."

"We need another approach to bring the solution to the cloud. In addition to Access Management, we would like to see if we can jump into Directories. I think ADs are going to go away and everything is going to be cloud-based and minimize the use of ADs because of the cost and some other dependencies to the cloud. Every time you buy AD it is more hardware, and everything's changing to software. The network's changing, the applications are changing, and for IT it is hard to keep up with it."

"I would like to see Microsoft communicate how they intend to manage legacy applications. Right now, you still have to deploy a hosted domain server (which comes at an extra cost) if you have a legacy application that cannot sync properly with the enterprise applications and the modern applications."

"We would like to see more system updates."

"Initially, we wanted to exclude specific users from MSA. So, we had a condition policy, which forces MSA for all the users. So we wanted to exclude users who are using an NPS extension. So it was not listed, as a NPS extension was not listed outside an application, in actual, so, we go back and were not able to exclude users using NPS extension from MSA. So that was one limitation that we found and we had to work around that."

"Compatibility features for legacy system integration with new features will be challenging at times."

"There is a concept of cross-tenant trust relationships, which I believe Microsoft is actively pursuing. That is something which in the coming days and years to come by will be very key to the success of Azure Active Directory, because many organizations are going into mergers and acquisitions or spinning off new companies. They will still have to access the old tenant information because of multiple legal reasons, compliance reasons, and all those things. So, there should be some level of tenant-level trust functionality, where you can bring people from other tenants to access some part of your tenant application. So, that is an area which is growing. I believe Microsoft is actively pursuing this, and it will be an interesting piece."

"I would like to see improvements made when it comes to viewing audit logs, sign-in logs, and resource tags."

"Customers want to know exactly where they are spending their money, allowing them to assess and potentially save money in those specific areas."

"It would be an improvement if Authenticator made it easier to recover the app if you reboot your cellphone and lose access."

More Microsoft Entra ID cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Licensing is based on user count."

"The price is great it is all-inclusive, they use an enterprise cost model. That's what we like compared to other users. This is one of the main attractions of Akamai Enterprise Application Access. It's already an enterprise cost model established with us for services."

"The license can be shared based on the number of active users."

"I think the pricing is efficient, but the licensing is overly complicated and difficult to understand. There are many tricks in the licensing that weigh against us."

"The price of the solution was reasonable."

"If you're on Azure, it can be free or it's incorporated, at no extra cost, or it can become extremely complicated."

"I work for an academic medical center, where there is a watch kept over every dollar spent. I do have concerns about the micro charges for different levels or features of the product."

"The price is fine. It's a good value for the money compared with other solutions."

"The licensing costs are yearly. There is a standard fee per user."

"I give the cost a three out of ten."

"It's relatively inexpensive in comparison with third-party solutions. It's highly available and supported by Microsoft Azure in our enterprise agreements. With the addition of their B2C tenants, it's hard to beat from a cost perspective now."

More Microsoft Entra ID pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Manufacturing Company

16%

Computer Software Company

14%

Financial Services Firm

11%

Healthcare Company

Educational Organization

33%

Computer Software Company

10%

Financial Services Firm

Manufacturing Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

No data available

Questions from the Community

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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...

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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.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Azure Active Directory?

Microsoft Entra ID is reportedly quite expensive for each user regarding security features. The renewal cost is particularly high according to the teams managing purchases.

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Compared 9% of the time

Auth0 vs Microsoft Entra ID

Compared 6% of the time

Amazon Cognito vs Microsoft Entra ID

Compared 5% of the time

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Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

ZTNA as a Service

March 2025

Akamai Enterprise Application Access report

Download Akamai Enterprise Application Access product report

Buyer's Guide

Microsoft Entra ID

March 2025

Download Microsoft Entra ID product report

Also Known As

Soha

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

Interactive Demo

Demo not available

Akamai

Microsoft

Overview

Akamai Enterprise Application Access is a cloud-based solution that provides secure access to enterprise applications and data from any device, anywhere. It eliminates the need for traditional VPNs and allows organizations to easily manage access to applications and data for employees, partners, and customers. With its zero-trust approach, it ensures that only authorized users can access sensitive information, reducing the risk of data breaches.

Akamai

Microsoft Entra ID is used for extending on-premises Active Directory to the cloud, managing application access, enabling multi-factor authentication, and single sign-on. It facilitates policy enforcement and secure access, ensuring centralized identity management across cloud and on-premises resources.

Organizations utilize Microsoft Entra ID for robust user and group management, identity synchronization, and conditional access. Its seamless integration with third-party apps, scalability, and support for remote work make it a preferred choice. The admin center streamlines identity and access tasks, enhancing efficiency and security with features like privileged identity management and audit logs.

What are the key features of Microsoft Entra ID?

Single Sign-On: Simplifies user access to multiple applications with one login.
Multifactor Authentication: Enhances security by requiring additional verification.
Conditional Access: Establishes policies that determine how users' access cloud apps.
Integration: Easily integrates with various third-party applications.
User Identity Protection: Safeguards user identities from threats.
Privileged Identity Management: Manages elevated access to sensitive resources.
Audit Logs: Provides thorough activity logs for oversight and compliance.

What benefits should users look for in Microsoft Entra ID reviews?

Enhanced Security: Offers strong multifactor authentication and identity protection.
Administrative Efficiency: Simplifies identity and access management tasks.
Scalability: Supports growing user bases and remote work environments.
Integration Capabilities: Compatible with numerous third-party applications.
User-Friendly Interface: Makes managing user identities straightforward.

Microsoft Entra ID implementation varies across industries. Tech firms leverage it for secure, scalable access management, while healthcare organizations utilize its identity protection features to safeguard patient data. Educational institutions adopt Entra ID for streamlined user management and policy enforcement, ensuring secure access for students and staff across on-premises and cloud resources.

Microsoft

Sample Customers

Bugcrowd, InPowered, Spirent Communications

Microsoft Entre ID is trusted by companies of all sizes and industries including Walmart, Zscaler, Uniper, Amtrak, monday.com, and more.

Buyer's Guide

Akamai Enterprise Application Access vs. Microsoft Entra ID

March 2025

Free Report: Akamai Enterprise Application Access vs. Microsoft Entra ID

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