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Atlassian Crowd vs Microsoft Entra ID comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Sep 18, 2024

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

Atlassian Crowd
Ranking in Single Sign-On (SSO)
27th
Average Rating
9.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.7
Number of Reviews
4
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Microsoft Entra ID
Ranking in Single Sign-On (SSO)
2nd
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
278
Ranking in other categories
Authentication Systems (1st), Identity Management (IM) (3rd), Identity and Access Management as a Service (IDaaS) (IAMaaS) (1st), Access Management (1st), Microsoft Security Suite (2nd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of November 2026, in the Single Sign-On (SSO) category, the mindshare of Atlassian Crowd is 1.5%, up from 0.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Microsoft Entra ID is 8.4%, down from 16.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Single Sign-On (SSO) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Microsoft Entra ID8.4%
Atlassian Crowd1.5%
Other90.1%
Single Sign-On (SSO)
 

Featured Reviews

Grigoriy Kneller - PeerSpot reviewer
General Manager at HDI Systeme AG
Enhanced user management offering seamless single sign-on, scalability for large enterprises, and improved configurability through integration with various user sources and directories
For organizations using various Atlassian products and dealing with multiple user sources or directories, implementing Atlassian Crowd for single sign-on proves highly beneficial. This is especially true for companies that have instances of Atlassian product installations across different entities, each with its own Active Directory and user directory. Crowd significantly streamlines user and directory management, making it more efficient for larger enterprises. It is particularly advisable and recommended for big companies, especially those that have undergone acquisitions or mergers, as it enhances user management, transparency, and configurability. While it's incredibly useful for enterprise-level businesses, it may also be suitable for mid-sized companies with a substantial user base. Overall, I would rate it nine out of ten.
Stafin Jacob - PeerSpot reviewer
Microsoft 365 Security & Compliance Practice Lead at Invoke
Identity has become our central gatekeeper and has provided secure single sign-on for all users
Microsoft Entra ID can improve by focusing more on new passwordless methods and becoming a primary adopter. One feature we would like to see is the ability to have security questions for password resets. I know the current capability is phasing out, so we do not have an alternative method yet. Customers who already use security questions require a smoother transition for that capability to be available. My experience with the deployment has had some challenges, particularly around the Microsoft MFA campaigns. The hardest part is moving users from a different MFA provider to the Microsoft MFA provider, as it ultimately depends on user activity. In large enterprises with numerous users across various geographies, this transition takes time. If there are ways to exert more control around that process, it would improve the situation.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Integrating third-party directories is very easy since Crowd offers well-described input fields so you know what information is needed."
"The most valuable features are predominantly in the directory and development spaces."
"If your budget allows, it is worth purchasing Crowd once you have at least 2 Atlassian products like Jira and Confluence."
"One standout feature is the capability to configure various authentication and authorization methods from diverse user directories."
"As a company, you want effective identity and access management, and with Azure Active Directory you are able to manage everything, such as building user provisioning into third-party applications, single sign-on, and tools to mitigate threats or risky sign-ins, with a lot of features provided."
"Privileged Identity Management (PIM), managed identities, dynamic groups, and extension and security attributes are all great features."
"This solution has helped my organization by allowing us simple management of identities within the organization for integration with the single sign-on system unifying access to applications for mobile devices and management."
"The security features, such as attack surface rules and conditional access rules, are the most valuable aspects of Azure AD."
"The cloud security part is very valuable. Security is the most important thing in today's world. With Azure Active Directory, there are some features that tell you how you need to improve your security level. It informs you if you set up certain policies, e.g., this is where my users sign in. It tends to let you know if your organization has been breached with this security set up. Therefore, it is easier to know when you have been breached, especially if you set up a Conditional Access policy for your organization."
"All of the features are amazing, such as identity governance and privileged identity management."
"Improved user experience with SSO logins."
"It is cloud based so it is always updated,"
 

Cons

"Exporting users/group toward LDAP and retrieving LDAP attributes like photo profile."
"It makes you more efficient, but you have to optimize what you're doing before you get into the software."
"It would be great if the UI would receive a complete re-design."
"There's a need for effective group membership management, especially for corporate programs."
"Microsoft plans to move away from SMS authentication for Multi-Factor Authentication and only implement application-based authenticator, which will be challenging for retail outlets reliant on Microsoft Active Directory."
"If your organization requires additional security then the subscription will be more expensive."
"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."
"The variety of different group types has caused challenges in areas where we have Microsoft 365 groups, distribution groups, and security groups, and the different types do not always make programmatic management clear."
"While Microsoft Entra ID is a strong and reliable solution, there are a few areas where improvement can enhance the overall experience, such as simplifying policy management and security policies, which can be complex for new users."
"Four years ago, we had an issue with Azure AD. We wanted to reverse sync from Azure AD to on-prem Active Directory, but we couldn't achieve this. Azure AD could connect only in one way, for example, from your site to Azure. If you needed to do the reverse and connect from Azure to on-prem, there was no way to achieve it. We asked Microsoft, and they told us that they don't support it."
"We would like to have more granularity in the Azure conditional access in order to be able to manage more groups for devices and for applications."
"Licenses are very expensive."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It's pretty cheap. I would rate the price as three out of five."
"While it may seem affordable for larger enterprises, it tends to become more expensive as you move up the scale."
"The process for buying licenses from Microsoft is somewhat messy and really hard to do. We have to talk to someone because it's hard to find out how many licenses we need. If I'm applying for 2,000 users, how many Windows licenses do we need? They could also charge less for support."
"I think we're on the E3 — I think it was about 35 dollars per user."
"It is not too expensive."
"From a pricing standpoint, with all the services that we get, we are okay. I do not see a problem with the pricing structure. We are getting our money's worth."
"We pay about $35 per user."
"Microsoft Entra ID service can be quite costly due to its hidden expenses linked to usage."
"Azure has an educational package available for students with a variety of licenses and different software available."
"We are currently on the education plan, so the price is slightly better than the development plan."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Construction Company
15%
Manufacturing Company
13%
Comms Service Provider
11%
University
9%
Outsourcing Company
13%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Government
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business91
Midsize Enterprise42
Large Enterprise162
 

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...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Azure Active Directory?
I primarily use Microsoft Entra ID's free tier, so I have not faced any issues with pricing; I hope this free tier remains available for some time.
What needs improvement with Azure Active Directory?
To improve Microsoft Entra ID, I believe it should be openable with third-party applications to use Microsoft Authenticator, which is currently tied to Entra. There should definitely be a way to re...
 

Also Known As

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

Interactive Demo

Demo not available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

NHL, Interspire, Appfire
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 Atlassian Crowd vs. Microsoft Entra ID and other solutions. Updated: November 2026.
920,769 professionals have used our research since 2012.