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Microsoft Entra ID vs Microsoft Purview Data Lifecycle Management comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

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 ID
Ranking in Microsoft Security Suite
2nd
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
276
Ranking in other categories
Single Sign-On (SSO) (1st), Authentication Systems (1st), Identity Management (IM) (3rd), Identity and Access Management as a Service (IDaaS) (IAMaaS) (1st), Access Management (1st)
Microsoft Purview Data Life...
Ranking in Microsoft Security Suite
29th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
5.2
Number of Reviews
5
Ranking in other categories
Email Archiving (8th), Document Management Software (5th), Data Governance (26th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2026, in the Microsoft Security Suite category, the mindshare of Microsoft Entra ID is 7.6%, down from 9.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Microsoft Purview Data Lifecycle Management is 1.8%, up from 0.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Microsoft Security Suite Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Microsoft Entra ID7.6%
Microsoft Purview Data Lifecycle Management1.8%
Other90.6%
Microsoft Security Suite
 

Featured Reviews

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.
ST
Ict Systems Manager at Lltnpa
Automated retention has transformed compliance workflows and now simplifies audit responses
The deep native integration with Microsoft 365 is what ultimately made me decide on Microsoft Purview Data Lifecycle Management over Enterprise Vault and OpenText Content Manager. Auto-apply retention labels using machine learning is the specific integration with Microsoft 365 that made it the deciding factor for me over Enterprise Vault or OpenText. Manually labeling content at our data volumes is not realistic. The automated classification based on sensitive information types and trainable classifiers is what makes the program actually scale. That feature gets used constantly. We went from inconsistent ad-hoc retention practices to a consistent, automated, documented program across the whole organization with Microsoft Purview Data Lifecycle Management. That shift from a compliance audit perspective is enormous.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Azure is the leading market solution because of its history, features, and maturity."
"The tool's most valuable feature is auto logs. It helps with user activity and monitoring. It also assists us with GLBA policies and procedures. Microsoft Entra ID gives a 360 view of what the user has access to, what applications are available to them, when they are logging in and out, etc. It makes knowing what is happening to our tenants incredibly powerful."
"We found the implementation process to be quite straightforward and simple."
"Thanks to the implementation of Microsoft Entra ID, our security team can operate with confidence, as we can go to clients and say that no matter if their credentials get leaked, they still cannot access work data because the device they use must be enrolled within Intune."
"I find the conditional access policies to be the most valuable. They provide a lot of granularity in determining where the users can log in from, how they log in, and what they have access to."
"Privileged Identity Management and Privileged Identity Management make controlling access considerably easier and ensure that authorized access is achieved."
"Azure Active Directory has useful policy assigning and management."
"It's not intuitive and we use it mainly for our Office 365 files. The integration between the two is interesting. However, the learning curve is high."
"The impact of Microsoft Purview Data Lifecycle Management on my unified data catalog has improved a lot; the improvements I see are in the lineage, the discovery, and the labeling."
"The system is stable; I haven't encountered any worldwide stability issues unlike other office products."
"The UI is the most valuable feature."
"We went from inconsistent ad-hoc retention practices to a consistent, automated, documented program across the whole organization with Microsoft Purview Data Lifecycle Management."
"HPE Apollo Systems has positively impacted our organization by improving business operations by eighty percent, saving time, improving efficiency, and facilitating the management of large data sets."
 

Cons

"The thing that is a bit annoying is the inability to nest groups."
"For the end users, it can be confusing if they have worked for another company that had the Authenticator app."
"Microsoft could improve by stabilizing its branding. I still call it Azure AD. Some of the customers I work with call it Azure AD. Branding makes you stand out in the market, but it is something that also confuses people."
"I would like them to improve the dashboard by presenting the raw data in a more visual way for the logs and events. That would help us understand the reports better."
"I want better integration between Azure AD and the on-prem environment because there are currently limitations that can hamper employee experience. We use a feature called password writeback, that can be challenging to implement in a hybrid environment. Employees can change their passwords using a self-service password reset (SSPR) feature, which reflects from the cloud to the on-prem identity, but not the other way around. Currently, there is no way to reflect passwords from on-prem identities to the cloud."
"We did experience downtime tied to Microsoft when there was an issue with Front Door. All external identity platform services were down for more than 8 hours, which was a critical incident from a couple of months back."
"They can simplify and provide more information about adding or updating a phone number or email id in the MSA account."
"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 initial setup took longer than we expected. Microsoft Purview Data Lifecycle Management is not a turn-it-on-and-go product."
"I think labeling could use a lot more AI assistance. AI implementation into labeling would be beneficial."
"Microsoft's Purview Data Lifecycle Management preview features can be unreliable, hindering their usefulness."
"There is no specific improvement I would suggest for Microsoft Purview Data Lifecycle Management, but I think if they can work on policy design and usability, adding more granular control for the organization regarding controlling the movement of data outside would definitely improve the solution."
"The time it takes to scan is one issue; when we raise high-volume issues and tickets related to scanning failures, it relates to permission errors, which are technical challenges."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The pricing depends on the use case and can be negotiated based on volume."
"If you're on Azure, it can be free or it's incorporated, at no extra cost, or it can become extremely complicated."
"Pricing-wise, they offer a stepladder approach. You can start with the lowest level features, then start increasing based on new requirements."
"Microsoft Entra ID service can be quite costly due to its hidden expenses linked to usage."
"The pricing is good; it's not cheap but very reasonable."
"Expensive solution, but if you look at the technical benefits it provides, the price for it is decent."
"The P1 version costs $6 per user per month."
"The solution costs us 60,000 Rupees annually, just over $700, and there are no additional costs."
"The service operates on a pay-as-you-go basis, charging an extra one cent per field of metadata scanned in our data."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
12%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Government
8%
Computer Software Company
7%
Computer Software Company
12%
Government
11%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Comms Service Provider
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business90
Midsize Enterprise40
Large Enterprise161
No data available
 

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 is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Azure Active Directory?
My experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing is that going through and being able to use these things is always part of delivering an M365 bundle, so I don't think the experience is great ...
What needs improvement with Azure Active Directory?
Microsoft Entra ID can be improved by open-sourcing it. You already have Windows Subsystem for Linux, which is open-source Linux in Microsoft. One major shift for Microsoft would be using the commo...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Microsoft Purview Data Lifecycle Management?
We opted for Purview Data Lifecycle Management due to its significant cost advantage over competitors. At a 95 percent price reduction, it was a clear winner. The service operates on a pay-as-you-g...
What needs improvement with Microsoft Purview Data Lifecycle Management?
Better coverage outside Microsoft 365 is a feature I wish Microsoft Purview Data Lifecycle Management had that it does not offer today. If I could change one thing about Microsoft Purview Data Life...
What is your primary use case for Microsoft Purview Data Lifecycle Management?
Automating retention and deletion across our Microsoft 365 environment is my main use case for Microsoft Purview Data Lifecycle Management. At Microsoft scale, Exchange, SharePoint, OneDrive, and T...
 

Also Known As

Azure AD, Azure Active Directory, Azure Active Directory, Microsoft Authenticator
Microsoft Information Governance, Microsoft Purview Records Management
 

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.
Information Not Available
Find out what your peers are saying about Microsoft Entra ID vs. Microsoft Purview Data Lifecycle Management and other solutions. Updated: April 2026.
900,644 professionals have used our research since 2012.