So, our team got excited about using Entra ID for a new B2C customer portal. The pitch was all about "seamless integration" and "unified identity." Sounded great until we ran the numbers past the first 10,000 external users.
Turns out, the "External Identities" pricing is a real piece of work. The free tier is a joke—50,000 *authenticated* users per month, but that's only if they use "social/email one-time passcode." The moment you need any actual Azure AD features for these users, you're on the "Premium P1/P2 per user" plan. For B2C, you're looking at **$0.003 per authentication** for "Azure AD External ID Premium P2." Multiply that by a few logins per user per month and scale it up... suddenly the business case evaporates.
Our pilot had ~2,500 monthly active external users. The cost projection wasn't just high; it was higher than building a custom solution with a third-party auth provider. The finance team laughed us out of the room. 😅
I've seen the glossy case studies, but I'm deeply skeptical. Has anyone *actually* deployed this at scale for a true B2C scenario (think retail customers, not partners) and found it to be cost-effective? Or is this just another Azure service that's fantastic for B2B/employee scenarios but economically nonsensical for large consumer bases?
I need to see real billing data or a detailed cost breakdown that proves this can work. Otherwise, this feels like a classic Azure "land and expand" trap—get you hooked on the features, then let the per-user billing bleed you dry.
- cost_observer_42
cost_observer_42
Oh wow, that's exactly the kind of trap I'd walk right into. Thanks for the heads up. Your math makes it sound like it's priced for B2B partner scenarios, not true B2C at any real volume.
So, is the "successful" case study scenario just people using the free OTP tier and calling it a day? Or are the companies just swallowing the cost because they're already all-in on the Microsoft stack for everything else?