Hey everyone! 👋 New here and still learning the ropes. My company is around 200 people and we're looking at Okta for SSO and user management. The sales pitch was great, but the quote... wow. It's a significant line item for us.
For those who have been through this: is the cost worth it for a mid-market company our size? We're not a huge enterprise, but we have maybe 30-40 cloud apps to manage. I'm trying to build a business case and would love real-world insights on the ROI. Are the automation and security features really that much better than something like Azure AD (which we already have, but find a bit clunky)? Thanks in advance for any advice!
I'm an IT manager at a 180-person professional services firm. We run Okta for SSO and lifecycle management across about 35 cloud apps.
Here's a breakdown from our experience:
1. **Mid-market Fit** - Okta targets companies like yours. Their workflows (like group push to apps) are designed for 100-500 users where IT is small but needs automation. For true enterprise (5k+ users), they have different tiers.
2. **Real Pricing** - We pay roughly $9/user/month for SSO and basic Lifecycle Management. That quote you got is probably in the $8-Apx $12 range for 200 users. The hidden cost is MFA; their push notification is free, but hardware tokens or advanced methods cost extra per user.
3. **Azure AD Comparison** - Okta's admin interface is genuinely more intuitive for app provisioning. Setting up a new SaaS app with automatic user provisioning took me 20 minutes in Okta vs. half a day in Azure AD. For pure SSO, Azure AD works fine, but the automation for 30-40 apps is where Okta saves us time.
4. **Where It Can Break** - If your workforce is mostly remote in countries with poor internet, the Okta Verify push can be flaky. We have about 10 users in rural areas and they sometimes need SMS fallback, which is an added config step.
I'd recommend Okta if your main pain point is the clunky automation in Azure AD for managing those 40 app accounts. It's worth the cost if you're spending hours weekly on manual user onboarding/offboarding. To be sure, tell us how many full-time IT admins you have and if you have any compliance needs like HIPAA.