Customer Identity and Access Management (CIAM) solutions allow for frictionless access, secure access to online services for customers. This type of identity technology supports organizations in managing customer identities, ensuring they have appropriate access and an enhanced user experience, without compromising on security, by enforcing secure, adaptive multi-factor authentication.
In this article, we’ll explore the top CIAM solutions designed to help organizations deliver a great customer experience, while ensuring their user data is well protected. We’ll look at the vendors background, explore the key features offered by each solution, and give recommendations (based on our independent research) on who would be best serves by each solution’s capabilities.
The Thales OneWelcome CIAM Platform enables you to protect digital identities across your B2B ecosystem. The cloud based CAIM solution simplifies user registration, onboarding, delegation management and access control, ensuring seamless and secure protection for identities across the B2B ecosystem. Thales, a leading provider of cybersecurity solutions, acquired OneWelcome in 2022, strengthening its position as a market leading identity and access management provider.
Thales OneWelcome CIAM Platform Features
Supported Authentication Methods: Biometrics, face recognition, one-time passwords, or mobile login.
Thales OneWelcome CIAM Platform Pricing: Visit the Thales OneWelcome website for custom pricing information.
Expert Insights’ Comments: The Thales OneWelcome Identity Platform streamlines identity and access management for your business customers with intuitive, user friendly interfaces and processes. The platform provides key CIAM capabilities including secure MFA, Single Sign-On, identity lifecycle management and identity registration. This enables customers to improve onboarding processes, collaboration with suppliers, and facilitate guest users. Integrations and automations help to reduce complexity and cost, so teams can build more scalable systems. We recommend this solution to organizations looking to provide secured, frictionless, privacy protected access for customers.
Descope is a versatile no/low-code CIAM platform designed to enhance user onboarding and authentication processes. It provides visual workflows, SDKs, and APIs to deliver a clear and customizable identity experience. The solution’s drag and drop interface makes it easy to use for organizations of all experience levels.
Descope Features:
Supported Authentication Methods: SSO, MFA, authenticator apps, OTPs, passkeys, biometrics, Magic Links, and Passkeys.
Descope Pricing: Descope offers a Free plan with no time limits, but some limits on features. The Pro plan is designed for early-stage startups and costs $249/month with 10,000 monthly users, 35 tenants, and other features for emerging company. The Growth plan, starting at $799/month, allows 25,000 monthly users and 100 tenants, in addition to bot protection, 1M anonymous users, multi-region data residency, amongst other features. Beyond this, there is an Enterprise plan which allows more customization for the specific needs of large organizations.
Expert Insights’ Comments: Descope provides a streamlined approach to managing user identities and authentication. Its large number of integrations, easy to use drag and drop builder, and streamlined interface help it to stand out in a busy CIAM market. It simplifies user onboarding and improves conversion rates, while centrally managing user identity in both consumer and business applications. It is a flexible and valuable tool that can be customized for your organization’s needs, enhancing user experience and security.
As global leaders in identity security, CyberArk work to provide comprehensive security for both human and machine identities, supporting leading organizations in protecting their most critical assets. The CyberArk Identity Security Platform offers a CAIM solution in CyberArk Customer Identity, which is designed to help dynamic enterprises to secure customer identities end-to-end.
CyberArk Customer Identity Features:
Supported Authentication Methods: Embedded secure single-sign on, social login, username and password, federated credentials.
CyberArk Customer Identity Pricing: CyberArk offers a 30-day free trial and can also provide a demo of the solution. Contact the team at CyberArk directly for more information on the solution and on its pricing.
Expert Insights’ Comments: CyberArk Customer Identity allows organizations to safely open their website and apps for customer access, without leaving themselves vulnerable to security breaches. Users of CyberArk Customer Identity paise its capabilities and strong support, and they generally rate it highly. We would recommend this solution to organizations interested in seamless integration, a frictionless sign-on experience, and intuitive access controls.
ForgeRock are providers of end-to-end, AI-driven products that are designed to secure their thousands of global customers against today’s cyber threats. ForgeRock’s customer identity and access management offering promising to secure identities while providing customers with an experience that is personalized, effortless, and secure.
ForgeRock Identity Platform Features:
Supported Authentication Methods: Single sign-on, delegated administration, web, mobile and password authentication, customer identity verification.
ForgeRock Identity Platform Pricing: ForgeRock can be contacted via a form available on their website. Contact the sales team directly for information on pricing.
Expert Insights’ Comments: ForgeRock, a global digital identity leader, was recognized in the Forrester Wave: Customer Identity and Access Management (CIAM), Q4 2022. Their unified IAM platform is rated highly by past users who describe their customer access and authorization capabilities as “customer centric” and praise the platform’s stability and strong capabilities. We would recommend the ForgeRock Identity Platform to organizations interested in a solution that is customizable and scalable.
HYPR’s CIAM solutions enable businesses to enhance both security and user experience by eliminating passwords across the consumer landscape. The cloud-based platform emphasizes seamless authentication, comprehensive identity verification, and adaptive risk assessment, ensuring secure and user-friendly access for millions of consumers globally.
HYPR Features
Supported Authentication Methods: Biometric recognition, document verification, and FIDO2 passwordless login.
HYPR CIAM Solution Pricing: Contact HYPR for tailored pricing based on organizational needs and scale.
Expert Insights’ Comments: The HYPR CIAM Solution provides a comprehensive identity security platform that focuses on eliminating passwords to enhance security and user experience. HYPR is suitable for organizations in sectors like finance and retail that require high security and ease of use. The platform’s seamless deployment and white labeling capabilities, and focus on scalability and compliance, further reduce complexity and operational costs, making HYPR a recommended choice for businesses aiming to provide secure, user-friendly, and privacy-protected access for their customers.
Okta is a San Francisco-based IAM company, founded in 2009. As a leading independent identity provider, Okta provides simple and secure access to over 10,000 organizations globally. Their CIAM offering, Okta Customer Identity Cloud, supports organizations in solving complex identity challenges, allowing them to innovate and scale without friction.
Okta Customer Identity Cloud Features:
Supported Authentication Methods: Single sign-on, multifactor authentication, customized authentication and authorization workflows, biometrics, security keys, M2M tokens.
Okta Customer Identity Cloud Pricing: Okta offers a free version of their solution which supports 7,000 free active users, unlimited logins, branded logins, social connection, protection against brute force attacks and suspicious IP throttling, and 1,000 M2M tokens. The Customer Identity Cloud pricing for B2C plans starts at $23 monthly for essentials and $240 monthly for Professional. The B2B plans are higher in price, starting at $130 for Essentials and $800 for Professional. Those looking for an enterprise-grade solutions should contact the Okta sales team directly for pricing information.
Expert Insights’ Comments: Okta Customer Identity is praised by users for its functionality, seamless approach, and ease of use. Over 16,400 organizations rely on Okta to help them sure their customers and workforces. We would recommend this solution to any organizations looking to secure consumer and SaaS apps, while maintaining an optimized digital experience.
Founded in 2009, OneLogin is a global identity and access leader. This cloud-based IAM provider offers users a unified platform that is well suited to enterprise-level businesses and organizations. OneLogin’s customer identity and access solution works to increase the organization’s security posture while maintaining a seamless experience for customers.
OneLogin Customer Identity Features:
Supported Authentication Methods: Customizable authentication requirements, policy-based multi-factor authentication, social login, single sign-on, SmartFactor authentication, API authentication and administration.
OneLogin Customer Identity Pricing: You can test OneLogin’s customer identity and access management for 30-days, which includes use of cloud directory, MFA, VPN integration, desktop and mobile SSO, advanced password reset, secure policies, and custom reports. Contact OneLogin directly via their website for pricing information.
Expert Insights’ Comments: OneLogin Customer Identity is described by past users as strong, dependable, and user friendly. The solution helps organizations to protect themselves and their customers by securing and centralizing applications, devices, and end-to-end users in one place. We would recommend OneLogin’s CIAM offering to organizations looking for strong security without impacting the customer experience.
Ping Identity, founded in 2002, is an American software company which provides best-in-class, intelligent identity solutions to global companies in the Fortune 500. Their CIAM solution, PingOne for Customers, in a cloud solution which brings together no-code identity orchestration with authentication and user management to improve and secure the identity and access experience for customers.
PingOne for Customers Features:
Supported Authentication Methods: Centralized authentication services, single sign-on, adaptive authentication, self-service SSO, risk-based MFA, SMS, email and voice OTPs, identity verification for high-risk transactions.
PingOne for Customers Pricing: PingOne for Customers comes in three packages. The Essential package starts at $20,000 annually and comes with standard features such as single sign-on, authentication policies, and no-code identity orchestration. The Plus package starts at $40,000 annually and includes everything in Essential, with additional capabilities like embedded MFA into mobile apps. The Premium package includes all features included in both Essentials and Plus, and is best suited to enterprises with compliance or scalability needs. Contact the sales team directly for a quote.
Expert Insights’ Comments: Ping Identity is an enterprise-focused provider. Enterprises choose Ping for its strong functionality, identity expertise, and the open standards partnership with companies like Google, Amazon, and Microsoft. The solution is typically well rated by past users who praise its innovation and scalability. We would recommend PingOne for Customers to organizations looking for a centrally managed identity solution.
Prove is a market-leading user authentication provider that enables organizations to securely and seamlessly onboard new customers and verify the identities of any users accessing their applications and services. Prove’s identity platform, Pinnacle, utilizes machine learning techniques and cryptographic authentication mechanisms to deliver rapid, accurate, and privacy-preserving customer authentication.
Prove Pinnacle Features
Supported Authentication Methods: FIDO2 web-based authentication, push notifications, and biometrics.
Prove Pinnacle Pricing: Visit the Prove website for custom pricing information.
Expert Insights’ Comments: Prove Pinnacle enables organizations to manage and provide secure customer access to their services for the entirety of each customer’s lifecycle. Pre-Fill enables rapid user onboarding that delivers a seamless end user experience, while mitigating the risk of fraud. Identity and Auth enable secure, remote access for existing users, reducing the risk of account takeover. Finally, the Identity Manager makes it easy for administrators to centrally manage customer identities. Overall, we recommend Pinnacle as a strong CIAM solution, particularly for finance and e-commerce organizations looking to reduce fraud risk and deliver a fast, frictionless onboarding and verification experience to their customers.
SAP is a German multinational software company that provides enterprise software solutions designed to support the management of business and customer relations. SAP Customer Identity and Access Management for B2C is their customer identity management solution which helps to identify customer across channels and devices, providing them with an individual digital experience based on their interests and surfing behavior.
SAP CIAM for B2C Features:
Supported Authentication Methods: Passwordless authentication, AI-driven risk-based authentication, MFA, biometric authentication, one-time password (mobile SMS) authentication.
SAP CIAM for B2C Pricing: SAP offer a demo of their CIAM solution on their website. Pricing information for SAP Customer Identity and Access Management for B2C is available upon request.
Expert Insights’ comments: SAP Customer Identity and Access Management for B2C helps organizations to identify, convert, and retain their customers at scale. Past users of the solution praise how unified and efficient it is. We would recommend it to any organizations looking to boost their ROI by supporting a personalized customer experience using first-party, permissions-based data.
Customer Identity and Access Management (CIAM) is a subset of the broader Identity and Access Management (IAM) category. CIAM solutions are a type of security technology that supports organizations in managing their customer identities, enhancing both the security and the overall experience for customers. These solutions go beyond user identity, access control to provide comprehensive, integrated systems for compliance, privacy protection, and anti-fraud. More advanced solutions can collect customer behavior data and use AI and analytics, alongside customer relationship management (CRM) tools, to deliver a highly personalized customer experience.
A smooth and seamless customer experience is extremely important, especially today when consumers have such high expectations for navigating online spaces. Anything that impedes their use of your site risks pushing them towards a competitor, while anything that improves the experience for customers goes a long way to ensure they return again and again.
For organizations looking to provide online retail, news, financial services, and any other service, CIAM solutions can help ensure that the registration process is smooth and user friendly, the online experience is seamless and easy to navigate, and the likelihood of positive engagement – for example, customers subscribing or making a purchase – is as high as it can be.
Scalability
A growing customer base is what every business strives for and keeping up with that growth is vital to maintaining it. While you want as many customers as possible using your CIAM solution, the numbers can be difficult to predict (unlike an IAM solution, whose user base does not fluctuate nearly as much).
Your CIAM solution will have to deal with peaks and dips as your business grows with the introduction of new services or changes in demand for your service. It is essential that your CIAM solution has the capacity to scale according to changing customer needs, and to be able to handle users across various web and mobile channels, while ensuring performance and user experience across these channels does not suffer.
Flexibility
IAM systems are not known for being very flexible. Any changes – influenced by modern IT trends – tend to come onstream slowly, where the philosophy of making incremental adjustments over time rules. For CIAM systems, making changes needs to be quick and straightforward, with configuration requirements that are simple and easy to implement. Otherwise, customers will be annoyed that their OS has changed, and be resistant to upgrade again.
CIAM solutions cater to organizations’ need to keep on top of emerging customers trends, fluctuating numbers of customers, and changing industry standards. They need to remain relevant to the newest technological environments, so flexibility is vital.
Integration
You will want your CIAM solution to integrate effectively and seamlessly with as many channels as possible. This means that however a customer engages with you, they will have the same experience. An effective CIAM solution helps to create a unified customer profile which applications can use to provide users with a consistent, multi-channel experience that is tailored to each customers unique behaviors. The customer data used to achieve this tailored approach is critical to the business, so any CIAM solution must allow for integration with other types of solutions like CMS, CRM, CDP, etc.
Privacy And Security
CIAM solutions should provide data encryption, alert users of risky actions, and keep a record of user and administrator activity; this is in addition to managing the security levels of authentication mechanisms. For privacy, there are a range of regulations – including CCPA and GDPR – that organizations may be required to comply with. A CIAM solutions enables each user to review and accept the privacy policy of the organization and decide whether the privacy options offered are acceptable. By doing this, organizations can collect and use data in accordance with individual preference across applications, ensuring they fulfill any regulatory requirements and maintaining user trust.
Adaptive Authentication
Consumers have come to expect ease of access and convenience from any service, so ensuring your authentication solution offers both of those things is very important. Current authentication methods include Single Sign-On (SSO) through shared entities (like Google or Facebook), passwordless authentication, or multi-factor authentication (MFA) utilizing one-time passcodes (OTP), biometric data, and smart cards.
As well as improving convenience, strong authentication may also be a requirement for certain operations or use of data, for security reasons. A CIAM solution should allow for an adaptive approach to authentication – user should be able to authenticate according to their own preferences and behaviors. Users should also be given enough information regarding their account security to better-inform fraud detection efforts.
Data Collection And Analysis
It is important for organizations to make tactical business decisions based on relevant data. The better informed you are about your customers’ habits and wants, the more accurately you can curate their personalized experience, and keep them invested in your service. The data collected by CIAM solutions supports this through facilitating easy analysis by grouping customers based on their behavior and attributes. You can identify what related services or products a customer might be interested in.
This also lets you keep track of the number of active customers and leads to both the creation of new services and marketing and sales campaigns that are supported by data. According to Microsoft, leveraging customer behavior data to generate insights lead to organizations outperforming their peers by 85% in sales growth.
Mirren McDade is a senior writer and journalist at Expert Insights, spending each day researching, writing, editing and publishing content, covering a variety of topics and solutions, and interviewing industry experts. She is an experienced copywriter with a background in a range of industries, including cloud business technologies, cloud security, information security and cyber security, and has conducted interviews with several industry experts. Mirren holds a First Class Honors degree in English from Edinburgh Napier University.
Craig MacAlpine is CEO and founder of Expert Insights. Before founding Expert Insights in August 2018, Craig spent 10 years as CEO of EPA cloud, an email security provider acquired by Ziff Davies, formerly J2Global (NASQAQ: ZD) in 2013, which has now been rebranded as VIPRE Email Security. Craig has extensive experience in the email security industry, with 20+ years of experience helping organizations to stay secure with innovative information security and cyber security solutions.