JumpCloud alternatives
JumpCloud is often the answer for teams that find Okta’s $1,500 minimum too steep.
It’s a real product, but the pricing shape creates a different problem: identity
management isn’t one purchase, it’s several. Cloud Directory, SSO, User
Lifecycle Management and MFA are each their own $3-a-user-a-month module, billed annually
— so “JumpCloud” isn’t a price, it’s a shopping cart, and the
total depends on how many boxes you check.
There’s no free plan. What JumpCloud calls free is a 30-day trial with no restrictions
— after that it’s the module pricing above, or a bundle: Device Management at
$9/user/month, SSO at $11, Device Identity Management at $13, all billed annually. Need the
full platform? That’s Platform Essentials, Platform, Platform Prime or Privileged
Access Management — all contact-sales, no published number.
The alternatives
Okta
The other name people compare JumpCloud against. Starter tier lists at $6/user/month, but
Okta requires a $1,500 annual contract minimum — a floor that doesn’t stop
binding until you have about 21 people at that rate. Professional and Enterprise tiers are
quote-only. We did
the arithmetic on that minimum on its own page.
Good fit if: you’re past the minimum and want one vendor with the deepest
enterprise feature set.
Watch out for: paying the $1,500 floor regardless of headcount below that line.
Rippling IT
Rippling’s identity and device products sit inside a platform whose center of
gravity is HR and payroll. Their small-business page lists $8/user/month plus a $40/month
base fee as the platform entry point — but the IT and identity products themselves
have no published price, and every buying path we could find on their site ends at a quote
request.
Good fit if: you want payroll, benefits, HR and IT from one vendor and
you’re ready for that sales conversation.
Watch out for: buying an HR platform to get identity management, if HR
isn’t what you need.
Doing it by hand in Google Workspace
The default for most small teams, because it’s free in the sense that it’s
already included in what you pay Google. Groups and company email are there; everything
beyond Google — chat, code hosting, docs, password manager — is a manual
invite when someone joins and a manual removal when they leave, for every app, every time.
Good fit if: you’re 2 or 3 people and headcount isn’t changing soon.
Watch out for: the failure mode being invisible — nothing tells you an
ex-contractor still has access; you find out when it matters.
Rostid (yes, that’s us)
Rostid is one price for the whole thing: $5 a seat, flat — no
modules to assemble, no minimum, no annual contract, no sales call. The same product at 2
seats or 200.
We’re in early access. Join the waitlist and we’ll send one
email when it opens.