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20/08/2026 5:45 pm
TL;DR: Customers are leaving Ping Identity because of high costs, scaling issues, poor user experience, and complexity, according to Ory’s analysis. For IAM teams, the real issue is not branding but whether an identity stack can support modern access patterns without adding operational drag.
NHIMG editorial — based on content published by Ory: Is Ping Identity still a leader in Identity and Access Management (IAM)?
Questions worth separating out
Q: When does an IAM platform become too complex to keep operating effectively?
A: An IAM platform becomes too complex when routine changes depend on custom code, repeated exceptions, or scarce specialists to keep core access flows stable.
Q: Why does poor IAM user experience matter to security teams?
A: Poor IAM user experience matters because people and developers route around friction.
Q: How should teams decide whether to keep custom IAM or move to a platform model?
A: Teams should keep custom IAM only where the identity model is tightly bounded, well understood, and not expected to support broad reuse across applications or actor types.
Practitioner guidance
- Audit identity-related operational debt Map where the current IAM stack depends on custom flows, manual exception handling, or specialist knowledge to keep core authentication and federation paths working.
- Measure scaling pressure across access journeys Test onboarding, application integration, and regional expansion scenarios to see where the platform needs redesign, duplicated configuration, or extra support effort.
- Review user and developer friction Track where login, recovery, federation, or step-up flows push users and developers toward workarounds that weaken intended controls.
What's in the full article
Ory's full article covers the migration pressure and product comparison detail this post intentionally leaves for the source:
- Customer-facing reasons teams cite for moving away from Ping Identity, including cost and complexity trade-offs.
- The specific product and deployment considerations behind migration decisions rather than the high-level governance view.
- How organisations compare authentication, scale, and user experience when evaluating alternatives.
- The full context behind the article's alternatives framing and what it suggests about buyer expectations.
👉 Read Ory's analysis of why customers are leaving Ping Identity →
Ping Identity alternatives: what migration pressure means for IAM teams?
Explore further
20/08/2026 6:27 pm
Complexity becomes the decisive migration trigger when IAM stops fitting the operating model. The article’s core signal is not simply that customers dislike a product, but that the cost of keeping it aligned with modern access patterns is becoming too high. In identity programmes, operational complexity often matters more than feature breadth because complexity creates delays, exceptions, and workarounds that outlive any single deployment decision. Practitioners should read this as a governance stress test, not a vendor story.
A few things that frame the scale:
- The average estimated time to remediate a leaked secret is 27 days, despite 75% of organisations expressing strong confidence in their secrets management capabilities, according to The State of Secrets in AppSec.
- Only 44% of developers are reported to follow security best practices for secrets management, exposing a significant developer behaviour gap.
A question worth separating out:
Q: What is the difference between a technically secure IAM system and a usable one?
A: A technically secure IAM system may enforce good policy, but a usable one can do so without creating friction that drives workarounds or inconsistent adoption. Security teams need both. If users, developers, or administrators avoid the intended path because it is too difficult, the effective control weakens even though the design looks sound on paper.
👉 Read our full editorial: Ping Identity migration pressure shows IAM leader claims are eroding
