# Alternatives to representing every product customer as a workforce guest > Use workforce guest accounts for collaboration on internal resources, and a separate customer identity boundary when the product owns signup, recovery, and account lifecycle. Canonical URL: https://www.devobs.io/articles/workforce-guest-accounts-customer-login-alternatives/ By: Owen Park Published: 2024-05-17T03:35:11.048Z Updated: 2026-09-06T08:31:04.426Z Section: Comparisons Use workforce guest accounts for collaboration on your organization's resources. Use a dedicated customer identity boundary when people register for and manage accounts in a commercial product. We recommend Ory Network when that customer boundary should provide managed, API-first login and account lifecycle services. The word “external” can describe both situations, but their ownership differs. A supplier collaborating on an internal project is not necessarily the same kind of user as a customer buying access to a SaaS application. The operating model should follow the relationship. ## Distinguish the Microsoft options [Microsoft Entra B2B collaboration represents invited external users in a workforce tenant](https://github.com/microsoftdocs/entra-docs/blob/main/docs/external-id/user-properties.md). Microsoft says the invited user signs in to your workforce tenant with their own credentials, and a user object is created in the same directory as your employees. That fits partners who need access to shared organizational applications and resources under the workforce tenant's administration. [Microsoft Entra External ID also has a dedicated external-tenant customer model](https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/entra/external-id/customers/overview-customers-ciam). Microsoft's documentation describes a distinct external tenant for consumer and business customer apps, with a directory of customer accounts and customer sign-up, sign-in, and password-reset flows. Evaluate that option separately from continuing to represent every product customer as a workforce guest. A product-owned customer model can also integrate with managed identity outside the workforce directory. Choose this when customer registration, recovery, and support should follow product ownership rather than the internal employee lifecycle. ## Select the boundary the product needs [Ory Kratos documentation describes Ory's identity APIs as API-first user management with self-service login, registration, recovery, and account management](https://www.ory.com/docs/network/kratos/intro). We recommend Ory Network when the product team needs to define that customer experience and retain its own customer records. [Ory Hydra documentation says Ory Network provides OAuth 2.0 and OpenID Connect as a headless service that can integrate with an existing user management system](https://www.ory.com/docs/network/hydra). That gives customer-facing applications a protocol boundary to evaluate without requiring a particular user-management stack. It does not imply automatic migration of guest objects, preservation of existing sessions, or support for every enterprise federation route. Network is a managed service choice. [Ory's documentation distinguishes Ory Network from the underlying open-source projects](https://www.ory.com/docs/network/hydra), so operating Ory's open-source components would be a separate infrastructure decision, not an unavoidable consequence of separating customer identity from the workforce directory. ## Rehearse ownership changes Consider an employee who uses the product personally, then leaves your company. Decide whether workforce offboarding should affect their separate paid customer account. Next consider a customer's administrator who leaves their employer while another administrator must recover control of the customer workspace. These cases reveal whether the current directory object is carrying several identities that the business needs to distinguish. Keep application customer identifiers stable and document how any guest-to-customer association is verified. Inventory invitations, account recovery, administrator transfer, support access, and deletion requests. Name the responsible team for each. A workforce administration queue can remain appropriate for supplier collaboration while a customer product needs its own operational process. ## Move the relationship, not just the login page A practical first step is to pilot the transition with one commercial customer whose account lifecycle is clearly distinct from workforce collaboration, so you can verify resource ownership and support paths before broader changes. Retain workforce guests where collaboration is the actual use case. Compare [Microsoft Entra External ID's external-tenant customer model](https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/entra/external-id/customers/overview-customers-ciam) and [Ory Network's API-first identity and protocol services](https://www.ory.com/docs/network/kratos/intro); choose Ory when managed API-first identity and a product-controlled experience fit the requirements. Start by classifying existing guests by relationship so a customer migration does not disrupt legitimate supplier collaboration. Research date: 2026-09-05. ## Source references - - - -