CIPP vs UserDesk: When to Use Each for Microsoft 365 Management

TL;DR

CIPP is for MSPs who want a free, self-hosted, deeply technical multi-tenant management platform — and have the time to deploy and maintain it. It's open source, runs on Azure Static Web Apps, and gives technicians comprehensive control across many customer tenants.

UserDesk for M365 is for internal IT teams (or MSPs managing a few clients) who want to safely delegate routine Microsoft 365 work to non-IT staff — HR, office coordinators, team leads — without giving them admin access or asking them to learn an admin console. It's hosted SaaS, set up in two minutes, and built around role-controlled delegation rather than deep technical management.

They're not really competitors. They solve different problems. Below is a side-by-side breakdown to help you figure out which one fits your situation — or whether you need both.

Quick comparison

	CIPP	UserDesk
Built for	MSPs managing multiple tenants	Internal IT and MSPs delegating to non-IT staff
Hosting	Self-hosted on Azure	SaaS (hosted by us)
Pricing	Free (open source)	$59–$99/month
Setup time	Hours to days (Azure deployment)	~2 minutes (single admin-consent click)
Primary user	IT technicians and MSP staff	HR, office coordinators, team leads
Multi-tenant	Yes, designed for it	One tenant per subscription
Feature breadth	Very wide (deep M365 admin coverage)	Focused (delegation-friendly subset)
Role-based delegation	Limited	Three role tiers (Admin / Member / Viewer)
Audit log	Yes	Yes (immutable)
Stored credentials	None (uses M365 partner relationships)	None (uses OAuth delegated tokens)
Community	Strong open-source community	Single vendor, paid support

What CIPP actually is

CIPP — the CyberDrain Improved Partner Portal — is an open-source Microsoft 365 management tool built primarily by Kelvin Tegelaar and an active community of MSP contributors. It runs as a static web app on Microsoft Azure and uses partner-grant relationships to manage customer tenants.

CIPP shines when:

You're an MSP with Microsoft CSP / direct partner relationships and multiple customer tenants to manage.
You have at least one technically strong person who can deploy it to Azure, configure the app registration, and keep up with updates.
You want comprehensive technical coverage — bulk operations, Intune policies, Conditional Access, advanced reporting, license shuffling at scale.
You're comfortable with a tool that assumes its operators are IT pros.
You value being able to fork, extend, or audit the source.

Where CIPP gets uncomfortable:

Setup is real work. You need an Azure subscription, you need to walk through the deployment script, you need to grant the app the right consent, and you need to keep the deployment patched.
It's an admin tool. It's not designed for HR or an office manager to log in and reset Sarah's password. The interface assumes you know what a tenant ID is.
It's MSP-flavored. If you're an internal IT team at a single company, CIPP works, but a lot of the UI surface is about juggling many customers.
The free part is software, not time. Self-hosting costs you maintenance hours — debugging Azure quotas, handling Graph API changes, watching for security advisories.

What UserDesk actually is

UserDesk is a hosted SaaS portal for Microsoft 365 user management, built specifically so non-IT staff can do the routine work — create accounts, reset passwords, change licenses, manage Teams and group membership — through a focused, role-controlled interface.

UserDesk shines when:

You're internal IT at a 20–500 person company on Microsoft 365 and you want to stop being the password-reset desk.
You want HR, an office manager, or a team lead to handle their own user lifecycle work without learning the Microsoft 365 admin center.
You need a clean audit log of who did what, automatically.
You don't want to maintain another piece of infrastructure.
You're an MSP looking for a polished, low-touch delegation layer to give clients access to their own routine tasks — instead of handling every onboarding ticket yourself.

Where UserDesk gets uncomfortable:

It's not free. There's a 14-day trial, and the cheapest plan is $59/month for up to 50 M365 users.
It's focused. UserDesk does user lifecycle work very well; it doesn't try to be a one-stop Microsoft 365 management console. There's no Conditional Access editor, no Intune policy builder, no full Exchange admin surface.
It's single-tenant per subscription. MSPs can manage multiple customers, but each customer tenant gets its own UserDesk subscription rather than one console for everything.

The honest decision framework

The fastest way to decide is to ask: who is the primary user going to be?

If the answer is "an IT technician or MSP engineer who knows Microsoft 365 deeply" — CIPP is probably the right tool. It's built for that person.

If the answer is "the HR generalist, the office manager, the department lead, the new hire we just trained for two hours" — UserDesk is the right tool. CIPP will overwhelm them in fifteen seconds. The admin center will overwhelm them in five.

A second filter is what you're trying to optimize for:

Optimizing for cost? CIPP is free (in software). If your time is also free, that wins.
Optimizing for technical depth? CIPP covers more surface area.
Optimizing for delegation safety? UserDesk's role tiers and focused interface mean a delegate literally cannot do dangerous things — they can only do what the role allows.
Optimizing for time to value? UserDesk's two-minute setup beats hours of Azure deployment, and there's nothing to maintain.
Optimizing for audit and compliance? Both have audit logs. UserDesk's is intentionally immutable and shows up in a non-technical UI auditors can read directly.

A third filter — and this is where most internal IT teams land — is what role you're really playing. If you're a one-or-two-person IT team, you don't need a Microsoft 365 management console as much as you need an escape hatch for the work that shouldn't be yours in the first place. Password resets, new-hire onboarding, license assignments, channel access — none of that requires an admin. It just requires someone trustworthy with a constrained tool. That's the gap UserDesk fills, and it's not the gap CIPP was designed for.

Can you use both?

Yes, and some teams do. CIPP for the deep technical work IT actually owns (Conditional Access, bulk policy changes, advanced reporting). UserDesk on top as the delegation layer — the surface HR and team leads actually touch.

Most MSPs we talk to fall into one of three buckets:

All-in on CIPP. They're a technically deep MSP, they have the staff to maintain it, every operation goes through technicians. They probably don't need UserDesk.
Looking to delegate to clients. They want clients to handle their own password resets and new-hire onboarding without filing tickets. CIPP can't really do this — the UX isn't built for non-IT users. UserDesk is.
Hybrid. CIPP for backend technical work, UserDesk as the customer-facing portal. Best of both, but more cost.

Common questions

Is CIPP secure?

Yes — CIPP itself doesn't store credentials and uses Microsoft's partner-grant model. The risks are the usual self-hosted ones: your Azure deployment, your app registration, your update cadence, your operators. If you keep them tight, you're fine.

Is UserDesk a CIPP replacement?

No. They're not the same product. CIPP is a deep technical admin tool for MSP staff. UserDesk is a focused delegation interface for non-IT users. If your day-to-day involves writing Conditional Access policies, UserDesk is not for you. If your day-to-day involves wishing HR could reset passwords without your help, UserDesk is exactly for you.

Can HR use CIPP?

Technically yes, but in practice it's a poor fit. CIPP's interface assumes the user understands Microsoft 365 administration. There's no role-tier system that constrains what a non-technical user can do — you'd be granting them full operational access to the tenant. That's a meaningful security tradeoff.

Does UserDesk work for MSPs?

Yes, especially for MSPs whose value proposition is "your team handles their own routine work, we handle the complex stuff." Each customer tenant gets its own UserDesk subscription with its own admin consent, isolated data, and isolated billing. MSPs typically charge clients a small markup on the UserDesk subscription as part of the managed-services bundle.

Why does delegation matter at all? Can't we just give HR a User Administrator role in M365?

You can, but it's a sharp tool. The User Administrator role in Microsoft 365 exposes the full admin center — hundreds of settings, plus a handful that can break things if clicked by mistake. There's no in-tenant way to say "HR can reset passwords but cannot change MFA settings or assign Global Admin." UserDesk exists precisely to give you that fine-grained delegation without granting a role that's too broad. (We wrote about this specifically in How to safely delegate Microsoft 365 user management.)

Bottom line

CIPP and UserDesk both manage Microsoft 365, but they live on opposite ends of the user spectrum. CIPP is built for the technical admin who wants deep, free, self-hosted control. UserDesk is built so the technical admin can hand routine work to someone who isn't them.

If you're an MSP with a fleet of customer tenants and a technical team, start with CIPP. If you're internal IT at a small-to-mid business and you want password resets to stop landing in your queue, start with UserDesk — there's a 14-day free trial, no credit card, set up in two minutes.

If you're somewhere in the middle, the two coexist nicely. Use CIPP for the work that should never leave IT, and UserDesk for the work that should never have been there in the first place.