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Active Roles by One Identity vs Fortra's Powertech Identity & Access Manager comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

Active Roles by One Identity
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
92
Ranking in other categories
User Provisioning Software (3rd), Active Directory Management (1st), Non-Human Identity Management (NHIM) (1st)
Fortra's Powertech Identity...
Average Rating
5.0
Number of Reviews
1
Ranking in other categories
Privileged Access Management (PAM) (33rd)
 

Mindshare comparison

While both are Identity and Access Management solutions, they serve different purposes. Active Roles by One Identity is designed for Active Directory Management and holds a mindshare of 11.7%, up 9.6% compared to last year.
Fortra's Powertech Identity & Access Manager, on the other hand, focuses on Privileged Access Management (PAM), holds 1.0% mindshare, up 0.4% since last year.
Active Directory Management Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Active Roles by One Identity11.7%
Netwrix Auditor10.1%
ManageEngine ADManager Plus8.7%
Other69.5%
Active Directory Management
Privileged Access Management (PAM) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Fortra's Powertech Identity & Access Manager1.0%
Idira Privileged Access Manager8.6%
Safeguard by One Identity4.3%
Other86.1%
Privileged Access Management (PAM)
 

Featured Reviews

Puru Solanki ( ITIL. CISM , CCSP ) - PeerSpot reviewer
IT Head at Citadel Global
Automation has streamlined onboarding and governance and delivers faster, more secure access
Overall, we are very satisfied with Active Roles by One Identity, but there are a few areas that could be improved. The user interface could be more modern and intuitive, especially for new administrators. Some advanced configuration and policy settings have a steep learning curve and could be simplified. We would also like to see more built-in integrations with cloud platforms and SaaS applications, along with additional out-of-the-box reporting templates. These improvements would make the product even easier and more flexible for organizations managing hybrid environments. One thing that would make our daily work even smoother is having more ready-to-use templates for common administrative tasks and reports. This would reduce the need for customization and help teams get up and running more quickly. Additionally, faster and simpler synchronization for hybrid and cloud environments would be beneficial, especially for organizations managing both on-premises and cloud identities. More detailed documentation and guided setup for advanced features would help new administrators learn the platform faster and more easily. One additional improvement I would like to see for Active Roles by One Identity is a better built-in dashboard with more real-time insights into identity and access activities. It would be helpful if upgrades and migrations were simpler and required less planning. Finally, expanding native integrations with more cloud services and third-party applications would make the platform even more versatile and reliable. These enhancements would improve the overall user experience while keeping the product's strong security and automation capabilities.
reviewer910470 - PeerSpot reviewer
Practice Lead at a computer software company with 51-200 employees
Inexperienced support for old product, but good flexibility for use case customization
HelpSystems Powertech is scalable if you throw more servers at it. Then you can distribute the load, which is a Microsoft SQL Server backend, and as long as you allocate enough resources to those things, then it is scalable. That's good enough. It would be an entire organization that uses it. So at a hospital for example, a healthcare system, a bank, and it would be the entire workforce on it. I haven't see a lot of customer's specific use cases, but it is for the whole workforce, everyone. The CEO of the company to the janitor. In terms of maintaining it, that requires application administrators or system administrators. There is a manual process to update the product, at least with the on-premise version.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"One Identity Active Roles absolutely helps reduce identity-based breaches, making it very seamless for our user base to ensure that folks in specific positions have the least privileged access possible across our for-profit healthcare conglomerate with thirty states and over fifty community hospitals under a single Active Directory domain."
"Active Roles helped increase operational efficiency in our organization."
"It has eliminated a lot of tedious IT tasks, especially when people leave, with ten or 15 scripted actions that Active Roles always does the same way and at the same time."
"Previously, I was handling a 100 percent workload, but after using One Identity Active Roles, 70 percent of my load has been resolved."
"I see a return on investment with One Identity Active Roles, specifically noting a 40% to 60% drop in time spent on provisioning, access reviews, and audit-related tasks."
"Overall, beyond just making tasks easier, it adds a strong layer of control, security, and visibility of AD operations."
"In comparison to native Active Directory tools, using Active Roles for delegation is so much better. It uses an access template and that makes it easy to see who can access what. In fact, you can do that for many objects as well."
"One Identity Active Roles has positively impacted our organization by improving AD administration efficiency, reducing manual errors, strengthening access governance, and helping to standardize user provisioning and compliance processes across the team."
"HelpSystems Powertech's feature that I have found most valuable is its flexibility."
"HelpSystems Powertech's feature that I have found most valuable is its flexibility. It is able to be extended. A lot of the products these days, especially the ones on the cloud, are limited and can't handle all the use cases. Often there is not even a way to customize the application to meet uncommon use cases and HelpSystems provides an infrastructure that lends itself to the ability to be customized."
 

Cons

"The user and group management in Azure AD could be better. Our focus these days is dynamic sharing with several on-prem Microsoft applications like SharePoint."
"Overall, One Identity Active Roles is a very powerful tool, but there are definitely areas where it can be improved."
"Additional documentation about the Angular web interface is needed."
"One area for improvement would be the initial setup, which feels a little bit complex and could be simplified."
"In terms of improvement, it could be made even more user-friendly for administrators when they need to create new workflows and rule sets."
"One area for improvement would be troubleshooting and reporting."
"The main improvement I would suggest for One Identity Active Roles is making the UI and policy configuration more intuitive."
"There is always room to improve the user interface for increased clarity. I believe enhancements to the console are also necessary because it is more confusing than the web interface."
"In terms of what could be improved, I would say the support of the product. It's hard to get support for it. I think this is emblematic of the fact that they don't have a lot of employees who have long-term experience with it."
"I would not necessarily recommend customers use it."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The pricing is high. I have not been involved with the renewal or cost aspect, but I know it is not cheap by any means. However, it is very useful for our environment."
"It's expensive."
"The pricing is on the higher end."
"The licensing model is a simple user-based model, not that much complicated."
"The pricing for Active Roles is expensive but not as expensive as other solutions like Okta."
"The price is reasonable. It costs us about 1 million Danish kroner annually, and we also spend about half as much on consultants."
"It's fairly priced."
Information not available
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Outsourcing Company
27%
Healthcare Company
9%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Computer Software Company
7%
No data available
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business98
Midsize Enterprise18
Large Enterprise45
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for One Identity Active Roles?
Our experience with the pricing, setup cost, and licensing of Active Roles by One Identity has been very positive. Although Active Roles by One Identity is not the lowest-priced solution, we believ...
What needs improvement with One Identity Active Roles?
Overall, we are very satisfied with Active Roles by One Identity, but there are a few areas that could be improved. The user interface could be more modern and intuitive, especially for new adminis...
What is your primary use case for One Identity Active Roles?
Active Roles by One Identity is our main solution for simplifying and automating user account management in our Active Directory environment. We use it for tasks like user provisioning, deprovision...
Ask a question
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Also Known As

Quest Active Roles
HelpSystems Powertech Identity & Access Manager, Powertech Identity & Access Manager, BoKS, BoKS ServerControl, Fox Technologies ApplicationControl, ApplicationControl
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

City of Frankfurt, Moore Public Schools, George Washington University, Transavia Airlines, Howard County, MD. See all stories at OneIdentity.com/casestudies
Integris Health
Find out what your peers are saying about One Identity, Microsoft, Netwrix and others in Active Directory Management. Updated: August 2026.
912,006 professionals have used our research since 2012.