No more typing reviews! Try our Samantha, our new voice AI agent.

Active Roles by One Identity vs SolarWinds Access Rights Manager comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jul 20, 2026

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
Ranking in Active Directory Management
1st
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
90
Ranking in other categories
User Provisioning Software (3rd), Non-Human Identity Management (NHIM) (1st)
SolarWinds Access Rights Ma...
Ranking in Active Directory Management
9th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
2
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of July 2026, in the Active Directory Management category, the mindshare of Active Roles by One Identity is 12.3%, up from 6.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SolarWinds Access Rights Manager is 4.8%, down from 7.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Active Directory Management Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
One Identity Active Roles12.3%
SolarWinds Access Rights Manager4.8%
Other82.9%
Active Directory Management
 

Featured Reviews

Varun Mehra - PeerSpot reviewer
collaboration support engineer at a retailer with 11-50 employees
Automation has transformed onboarding and access control and now streamlines daily governance
While One Identity Active Roles is a strong identity and access management solution overall, there are a few areas where it could improve. One challenge we experienced was the initial setup and configuration complexity. Deploying workflows, policies, and delegation models require careful planning and a good understanding of the Active Directory environment. For organizations without experienced administrators, the learning curve can feel quite steep in the beginning. The user interface could also be more modern and intuitive. Some administrative tasks require navigating through multiple menus and the overall experience could be simplified for faster day-to-day management. Another area for improvement is reporting and customization. While the auditing features are good, creating highly customized reports sometimes requires additional efforts or scripting knowledge. More built-in reporting templates and easier dashboard customization would be helpful. We have also noticed that troubleshooting workflows or synchronization issues can occasionally take time because the logs can be very detailed and technical. Better diagnostic tools and simpler error explanations would improve the operational experience. That said, once the platform is properly configured and maintained, it performs reliably and delivers strong automation, delegation, and governance capabilities. One additional area where One Identity Active Roles could improve is cloud integration and hybrid environment management. While it works well with Active Directory and the Microsoft environment, organizations moving heavily towards cloud-first infrastructure may want even deeper and more seamless integration with modern SaaS platforms and identity providers. Performance optimization in large environments could be improved. In very large enterprise deployments with complex workflows and multiple managed domains, some administrative actions and synchronization tasks can occasionally feel slower than expected. Another point is documentation and onboarding resources. The product is feature-rich, but some advanced configurations require going through extensive documentation. More practical examples, guided setup wizards, and easier to follow best practice guides would help new administrators adopt the platform faster. Overall, the core functionality is solid, and most of the pain points are related more to usability, complexity, and modernization rather than the reliability. One additional improvement I would mention is around integration flexibility with third-party ITSM and DevOps tools. While the platform integrates well within Microsoft-centric environments, broader out-of-the-box integration and simpler API workflows for non-Microsoft ecosystems would make deployment and automation easier for organizations using diverse infrastructure. Another area is upgrade and migration simplicity. In enterprise environments, version upgrades and environment migration sometimes require careful planning and testing. Streamlining that process with more automated compatibility checks and migration assistance would reduce operational overhead.
Rafal-Stas - PeerSpot reviewer
CEO at Greeneris Sp. z o.o.
Has good pricing options and is easy to manage and deploy
It's pretty easy to manage, and quite easy to deploy. It's easy to understand to work, and customers also tell us that there are a lot of options even too many sometimes for them. Sometimes the product is even too big for them at the beginning. The product also has a good payload with pricing. That's why the customers choose this solution. The price and the quality and options have a good ratio.

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."
"One Identity Active Roles is highly recommended because it is a good solution that is really helping our organization streamline the process and reduce manual errors or manual efforts while providing a good return on investment."
"We achieve a strong ROI with One Identity Active Roles through approximately a forty to fifty percent reduction in service desk workload, faster user provisioning from hours to minutes, fewer manual administration errors, and improved compliance and audit efficiency."
"One Identity Active Roles takes us less time, probably half the time, to complete delegations that are very granular and complex, compared to having to use native tools and scripts."
"The biggest thing for us is Active Roles saves a lot of man-hours in keeping groups up-to-date manually or trying to write some sort of script that you have to run, so we don't have to reinvent the wheel. Instead of when every time somebody joins a department, then somebody has to remember to put in a request to add "meet user Joe" to this group, the solution does it automatically for us. Therefore, it saves our business and IT staff time because they do not have to process requests since Active Role can do it for them."
"One Identity Active Roles has positively impacted our organization by making Active Directory management much more efficient, reducing manual work, improving control over permissions, and providing better visibility into changes, which has helped both security and compliance efforts."
"Because of Active Roles, we're able to synchronize on an even more regular basis. It enables us to provide even more information to the Active Directory, which helped us to group our users in a more consistent manner."
"Heavily Automates - it will automate the entire provisioning, re-provisioning, de-provisioning and undo-de-provisioning tasks Complete Audit Trail - it gives an audit trail for each and every activity Increase in accountability – various tasks can be enabled for approval."
"It's pretty easy to manage, and quite easy to deploy."
"The solution can be used to audit the whole on-premises environment, including Active Directory, file servers, and other Microsoft services."
 

Cons

"One Identity Active Roles could be improved with a more modern and intuitive user interface, faster performance during large-scale directory operations, and simpler initial deployment and configuration."
"I did not rate One Identity Active Roles at the highest level because areas such as user interface modernization, workflow complexity, troubleshooting experience, reporting capabilities, and cloud integration still have room for improvement."
"The main improvement I would like to see for One Identity Active Roles is a more modern and intuitive interface, along with more customizable reporting and dashboards to enhance our experience with the platform."
"Troubleshooting could be more streamlined when dealing with detailed administrative changes or resolving synchronization issues."
"There are a couple of areas where One Identity Active Roles can be improved. One area is the overall user interface and experience, as the UI is sometimes very complex, so simplifying workflows for non-stakeholders would be helpful."
"Some advanced configuration and workflow can feel complex, so simplifying setup and management would improve the overall experience."
"Overall, One Identity Active Roles is a very powerful tool, but there are definitely areas where it can be improved."
"There is room for improvement in One Identity Active Roles. While the product is very capable, managing complex workflows and hybrid environments can sometimes require deeper expertise than expected, so better cloud integration and troubleshooting visibility would also be valuable improvements."
"Configuring the solution with online services, like Microsoft Exchange Online, is difficult."
"The GUI could be improved because this GUI was invented ten years ago, and now we have a modern user interface. This GUI is a bit older than expected in this market."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The pricing is on the higher end."
"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."
"The licensing model is a simple user-based model, not that much complicated."
"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 expensive."
"It's fairly priced."
"The pricing for Active Roles is expensive but not as expensive as other solutions like Okta."
"The pricing of the solution is fine. I rate the pricing a five out of ten."
"The pricing of the solution is fine. I rate the pricing a five out of ten."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Active Directory Management solutions are best for your needs.
905,526 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Outsourcing Company
24%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Computer Software Company
7%
Manufacturing Company
6%
Outsourcing Company
10%
Performing Arts
9%
Retailer
7%
Financial Services Firm
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business96
Midsize Enterprise14
Large Enterprise44
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for One Identity Active Roles?
I wasn't directly involved in the pricing or licensing decisions, so I cannot comment on the exact cost. For our operations, I believe the investment was considered worthwhile because the product r...
What needs improvement with One Identity Active Roles?
I think One Identity Active Roles is a mature and reliable solution, but there are a few areas where it could be improved. The biggest one is the management interface, which feels dated compared to...
What is your primary use case for One Identity Active Roles?
Our main use case for One Identity Active Roles is to simplify and standardize Active Directory administration across multiple business units while reducing the amount of manual work handled by our...
Ask a question
Earn 20 points
 

Also Known As

Quest Active Roles
SolarWinds ARM
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

City of Frankfurt, Moore Public Schools, George Washington University, Transavia Airlines, Howard County, MD. See all stories at OneIdentity.com/casestudies
Accenture, Emerson, Lockheed Martin, Nielsen, NTT
Find out what your peers are saying about Active Roles by One Identity vs. SolarWinds Access Rights Manager and other solutions. Updated: June 2026.
905,526 professionals have used our research since 2012.