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Cisco Identity Services Engine (ISE) vs OneLogin by One Identity comparison

 

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

Cisco Identity Services Eng...
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
142
Ranking in other categories
Network Access Control (NAC) (1st), Cisco Security Portfolio (1st)
OneLogin by One Identity
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
17
Ranking in other categories
Single Sign-On (SSO) (9th), User Provisioning Software (6th), Identity Management (IM) (11th), Identity and Access Management as a Service (IDaaS) (IAMaaS) (10th), Access Management (8th)
 

Mindshare comparison

Cisco Identity Services Engine (ISE) and OneLogin by One Identity aren’t in the same category and serve different purposes. Cisco Identity Services Engine (ISE) is designed for Network Access Control (NAC) and holds a mindshare of 25.8%, down 31.3% compared to last year.
OneLogin by One Identity, on the other hand, focuses on Identity and Access Management as a Service (IDaaS) (IAMaaS), holds 2.0% mindshare, up 2.0% since last year.
Network Access Control (NAC)
Identity and Access Management as a Service (IDaaS) (IAMaaS)
 

Featured Reviews

SunilkumarNaganuri - PeerSpot reviewer
Enhanced device administration hindered by complex deployment and security limitations
Cisco Identity Services Engine (ISE) needs to improve the profiling preauthentication. They are very poor in asset classification and should focus on improving the preauthentication profiling, especially for NAC use cases. This will give them a roadmap for software-defined access (SDA) use cases and network segmentation. Threat detection capabilities are very weak. Additionally, the product is vulnerable and has many bugs.
Pete Snell - PeerSpot reviewer
Staff and students can now reset their passwords using their enrolled two-factor device as the authentication mechanism
We've been a OneLogin customer for several years now. While I like the platform, there have been some challenges. A great example is the amount of work needed with that webhook for the enrollment user experience. This functionality is native to some competing products. That's one area where we've leaned on our account rep over the years. They shouldn't rely on the customer to make this experience better. This is one feature request that hasn't been implemented yet. At the same time, they've implemented other features we've requested. One is the ability to use a personal email address as a factor. Initially, they didn't have that. We pushed hard on our account team for about two years before it was finally released. It's a give-and-take. Some of the product's features aren't perfect, but we've had some success pushing fixes to the development team that needs to happen. They've done a decent job. However, there are some fixes that they don't have an interest in. A lot of what I described was before OneLogin was acquired by Quest/One Identity. Things have changed. It doesn't feel like they're driving the product as OneLogin was. It may be because it's a new product to them, and they're still trying to get the lay of the land, process feature requests, etc., but it's not moving as fast as before. We've been experiencing some pain points since the acquisition. For example, there have been some outages we didn't see previously, which are a big topic with my executive team. You have hundreds of applications relying on this service for login. If the service is unavailable, nobody can log into these applications. The issues have high visibility. It's gotten better, but it's still there. It raises questions about whether One Identity can support the platform they've acquired. How are they enhancing the product? And how are they supporting the product and the service in the future? Those are two essential questions. There are also lots of nice-to-haves, but that's the case with any product.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"It is a good product for what it does...So, it is one of the most critical systems that we have."
"The WiFi portal in Cisco ISE is very useful for WiFi customers."
"The user experience of the solution is great. It's a very transparent system."
"Cisco ISE provides authentication for various applications. It can integrate with other applications to manage access, including Privileged Access Management for those applications. For a comprehensive environment, Cisco ISE should be able to integrate and provide asset management for an IT organization or any organization."
"It is stable and easy to use."
"The core point is that Cisco ISE is the same globally compared to FortiAuthenticator. Whether I deploy in China, the US, South Africa, or wherever, I'm can get all the capabilities. It allows me to directly integrate with 365, and from a communications point of view, that is a good capability."
"Cisco ISE's integration with other external identity servers like Duende is very simple and easy."
"The most valuable features are authentication, we have more granular control on the access policies for the administrators. The solution is easy to use, has a center point administration, and has a good GUI."
"The directory integration and SCIM provisioning are probably the best features compared to competitors."
"The solution's ability to save and manage of all my passwords is great."
"Simplicity is the most valuable part of OneLogin."
"It's super useful to have a single pane of glass when it comes to access management."
"Documentation."
"The single sign-on and the fact that we can integrate everything in one place and control from there were valuable features of this solution."
"Once I made the OneLogin ID, it would essentially make user names and passwords for every application that we had."
"The most valuable feature is the ease with which we can manage the sign-on feature."
 

Cons

"The compliance and posture don't always work. They should make it more stable. With each upgrade, we lose some functionality. We have to wait for another upgrade."
"There can be a little bit more integration between the controller management and ISE. There are two dashboards, you have the controller dashboards, and you have the ISE dashboard it would is a way to maybe integrate that into one. That would be great. It's not that bad. It would be easier if it could be combined into one dashboard."
"The pricing and licensing structure are not ideal for customers."
"Migration could be better. Right now, we back up with the new version, and it requires a lot of licensing and other things. Whenever we choose a product, it's very difficult because we have to meet the requirements of each feature. There is no standard feature, so the best system that we bought may not fit the solution. We have to look at every feature that the customer uses. If you compare it with other products like Aruba, it's not the same. With Cisco, I have to read all about the features on this version and the licensing required for the product. In Aruba, that thing is covered when you get one license because it covers almost everything. It could also be more scalable."
"They should improve the upgrades. It's not easy to upgrade the solution."
"The product is expensive. It would also be a good add-on to have some machine learning."
"Sometimes some of Cisco ISE's graphical interfaces could be a little bit smoother. However, with the different versions, the product is getting better and better."
"The primary issue is the slowness of the application and the web interface. We have multiple admin nodes and app nodes. So when I need to get some information about a particular user, the GUI would take ten to fifteen seconds in loading when we need to know right away."
"This product doesn't necessarily provide us with all of the functionality that we need, such as being able to share passwords with external users."
"OneLogin offers a Virtual LDAP feature that we utilize, although it differs slightly from traditional LDAP servers."
"More off-hour support."
"The tool must be made more robust."
"having a RESTful implementation instead of RPC would have been more desirable."
"I'd like OneLogin to have a customization section that displays the company's offerings, categorized by different topics."
"I would like better reporting from SmartFactor Authentication when a user is not able to sign in due to a new location, new IP, new device, et cetera."
"In terms of managing the users on a large scale, it would be easier if they had some kind of user management portal."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Hardware appliances are expensive...Now moving to DNA-styled licensing, we have subscription-based licensing for everything. I hope it will continue to be fair, but we will have to wait and see."
"Its price is probably good if you use all of its features and functionalities to protect your environment. If you use only a part of the functionality, its price is too high. It is just a question of value and the functionality you use."
"In general, licensing can be quite complex with Cisco products. It would be nice if it was a bit more intuitive and had fewer "gotchas" in there."
"I get very good pricing from Cisco, so I don't have a problem with that. I also don't have a problem with licensing because we get enterprise or global licensing."
"Licensing is a disaster. It's a mess and I hope they fix it soon."
"The Essentials licensing is reasonable, but I would like the Premier version to be perpetual instead of a subscription."
"The licensing can be confusing, but it is still pretty good."
"We are running Version 2.9 because Version 2.9 of the ISE has a persistent license — it's a one-time payment. The latest version (3.1) is only available if you do a yearly subscription."
"Surprisingly expensive given the price of on-premise solutions."
"It was cheap in the beginning, and then it became very expensive. We were initially charged $2 per user per month, which was fine, but by the second year, they increased it to $5 per user. That became very expensive for us because we had about 1,500 users. At $2 per user, it comes out to be $3,000 a month, which is $36,000 a year. If we move to $5 per user, it comes out to be $7,500 a month. That made its cost so high. That is why we removed the product because the cost was high."
"The pricing and licensing are reasonable. It is much cheaper than other products."
"The price of the licensing is fine."
"The pricing for OneLogin seems to be okay. The pricing and licensing are affordable. If you'd consider OneLogin to be expensive, it's worth it."
"We were happy with the price we got when we signed up, but I don't know what will happen when the time comes to renew because it is a different company now. We haven't seen any pricing models or had that discussion yet. My renewal is a year and a half away. It's worth what we're paying for it. There's no way we could provide the level of service for cheaper or try to do the same in-house."
"While I wish OneLogin's pricing was more affordable, their licensing model, which is based on per user, is acceptable."
"OneLogin's pricing, from the perspective of the education sector, seems quite reasonable for the value it delivers."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Educational Organization
24%
Computer Software Company
14%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Government
7%
Computer Software Company
24%
Financial Services Firm
7%
Retailer
6%
Construction Company
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

Which is better - Aruba Clearpass or Cisco ISE?
Aruba ClearPass is a Network Access Control tool that gives secure network access to multiple device types. You can adapt the policies to VPN access, wired, or wireless access. You can securely ...
What are the main differences between Cisco ISE and Forescout Platform?
OK, so Cisco ISE uses 802.1X to secure switchports against unauthorized access. The drawback of this is that ISE cannot secure the port if a device does not support 802.1x. Cameras, badge readers, ...
How does Cisco ISE compare with Fortinet FortiNAC?
Cisco ISE uses AI endpoint analytics to identify new devices based on their behavior. It will also notify you if someone plugs in with a device that is not allowed and will block it. The user exper...
What needs improvement with OneLogin by One Identity?
There have been some outages over the years. The uptime has not been great recently, with some outages lasting six, seven, or eight hours. Improvement in the stability of the infrastructure would b...
What is your primary use case for OneLogin by One Identity?
We use OneLogin by One Identity to provide SAML authentication and single sign-on for all of our SaaS apps.
 

Also Known As

Cisco ISE
OneLogin, OneLogin Workforce Identity
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Aegean Motorway, BC Hydro, Beachbody, Bucks County Intermediate Unit , Cisco IT, Derby City Council, Global Banking Customer, Gobierno de Castilla-La Mancha, Houston Methodist, Linz AG, London Hydro, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Molina Healthcare, MST Systems, New South Wales Rural Fire Service, Reykjavik University, Wildau University
OneLogin has thousands of customers across multiple industries and from around the globe such as Uber, Airbnb, Noom, Petco, Sony, Lucky Brand, Tesco, Airbus, Japan Airlines, Aetna, Compass, Kaplan, Susan G. Komen, AAA and PennyMac.
Find out what your peers are saying about Cisco, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, Fortinet and others in Network Access Control (NAC). Updated: April 2025.
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