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ForgeRock vs StrongDM 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:
 

ROI

Sentiment score
5.2
ForgeRock enhanced market efficiency, security, and customer trust, reducing staffing needs and improving time to market without exact ROI figures.
Sentiment score
5.1
StrongDM streamlines access management, enhancing efficiency and security, while reducing costs and manual tasks without specific savings measurement.
On a B2B level, it opened up the market for TomTom to sell its services in a more efficient way to car companies.
Principal Consultant at Road2Value
We can use a Linux image from ForgeRock with different systems, applications, websites, and mobile apps to create various types of access for users.
Assistant Architect at a energy/utilities company with 501-1,000 employees
I can definitely see that fewer employees are needed compared to using different SaaS applications.
Identity and Access Management Specialist at a university with 10,001+ employees
I can definitely say that it saved us time, and a lot of it. Probably months worth of time in engineering and IT support.
Director at LivePerson
The onboarding of temporary privileged access accelerated significantly, allowing us to release consultants much faster than before, saving considerable money.
Dev Ops Engineer And Solution Architect at Scania
We need fewer employees now because StrongDM saves our time by eliminating manual work.
Senior Analyst at Toll Holdings Limited
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
5.8
ForgeRock customer service is flexible and responsive, but improvements are needed for professional services and ticket resolution speed.
Sentiment score
6.6
StrongDM's customer support is praised for responsiveness and knowledge, with high ratings, helpful documentation, and eventual assistance.
The support portals offer comprehensive documentation, troubleshooting guides, and community forums that have been helpful for resolving common issues independently.
Software Engineer at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees
For standard support tickets, response times were very decent, and the support team was helpful in identifying configuration issues, especially with authentication trees, token settings, and directory replications.
Identity and Access Management Specialist at a university with 10,001+ employees
The team is very responsive and takes a sense of ownership and accountability.
Principal Consultant at Road2Value
They responded quickly to issues and were readily available for calls rather than waiting for email confirmations.
Dev Ops Engineer And Solution Architect at Scania
The technical support is responsive and knowledgeable.
Senior Data Engineer at a non-profit with 1,001-5,000 employees
They also have very good documentation, where they often ask us to refer to a particular document but can provide excellent on-call support.
Senior Analyst at Toll Holdings Limited
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
7.3
ForgeRock offers scalable solutions for diverse enterprises, supporting seamless expansion, efficient administration, and integration across multiple environments.
Sentiment score
6.7
StrongDM efficiently scales with minimal latency, supports growing environments, and requires configurations for optimal performance in large settings.
The access management layer is stateless, so I can scale horizontally by adding more nodes behind a load balancer as traffic increases.
Identity and Access Management Specialist at a university with 10,001+ employees
The platform provides flexible authentication trees, enabling us to design custom MFA flows tailored for different user groups and risk profiles.
Software Engineer at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees
We scaled up with ForgeRock. My team received an award for implementing it for a 60 million customer base, which was the largest implementation at that time.
Principal Consultant at Road2Value
If a larger organization such as Microsoft or Dell adopted it, there would be more privileged accounts, showing the product's potential to grow if issues in maintenance and crashing are resolved.
Iam Engineer at a manufacturing company with 10,001+ employees
StrongDM's scalability is impressive; it is highly available, and we never perceived any latency issues.
Dev Ops Engineer And Solution Architect at Scania
StrongDM has very large and good scalability, capable of providing a million data in a second, showcasing its great scalability.
Senior Analyst at Toll Holdings Limited
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
7.3
ForgeRock is stable and reliable, though customization affects stability, with users rating it seven to nine out of ten.
Sentiment score
8.0
StrongDM is stable, highly rated for performance, with minor gateway issues, providing reliable access management that aids operations.
ForgeRock supports integration with legacy systems in our organization by offering a wide range of connectors and APIs.
Software Engineer at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees
ForgeRock is very stable because it manages access, authentication, and authorization effectively.
Assistant Architect at a energy/utilities company with 501-1,000 employees
The gateway sometimes crashes, and you are unable to retrieve passwords.
Iam Engineer at a manufacturing company with 10,001+ employees
StrongDM is very stable; I cannot recall experiencing a glitch.
Dev Ops Engineer And Solution Architect at Scania
I rate the stability of the product five out of ten because crashes sometimes happen when we are working on it.
Senior Network Security Engineer at EMAK For Computer Manufacturing (ECM)
 

Room For Improvement

ForgeRock users suggest improving documentation, UI, DevOps support, onboarding, and training for better customization and admin experience.
StrongDM needs improvements in setup, integrations, documentation, protocols, MFA options, automations, and enterprise access processes.
ForgeRock needs to focus on low-code, no-code solutions that allow for drag-and-drop functionality with good orchestration.
CIAM Engineer at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
It would be better if they were available for support whenever the customer needs it, especially during migration or go-live time periods.
IAM Solution Architect at a tech services company with 1-10 employees
The main area is complexity. ForgeRock is extremely flexible, but the learning curve can be steep.
Identity and Access Management Specialist at a university with 10,001+ employees
StrongDM has limited MFA and passwordless options, relying heavily on time-based one-time passwords (OTP) or Duo, lacking support for true passwordless setups like biometrics or hardware YubiKeys, and it does not support per-session MFA.
Senior Analyst at Toll Holdings Limited
It would be beneficial to have better control and alignment between frequent updates and improved communication regarding possible negative effects on existing customer bases.
Senior Data Engineer at a non-profit with 1,001-5,000 employees
It is difficult to find documentation or materials to review how it works, and there is less product material available in the market.
Senior Network Security Engineer at EMAK For Computer Manufacturing (ECM)
 

Setup Cost

ForgeRock offers flexible pricing with community and enterprise options, seen as fair, supporting various features and open-source choices.
StrongDM offers robust cloud management and security with efficient setup, but some find its per-user pricing costly.
One has to spend considerable time trying to understand the different modules and different needs for those modules on the licensing front.
Principal Consultant at Road2Value
The setup cost was free, with technical staff aiding our onboarding, requiring us only to cover the license fee.
Dev Ops Engineer And Solution Architect at Scania
It was mentioned that while the product is rapidly gaining features, it might become cost-prohibitive for wider usage.
Senior Data Engineer at a non-profit with 1,001-5,000 employees
My thoughts on the pricing of StrongDM is that it is expensive.
Director at LivePerson
 

Valuable Features

ForgeRock offers flexible authentication, scalability, and DevOps support with strong API integration, enhancing security and operational efficiency.
StrongDM enhances security and efficiency with centralized access, automated management, and integrations, ensuring seamless, secure operations and compliance.
Centralized management makes the biggest difference because it allows us to define, update, and enforce security and compliance rules from a single location.
Software Engineer at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees
ForgeRock positively impacts our organization as we manage a large number of users with ease, providing a standard IAM solution that simplifies our processes.
CIAM Engineer at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
ForgeRock has positively impacted my organization by allowing us to migrate from the older system to the newer ForgeRock component, enabling us to go live with many products across geographies, enhancing security as it is all cloud-based, and with the company taking care of availability, it has reduced costs for the company.
IAM CONSULTANT at a tech services company with 10,001+ employees
One of the most powerful tools in StrongDM is audit logging.
Senior Network Security Engineer at EMAK For Computer Manufacturing (ECM)
Just-in-Time Access is the primary feature that works well and makes life easier for us here at LivePerson.
Director at LivePerson
The best features for us are the centralized access control and the detailed audit logging, which allow us to provide temporary privileged access without managing VPNs ourselves.
Dev Ops Engineer And Solution Architect at Scania
 

Categories and Ranking

ForgeRock
Ranking in Access Management
8th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.5
Number of Reviews
37
Ranking in other categories
Identity Management (IM) (10th), Customer Identity and Access Management (CIAM) (4th)
StrongDM
Ranking in Access Management
9th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.6
Number of Reviews
11
Ranking in other categories
Privileged Access Management (PAM) (5th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2026, in the Access Management category, the mindshare of ForgeRock is 4.0%, down from 6.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of StrongDM is 0.8%, up from 0.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Access Management Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
ForgeRock4.0%
StrongDM0.8%
Other95.2%
Access Management
 

Featured Reviews

SR
Software Engineer at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees
Centralized access control has improved secure onboarding and supports strict compliance
I wish we had used ForgeRock's adaptive risk-based authentication, which allows dynamic adjustment of authentication requirements based on user behavior. This could have helped us further strengthen our security. Another hidden gem is the built-in support for custom authentication modules and scripting, which gives a great deal of flexibility to tailor authentication flows. The self-service capabilities for password resets and account recovery have been very helpful in reducing support overhead and improving user experience. Discovering and utilizing these features would have definitely made our integration even smoother and would have provided additional value for both our users and our security team. One area of improvement would be the user interface for policy and workflow configuration, which can become complex and sometimes unintuitive, especially for new administrators. A more streamlined and user-friendly UI would help reduce the learning curve. Enhanced out-of-the-box analytics and reporting would also be valuable, as our current options often require custom development or integration with external tools. While extensibility is a strength, documentation for advanced customizations and integrations could be more comprehensive and easier to follow. Improved support for seamless upgrades and backward compatibility would also help minimize downtime. In terms of performance, optimizing the platform for high concurrency environments would be beneficial, especially for organizations with large user bases or peak usage periods. Enhanced scalability features such as more granular or horizontal scaling options would provide better support for distributed deployments. For integrations, having more pre-built connectors and easy integration with modern cloud-native services would accelerate adoption. Improved monitoring and real-time health dashboards would help proactively identify and resolve performance bottlenecks.
MX
Dev Ops Engineer And Solution Architect at Scania
Centralized access has improved privileged control and now provides strong audit visibility
I believe StrongDM can improve its initial setup and onboarding experience for larger enterprise environments like Scania, where we have a lot of processes. Integrating different teams, access policies, and existing identity workflows requires substantial planning. Additionally, I think the dashboard customization and reporting could be more flexible for operational teams, though new teams find it manageable. Once the platform is fully integrated, it provides significant value. Apart from the onboarding experience, I would also mention that the templates for enterprise onboarding and policy setup could benefit from innovative thinking tailored to organizations managing large AWS and Kubernetes workloads. Enhanced customization in dashboards and reporting would further ease operations and provide better insights.
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
19%
Outsourcing Company
9%
Manufacturing Company
6%
Construction Company
6%
Computer Software Company
12%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Construction Company
9%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business15
Midsize Enterprise5
Large Enterprise18
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business3
Midsize Enterprise3
Large Enterprise9
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for ForgeRock?
The pricing, setup cost, and licensing are very straightforward, which is a good success. I appreciate that it is very straightforward and helpful.
What needs improvement with ForgeRock?
There are some areas I want ForgeRock to improve. These areas include policy configuration, documentation clarity, UI complexity, and debugging token flow. I want ForgeRock to improve in documentat...
What is your primary use case for ForgeRock?
I am using ForgeRock for standard support, policy configurations, and documentation clarity. The pricing, setup cost, and licensing are very straightforward, which is a good success. I appreciate t...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for StrongDM?
I cannot disclose the pricing details, but I find it competitive compared to other solutions.
What needs improvement with StrongDM?
StrongDM can be improved in many ways. For example, the access approval workflow could be faster. We face a challenge where we sometimes need temporary access to production but have to wait for an ...
What is your primary use case for StrongDM?
In our environment, we have managed Linux servers, cloud resources, and production systems, and we use StrongDM as a privileged access management solution. StrongDM authenticates users through the ...
 

Also Known As

ForgeRock Identity Platform, ForgeRock OpenIDM
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Geico, Thomson Reuters, Salesforce, McKesson, Trinet, SKY, BNP Paribas, Deloitte, Capgemini, North Western University
Information Not Available
Find out what your peers are saying about ForgeRock vs. StrongDM and other solutions. Updated: August 2026.
909,725 professionals have used our research since 2012.