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NetIQ Identity Manager vs One Identity Active Roles comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Nov 6, 2024

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

NetIQ Identity Manager
Ranking in User Provisioning Software
9th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
18
Ranking in other categories
Identity Management (IM) (19th)
One Identity Active Roles
Ranking in User Provisioning Software
5th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
25
Ranking in other categories
Active Directory Management (1st), Non-Human Identity Management (NHIM) (5th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2025, in the User Provisioning Software category, the mindshare of NetIQ Identity Manager is 3.2%, down from 4.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of One Identity Active Roles is 4.3%, down from 4.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
User Provisioning Software
 

Featured Reviews

SYAMSUL SALAM - PeerSpot reviewer
The product is affordable and easy to use, but the technical support must be improved
The solution is used to manage SSO and login for internal applications The product enables detailed user management. The product is easy to use. Our users found it easier than Microsoft Identity Manager. The solution must add more configurations. There are different types of user identity in…
Grzegorz Kosela - PeerSpot reviewer
Task automation simplifies user and delegation management while offering a customizable interface
Currently, task automation, like provisioning, deprovisioning, and reprovisioning, is very effective. When a user moves from one organization to another, it automatically changes their group membership and performs similar functions. Secondly, the granular delegation feature is very nice and much simpler and easier than it is natively in Microsoft. Two years ago, One Identity Active Roles was under Dell. It was quite poor. However, now, there have been notable improvements, such as faster system processing, better logging, enhanced information, and a more user-friendly interface. Once it was sold by Dell, things got better. The interface became a bit more user-friendly. The Angular user interface is much more flexible for adjusting to customer needs, and a completely new and customizable one can be created, aligning with all settings and scripts required by a customer. The ease of managing on-prem and cloud-based directories through a single pane of glass is good. I'd rate it nine out of ten. The solution's ability to provision and deprovision resources and directories like Azure AD is very simple, especially when you can integrate with the HR system and grab some data from HR. It's actually fully automatic. I don't need to even touch it. It's helped increase operational efficiency by 50%. It's helped decrease security problems around privileged accounts. We were able to decrease the number of privileged accounts and have been able to delegate more effectively. We decreased the number of high-level permissions that administrators had. For example, if someone is a DNS administrator, he has access only as far as the specific actions he needs to handle. We don't need to give away such high privileges for such a daily job. It's helped clarify roles and access. It's helped reduce identity-based breaches. If someone leaves a company, we can easily undo provisioning and close accounts. We can generate reports to see which people have which permissions and at what times. We've just integrated with our HR system. It helps us follow activated and deactivated users. I'd rate the granular controls on offer ten out of ten. We've saved on manpower in terms of the work of the administrators. There's good reporting and functionality, and it's very transparent. You can connect more than one directory and manage everything from one pane. You can do many things from one interface.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The most valuable features are Password Reset Alerts, Password Sync, and SQL connectors."
"The product is easy to use."
"I like the eDirectory feature."
"The most valuable feature of this solution has been the ability for us to integrate a lot of external systems, and the automatic transfer of a lot of identity information. Additionally, the customization is very good."
"The access request management has improved significantly in terms of its user interface. What sets it apart from competitors like SailPoint is that it's an event-based solution rather than schedule-based. That's a key differentiator."
"It's a very flexible tool, so you can synchronize multiple sources of data and you have multiple connections to various kinds of systems."
"NetIQ does not have a limit on the number of users."
"The most valuable features of NetIQ Identity Manager are the synchronization of different directories, such as Active Directory. We have many Active Directory systems, not only one."
"The access templates help set up granular permissions and the web portal to manage Active Directory."
"Active Roles is easy to configure. It isn't a plug-and-play solution, and you need expertise to set it up. However, once you have your templates, it's easy to deploy in a highly decentralized environment. The custom configuration for our customers is fantastic, especially the web interface."
"The ease of managing on-prem and cloud-based directories through a single pane of glass is good."
"Active Roles helped increase operational efficiency in our organization."
"Active Roles helped reduce our identity-based breaches."
"The AD and AAD management features of this solution are really good... They offer added value by showing more fields such as password age and the statuses of some things that we normally wouldn't see."
"The solution improved our organization's security posture by framing the end users and ensuring that capabilities that could cause mistakes are hidden from the web interface."
"Instead of deleting accounts, we like the deprovision option so that we can reverse any accidental deletions. It also gives a higher level of quality control in terms of enforcing any number of variables, such as making sure that an account has a description entered before the account can be created. We can backtrack and know the history of it that way."
 

Cons

"The vendor must provide an easier console for configuring things for smaller customers."
"NetIQ Identity Manager could improve by updating the user portal, it is out of date."
"If it could be operated in such a way that anybody could use it, with just the user interface, and there's no need for programming, then that would be a great improvement."
"The solution architecture is somewhat complex. For some components, the necessary resilience is not inherent."
"We have another system that is using the SAML system, and we also integrate with Active Directory only. If NetIQ Identity Manager can integrate directly, we would not need to use the Active Directory directory."
"The interface is old and outdated, and the design software seems archaic."
"Areas for improvement are further enhancing the access granting process to reduce time and improve accuracy."
"The integrations must be made easier."
"In terms of improvement, it could be made even more user-friendly for administrators when they need to create new workflows and rule sets."
"Additional documentation about the Angular web interface is needed."
"Most of the time it just works."
"The possibility to request group membership, similar to the past, was disabled and moved to Identity Manager."
"The user interface needs to be more modern and scalable. There are certain screen resolutions where the product is unusable."
"I've had a difficult time getting it to cooperate with Azure in the cloud and, while the support staff are very good and very knowledgeable, what they assist with just on a call doesn't go deep enough to help with a number of issues. The answer that comes back is that we'd have to start an engagement with Professional Services, which is fine but that takes time to schedule and it takes budget."
"For the AAD management feature, it needs to improve the objects that we can manage and the security."
"Customer support is rated six. Sometimes having a fix for a bug takes too much time. While in production, issues tend to take a while to resolve."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"I would rate the pricing a two out of ten, with one being low price and ten being high price. It is significantly more cost-effective than the major players in the market."
"It would easily help them in getting more market and more customers if more consultants knew about their software. If they could keep it free for schools for teaching purposes, it would be good. I had to pay myself to get it and use it for training. Their competitors are giving it for free. I had to pay for it myself. They are losing market to their competitors."
"You just need to be aware that the more systems you connect, the more license fees you have to pay."
"The price of the solution is a bit high and could be reduced."
"Micro Focus is flexible when it comes to price. The cost varies from customer to customer. There are no additional costs, though. Everything is included."
"The solution is quite affordable."
"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 is on the higher end."
"The licensing model is a simple user-based model, not that much complicated."
"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 pricing for Active Roles is expensive but not as expensive as other solutions like Okta."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
18%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Government
8%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Computer Software Company
17%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Healthcare Company
8%
Government
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about NetIQ Identity Manager?
The most valuable feature of NetIQ Identity Manager for identity synchronization is the ability to provide users with all necessary access on day one through automated provisioning, facilitated by ...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for NetIQ Identity Manager?
The pricing depends on whether we buy the solution as a service or a license. The license is expensive. If we buy it as a service for a large number of users, it is the cheapest tool we can get. Th...
What needs improvement with NetIQ Identity Manager?
The tool is used mostly in big systems to understand what is happening. There are not many technicians who know how to use the product. The vendor must provide an easier console for configuring thi...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for One Identity Active Roles?
The product is expensive, but if you want to save money, the delegation set-up process is quite easy. After setting up Active Roles once, defining the delegation model, it is very efficient, almost...
What needs improvement with One Identity Active Roles?
One area for improvement would be the Entra ID side, including better delegation for Entra ID objects and more granular permissions. We would also like to see better Entra ID license management usi...
 

Also Known As

Novell Identity Manager
Quest Active Roles
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Sheetz
City of Frankfurt, Moore Public Schools, George Washington University, Transavia Airlines, Howard County, MD. See all stories at OneIdentity.com/casestudies
Find out what your peers are saying about NetIQ Identity Manager vs. One Identity Active Roles and other solutions. Updated: June 2025.
856,873 professionals have used our research since 2012.