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One Identity Active Roles vs SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jun 3, 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

One Identity Active Roles
Ranking in Active Directory Management
1st
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
87
Ranking in other categories
User Provisioning Software (3rd), Non-Human Identity Management (NHIM) (1st)
SolarWinds Server and Appli...
Ranking in Active Directory Management
8th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
4.5
Number of Reviews
44
Ranking in other categories
Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability (17th), Server Monitoring (7th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2026, in the Active Directory Management category, the mindshare of One Identity Active Roles is 12.3%, up from 6.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor is 2.9%, up from 1.2% 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 Server and Application Monitor2.9%
Other84.8%
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.
NikhilKalwint - PeerSpot reviewer
Technical Specialist at ServiceIO
Monitoring over a thousand systems has improved decision making and operational visibility
From an advantage perspective, SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor is comparatively cheaper from a commercial point of view. It is easy to install and configure, very user-friendly, and quick to get up and running, allowing you to see the early value adds in your organization. It is compatible with most technologies for monitoring with very few chances of incompatibility. Configuration also allows us to monitor all the technical parameters we are looking for, making it a very good experience for us. The alerting feature in SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor is a main advantage, as it alerts based on threshold breaches and can raise tickets to the ticketing system, send SMS, and email notifications, allowing engineers to work on those tickets to resolve issues and avoid further impact. The visibility into server health is a beneficial feature that I am utilizing. We widely use various application performance metrics in SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor such as database monitoring and server monitoring, which are quite good enough for any monitoring solution. We utilize the customizable dashboards in SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor.

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 has significantly reduced the complexity and workload of administrative tasks related to Active Directory, as routine tasks like user creation, password resets, and access changes are automated or delegated, saving time and reducing manual efforts while making management more structured and consistent, making overall administration easier and more efficient."
"One Identity Active Roles has improved our organization by automating AD tasks, reducing manual errors, improving security through dedicated access control, and speeding up user onboarding and off-boarding."
"Active Roles provided us to do all these operations automatically and reduced our workload very significantly."
"We have seen a huge return on investment with One Identity Active Roles, with measurable reductions in provisioning and admin efforts by 40 to 60%, eliminating the need for thousands of additional staff and leading to approximately 75% ROI and cost reduction."
"We are seeing a very good return on investment with One Identity Active Roles by reducing manual efforts, which in turn saves us time and money, and this solution provides a significant benefit, allowing us to complete tasks forty to sixty percent faster than before."
"Active Roles is a thousand times better than native Microsoft tools."
"With this solution, they are skipping all the domain administrators and keeping the normal users, which is fantastic for them because some of the personnel are basic IT technicians without the knowledge of AD advanced features."
"The features I found most valuable in One Identity Active Roles are delegated administration, workflow-based automation, and role-based access control, which help streamline Active Directory management while maintaining better control over administrative permissions and access requests."
"Monitoring the components on your devices with out of the box monitors or the ability to create new ones (SAM)"
"Having used various other vendors for monitoring over my career, the SolarWinds products give outstanding value for the price."
"The most beneficial aspect of SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor is its ability to monitor at the application level."
"The OOTB (Out of the Box) implementation does have very good node specific pages and can provide a wealth of information."
"If a company would really like insight into its database utilization or performance and why their servers are slow or why the database is not giving a proper response, this solution will help."
"SAM has altered the way monitoring is being looked at - from just being able to monitor CPU, Mem, Disk and network utilization levels we have moved to the next levels of finding out process related issues, service related issues and specific application related issues to identify root cause of performance issues."
"I find it to be a strong product suite, particularly when you need a comprehensive monitoring tool."
"The component and cable monitoring are good. SolarWinds is more intuitive and user-friendly than AppDynamics. The AppDynamics console is more complex because it's a more feature-rich solution, so it's not easy for somebody to pick it up."
 

Cons

"The initial setup could be simpler because sometimes it feels like it should be more straightforward."
"Scripting options in different languages."
"The ability to send logs to a SIEM would be very beneficial."
"Integration capabilities are somewhere in the middle; it is not easy to integrate, but it is not the hardest thing out there."
"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."
"One area for improvement would be the initial setup, which feels a little bit complex and could be simplified."
"The main improvement I would suggest for One Identity Active Roles is making the UI and policy configuration more intuitive."
"Additional documentation about the Angular web interface is needed."
"I would like to see support for non-Windows or non-Microsoft domains, especially Apache and other non-Windows servers."
"When you implement SolarWinds on a larger scale my customers complain about the speed."
"They should incorporate more artificial intelligence. There should also be more predictive features."
"The technical support was better in previous years. With the launch of the premium support service, the normal support has declined."
"It lacks a user experience for measuring things like the end-to-end time for which a user waits for a specific response in the system. In the application layer, it has some very basic stuff. You have to build your own with manuscripts and things like that."
"The technical support is nothing special."
"The setup was complex. We had local support to assist us."
"It needs time-based functions for monitoring. Some things need to be polled on a specific schedule or only during a specific window."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It's fairly priced."
"The licensing model is a simple user-based model, not that much complicated."
"It's expensive."
"The pricing is on the higher end."
"The pricing for Active Roles is expensive but not as expensive as other solutions like Okta."
"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 price is reasonable. It costs us about 1 million Danish kroner annually, and we also spend about half as much on consultants."
"I think SolarWinds' pricing is very decent compared to other competitors in the market."
"We pay around $ 2,000 to $ 5,000 yearly for the solution."
"We are on an annual license to use the solution. The price of the solution is expensive. The price is based on a bunch of factors, such as the number of engines and elements."
"I have always said SolarWinds is very “proud” of their products, meaning they are expensive. I cannot afford to purchase all the licenses I need for all the SolarWinds products."
"I like the pricing for this SolarWinds product."
"The solution is overpriced in terms of application management."
"The product might cost you $30,000 USD to buy, but scaling this solution requires the purchase of additional polling engines at $20,000 USD each."
"Price can always be lower. It is neither on the expensive side nor on the cheap side. We have worked with them for a lot of years, so we get a discount due to the size of the installation."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Outsourcing Company
24%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Computer Software Company
8%
Manufacturing Company
6%
Educational Organization
13%
University
8%
Financial Services Firm
7%
Government
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business90
Midsize Enterprise18
Large Enterprise42
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business17
Midsize Enterprise8
Large Enterprise21
 

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 One Identity Active Roles reflects the platform's status as an enterprise-grade premium product. One Identity structured the Active Rol...
What needs improvement with One Identity Active Roles?
One area for improvement in One Identity Active Roles would be reporting and dashboard customization. While the available reports are useful, having more flexible and easier-to-build reports would ...
What is your primary use case for One Identity Active Roles?
I have been using One Identity Active Roles for almost the last two years. My main use case of One Identity Active Roles is for user provisioning, group management, delegated administration, and ha...
What needs improvement with SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor?
There is definitely room for improvement besides simplifying its setup. As a non-technical person, I believe the dashboards could be improved. Everything we use appears on video walls, and we need ...
What is your primary use case for SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor?
I am doing research as we currently have both solutions, and I am looking to see if we need both or can manage with one. Currently, the outcome indicates that we need both. The focus point is diffe...
 

Also Known As

Quest Active Roles
SolarWinds SAM
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

City of Frankfurt, Moore Public Schools, George Washington University, Transavia Airlines, Howard County, MD. See all stories at OneIdentity.com/casestudies
Andr. L. Riis AS, NetSuite
Find out what your peers are saying about One Identity Active Roles vs. SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor and other solutions. Updated: June 2026.
902,588 professionals have used our research since 2012.