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Active Roles by One Identity vs Fortra's Powertech Identity & Access Manager comparison

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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

Active Roles by One Identity
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
91
Ranking in other categories
User Provisioning Software (3rd), Active Directory Management (1st), Non-Human Identity Management (NHIM) (1st)
Fortra's Powertech Identity...
Average Rating
5.0
Number of Reviews
1
Ranking in other categories
Privileged Access Management (PAM) (33rd)
 

Mindshare comparison

While both are Identity and Access Management solutions, they serve different purposes. Active Roles by One Identity is designed for Active Directory Management and holds a mindshare of 11.7%, up 9.6% compared to last year.
Fortra's Powertech Identity & Access Manager, on the other hand, focuses on Privileged Access Management (PAM), holds 1.0% mindshare, up 0.4% since last year.
Active Directory Management Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Active Roles by One Identity11.7%
Netwrix Auditor10.1%
ManageEngine ADManager Plus8.7%
Other69.5%
Active Directory Management
Privileged Access Management (PAM) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Fortra's Powertech Identity & Access Manager1.0%
Idira Privileged Access Manager8.6%
Safeguard by One Identity4.3%
Other86.1%
Privileged Access Management (PAM)
 

Featured Reviews

Puru Solanki ( ITIL. CISM , CCSP ) - PeerSpot reviewer
IT Head at Citadel Global
Automation has streamlined onboarding and governance and delivers faster, more secure access
Overall, we are very satisfied with Active Roles by One Identity, but there are a few areas that could be improved. The user interface could be more modern and intuitive, especially for new administrators. Some advanced configuration and policy settings have a steep learning curve and could be simplified. We would also like to see more built-in integrations with cloud platforms and SaaS applications, along with additional out-of-the-box reporting templates. These improvements would make the product even easier and more flexible for organizations managing hybrid environments. One thing that would make our daily work even smoother is having more ready-to-use templates for common administrative tasks and reports. This would reduce the need for customization and help teams get up and running more quickly. Additionally, faster and simpler synchronization for hybrid and cloud environments would be beneficial, especially for organizations managing both on-premises and cloud identities. More detailed documentation and guided setup for advanced features would help new administrators learn the platform faster and more easily. One additional improvement I would like to see for Active Roles by One Identity is a better built-in dashboard with more real-time insights into identity and access activities. It would be helpful if upgrades and migrations were simpler and required less planning. Finally, expanding native integrations with more cloud services and third-party applications would make the platform even more versatile and reliable. These enhancements would improve the overall user experience while keeping the product's strong security and automation capabilities.
reviewer910470 - PeerSpot reviewer
Practice Lead at a computer software company with 51-200 employees
Inexperienced support for old product, but good flexibility for use case customization
HelpSystems Powertech is scalable if you throw more servers at it. Then you can distribute the load, which is a Microsoft SQL Server backend, and as long as you allocate enough resources to those things, then it is scalable. That's good enough. It would be an entire organization that uses it. So at a hospital for example, a healthcare system, a bank, and it would be the entire workforce on it. I haven't see a lot of customer's specific use cases, but it is for the whole workforce, everyone. The CEO of the company to the janitor. In terms of maintaining it, that requires application administrators or system administrators. There is a manual process to update the product, at least with the on-premise version.

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 helped my organization reduce the number of incorrect privileged accounts through the management unit feature and enables comprehensive group membership management with features not available in Active Directory, such as adding multiple secondary owners and dynamic groups."
"Since we have implemented One Identity Active Roles, we have seen significant improvements, with faster user management, better control over Active Directory, reduced errors, and improved security."
"Active Roles is a thousand times better than native Microsoft tools."
"Over a decade, this solution has done its job; it's a very stable system, easy to implement, easy to upgrade, and has very low operation maintenance costs."
"Using One Identity Active Roles, we reduced our user provisioning time from hours to minutes, lowered service desk workload by approximately 40 to 60 minutes, reduced manual administration errors, and improved audit and compliance efficiency."
"The solution is stable."
"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."
"It has eliminated a lot of tedious IT tasks, especially when people leave, with ten or 15 scripted actions that Active Roles always does the same way and at the same time."
"HelpSystems Powertech's feature that I have found most valuable is its flexibility."
"HelpSystems Powertech's feature that I have found most valuable is its flexibility. It is able to be extended. A lot of the products these days, especially the ones on the cloud, are limited and can't handle all the use cases. Often there is not even a way to customize the application to meet uncommon use cases and HelpSystems provides an infrastructure that lends itself to the ability to be customized."
 

Cons

"The solution needs an attestation process that includes certification and recertification attestation."
"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."
"Another issue we have with the product is that we run a lot of custom tasks. You have to program them to run on one particular host and there's no automatic failover to a second host. If that host is down when a task is supposed to run, it has to wait until the next time it runs when that host is up."
"One Identity Active Roles is very useful, though there are a few areas where it could be improved, such as the user interface, policy creation, and reporting; it requires good knowledge of Active Directory."
"We don't get a lot of communication from the One Identity side. I don't know who our account representative is, and that is kind of not good since we have had some turnover there."
"One area is the user interface and administrative experience. While the platform is feature-rich, some workflows and configuration screens can feel complex for new administrators, especially in large enterprise environments with extensive policy configurations."
"For mid-sized to small companies, I do not know if it would be that useful, considering the tool's purpose."
"Scripting options in different languages."
"In terms of what could be improved, I would say the support of the product. It's hard to get support for it. I think this is emblematic of the fact that they don't have a lot of employees who have long-term experience with it."
"I would not necessarily recommend customers use it."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It's expensive."
"The price is reasonable. It costs us about 1 million Danish kroner annually, and we also spend about half as much on consultants."
"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 licensing model is a simple user-based model, not that much complicated."
"It's fairly priced."
"The pricing is on the higher end."
Information not available
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Outsourcing Company
28%
Healthcare Company
9%
Financial Services Firm
7%
Computer Software Company
6%
No data available
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business100
Midsize Enterprise16
Large Enterprise45
No data available
 

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 Active Roles by One Identity has been very positive. Although Active Roles by One Identity is not the lowest-priced solution, we believ...
What needs improvement with One Identity Active Roles?
Overall, we are very satisfied with Active Roles by One Identity, but there are a few areas that could be improved. The user interface could be more modern and intuitive, especially for new adminis...
What is your primary use case for One Identity Active Roles?
Active Roles by One Identity is our main solution for simplifying and automating user account management in our Active Directory environment. We use it for tasks like user provisioning, deprovision...
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Also Known As

Quest Active Roles
HelpSystems Powertech Identity & Access Manager, Powertech Identity & Access Manager, BoKS, BoKS ServerControl, Fox Technologies ApplicationControl, ApplicationControl
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

City of Frankfurt, Moore Public Schools, George Washington University, Transavia Airlines, Howard County, MD. See all stories at OneIdentity.com/casestudies
Integris Health
Find out what your peers are saying about One Identity, Microsoft, Netwrix and others in Active Directory Management. Updated: August 2026.
913,076 professionals have used our research since 2012.