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Active Roles by One Identity vs SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jul 20, 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

Active Roles by One Identity
Ranking in Active Directory Management
1st
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
92
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 (22nd), Server Monitoring (5th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of October 2026, in the Active Directory Management category, the mindshare of Active Roles by One Identity is 11.8%, up from 10.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor is 3.4%, up from 1.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Active Directory Management Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Active Roles by One Identity11.8%
SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor3.4%
Other84.8%
Active Directory Management
 

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.
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

"Overall, One Identity Active Roles has led to roughly a 40 to 60 percent reduction in AD-related service desk tickets and manual effort, with user onboarding tasks dropping from 15 to 20 minutes down to just a few minutes through automation and templates, adding up to dozens of IT hours saved every month and enabling the same team to manage more users without additional headcount."
"It gives us attribute-level control and the AD management features work very well."
"Active Roles is a thousand times better than native Microsoft tools."
"One Identity Active Roles has had a very positive impact on our organization, mainly by improving efficiency and security at the same time."
"The access templates help set up granular permissions and the web portal to manage Active Directory."
"One Identity Active Roles has had a very positive impact on the organization, especially in terms of efficiency, security, and compliance."
"One Identity Active Roles absolutely helps reduce identity-based breaches, making it very seamless for our user base to ensure that folks in specific positions have the least privileged access possible across our for-profit healthcare conglomerate with thirty states and over fifty community hospitals under a single Active Directory domain."
"One Identity Active Roles has positively impacted my organization by speeding up the user provisioning, reducing manual AD tickets, strengthening the security through consistent access control, and improving compliance."
"Having used various other vendors for monitoring over my career, the SolarWinds products give outstanding value for the price."
"The application dependency feature identifies issues between applications and servers or within the network where the application is hosted. It highlights related problems, whether related to packet processing or other issues, enabling the creation of alerts and reports accordingly."
"The recommendations are a life saver."
"The most valuable features of the solution are its real-time node monitoring and Help Desk's feedback."
"The features like trends, capacity planning, recommendations, and diagnostics are the main items I focus on for added value."
"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."
"It is simple to implement and can provide fairly decent Windows-based monitoring, beyond simple SNMP. It is great for monitoring newbies and smaller shops."
"SolarWinds is one of the best products on the market and if they eventually support the IBM Mainframe then it will be perfect."
 

Cons

"There are areas for improvement in One Identity Active Roles that include updating the web interface, creating an API accessible from the web, and improving overall performance, as it can be slow at times."
"Most of the time it just works."
"I believe the initial setup could be more simplified to allow for better and faster deployment."
"The third area for improvement, which is the weakest portion of ARS, is the workflow engine, which was introduced a few years ago. It's slow and not very intuitive to use, so I would like to see improvement there."
"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."
"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."
"The initial setup was quite easy, but it was time-consuming. It took about three months."
"It also has workflows and those are really powerful, but there are no built-in workflows."
"I would like to see support for non-Windows or non-Microsoft domains, especially Apache and other non-Windows servers."
"Downside of the tools is the web console are hung or crash. It need to improve the performance."
"From an integration point of view, if you want to have a manager of manager kind of layer, that is currently lacking in SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor."
"As per my view, Solarwinds should come up the same monitoring system for other certificate expiration alert apart from SSL."
"PerfStack can be made more effective. I am sure SolarWinds already has a plan for the same in coming versions."
"The templates could use improvement. Currently, they are quite complex. They should have drag-and-drop functionality instead. It would make it easier to use."
"I believe that SolarWinds should spend more effort in reporting."
"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

"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 is on the higher end."
"It's expensive."
"The licensing model is a simple user-based model, not that much complicated."
"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."
"It's fairly priced."
"When compared to other licensed models in the market, it stands out as one of the more cost-effective options."
"Its licensing is on a yearly basis. It is just the standard price, but it can vary depending on the current rate of the dollar."
"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."
"The solution is overpriced in terms of application management."
"The product is expensive."
"The licenses start from USD 3000.00 and go up to USD 20,000.00 for the year. It's a perpetual license. Nothing is free in SolarWinds, anything that you need is an additional cost."
"I think SolarWinds' pricing is very decent compared to other competitors in the market."
"I like the pricing for this SolarWinds product."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Outsourcing Company
26%
Healthcare Company
9%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Computer Software Company
7%
Educational Organization
13%
University
9%
Financial Services Firm
7%
Outsourcing Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business98
Midsize Enterprise19
Large Enterprise46
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business17
Midsize Enterprise8
Large Enterprise21
 

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with One Identity Active Roles?
To improve Active Roles by One Identity, I would like to see more automation around role assignment and access reviews, along with better reporting and an easier-to-use dashboard. While the integra...
What is your primary use case for One Identity Active Roles?
My main use case for Active Roles by One Identity involves managing user access and roles across different applications while ensuring users have the right permissions based on their responsibiliti...
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 Active Roles by One Identity vs. SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor and other solutions. Updated: September 2026.
919,894 professionals have used our research since 2012.