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

Categories and Ranking

Fortra's Powertech Identity...
Average Rating
5.0
Number of Reviews
1
Ranking in other categories
Privileged Access Management (PAM) (37th)
One Identity Active Roles
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
34
Ranking in other categories
User Provisioning Software (3rd), Active Directory Management (1st), Non-Human Identity Management (NHIM) (4th)
 

Mindshare comparison

While both are Identity and Access Management solutions, they serve different purposes. Fortra's Powertech Identity & Access Manager is designed for Privileged Access Management (PAM) and holds a mindshare of 1.0%, up 0.2% compared to last year.
One Identity Active Roles, on the other hand, focuses on Active Directory Management, holds 12.2% mindshare, up 6.7% since last year.
Privileged Access Management (PAM) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Fortra's Powertech Identity & Access Manager1.0%
CyberArk Privileged Access Manager11.4%
Delinea Secret Server4.9%
Other82.7%
Privileged Access Management (PAM)
Active Directory Management Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
One Identity Active Roles12.2%
ManageEngine ADManager Plus11.5%
Netwrix Auditor9.9%
Other66.4%
Active Directory Management
 

Featured Reviews

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.
IO
Cybersecurity Consultant at CyberBackbone
One Identity Active Roles makes it easier to maintain a detailed auditing workflow
I want One Identity Active Roles to improve in the area of user interface, modernizing it to feel more like a SaaS tool and to have user-friendly navigation. I also want One Identity Active Roles to improve in their policy configuration area, which requires advanced expertise, and in the area of reporting, I want the reporting to be more basic, visible, and have the ability to export and customize options. The areas needing improvement for One Identity Active Roles include the reporting, the dashboard, and simple policy configuration. I would appreciate improvement in policy configuration and making the reporting system more basic for user interface usage.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"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."
"Active Roles improved the management of users, groups, and AD objects in the organization."
"The most valuable features include auditing, dynamic grouping, and creating dynamic groups based on AD attributes."
"It is an easier way for me to manage Active Directory with more advanced features."
"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."
"Secure access is the most valuable feature."
"Having a tool to manage all changes to AD from a single pane of glass is awesome."
"One Identity Active Roles has positively impacted my organization by providing a consistent and easy to understand interface for Active Directory, whether you are reading it or whether you are actively managing Active Directory."
"Active Roles helped reduce our identity-based breaches."
 

Cons

"I would not necessarily recommend customers use it."
"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."
"Web console – it should have more customization options in terms of look and feel of the landing page."
"Scripting options in different languages."
"When we add numerous domains, it becomes slow. With around 60 domains, attempting to add approximately 30 caused significant performance issues."
"When doing a workflow, we would like a bit better feedback on the screen, as we're trying to get it to work."
"I want One Identity Active Roles to improve in the area of user interface, modernizing it to feel more like a SaaS tool and to have user-friendly navigation."
"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."
"Additional documentation about the Angular web interface is needed."
"The user interface needs to be more modern and scalable."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available
"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 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 on the higher end."
"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."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
No data available
Computer Software Company
9%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Healthcare Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business12
Midsize Enterprise7
Large Enterprise21
 

Questions from the Community

Ask a question
Earn 20 points
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for One Identity Active Roles?
I am aware of the pricing; it is on the expensive side, though pricing is not my department.
What needs improvement with One Identity Active Roles?
One Identity Active Roles can be improved by simplifying the setup process since a small team in a small business requires implementation without extensive IT support. Additionally, the pricing cou...
What is your primary use case for One Identity Active Roles?
One Identity Active Roles is used primarily to simplify and automate Active Directory user and permission management. The solution automates routine tasks such as account creation, password reset, ...
 

Also Known As

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

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Integris Health
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 CyberArk, One Identity, Okta and others in Privileged Access Management (PAM). Updated: March 2026.
884,976 professionals have used our research since 2012.