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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
88
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 engineer8 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

"We have seen a good return on investment because the automation feature has reduced manual efforts by around thirty to fifty percent and improved efficiency with reduced workload, saving our engineers time."
"One Identity Active Roles has helped us improve security with smooth processes."
"Because of Active Roles, we're able to synchronize on an even more regular basis. It enables us to provide even more information to the Active Directory, which helped us to group our users in a more consistent manner."
"One Identity Active Roles has positively impacted my organization by enabling a faster onboarding and offboarding process, fewer administration errors, and better security posture because privileged AD access is tightly controlled and delegated via RBAC."
"I see a return on investment with One Identity Active Roles, specifically noting a 40% to 60% drop in time spent on provisioning, access reviews, and audit-related tasks."
"One Identity Active Roles has impacted my organization positively by reducing manual work, improving security, saving administrative time, and reducing human errors."
"One Identity Active Roles has reduced a significant amount of manual AD admin work, improved security through tighter access control, and made onboarding and offboarding much faster and more consistent across teams."
"The provisioning and deprovisioning saves a lot of time and skips a lot of errors."
"I find it to be a strong product suite, particularly when you need a comprehensive monitoring tool."
"We choose the Solarwinds based on the simplication of managing the tool itself."
"The most valuable feature is application monitoring."
"Hardware health: It allows for proactive monitoring of the hardware health and is a game changer."
"One of the most valuable features are the reports. They're pretty good. Also, the ease of installation and customization for the client is another feature that we value. SolarWinds has a lot of features but these are the ones I like the most. We also like that the KPIs have the ability to be preset."
"The solution is end-to-end from the network and the application to the processes. Everything about the enterprise infrastructure is being covered by the solution. It's easy to use and easy to navigate and one of the leaders among monitoring solutions."
"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."
"AppInsight. Provides a simple way to get very in-depth monitoring configured for our most popular applications. Exchange, SQL, and SharePoint."
 

Cons

"One area where One Identity Active Roles can improve is simplifying complex workflow and approval management in large enterprise environments."
"It also has workflows and those are really powerful, but there are no built-in workflows. When it comes to them, it's empty. I would personally love for it to come with ten, 15, or 20 workflows where each achieves a certain task... I could just look at how each is done, clone them, copy them, modify them the way I want them, and be good to go. Right now we have to invent things from scratch."
"The user interface needs to be more modern and scalable. There are certain screen resolutions where the product is unusable."
"One area that could be improved in One Identity Active Roles is the user interface and initial configuration process, as some advanced workflows and policy settings can be complex for new administrators."
"Most of the time it just works."
"One Identity Active Roles can be improved by modernizing the UI to be more responsive, as some advanced workflow configurations can feel a bit clunky during setup."
"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."
"Some advanced configuration and workflow can feel complex, so simplifying setup and management would improve the overall experience."
"The technical support is nothing special."
"SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor is not stable. We have to maintain the platform and it goes down frequently."
"We are looking into other solutions because it is just too expensive to keep scaling."
"Scalability was an issue in the past."
"In terms of the dashboards on offer, they should work to improve them. The types of dashboards that you get in terms of the graphs on offer aren't ideal right now."
"The stability, flexibility, and ease of use could be improved."
"The major concern in the product revolves around application performance monitoring since end-to-end application monitoring is not possible with the tool."
"Downside of the tools is the web console are hung or crash. It need to improve the performance."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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 price is reasonable. It costs us about 1 million Danish kroner annually, and we also spend about half as much on consultants."
"It's fairly priced."
"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 expensive."
"I would rate the pricing for this solution a three out of five."
"SAM is not per server so the pricing model can be deceiving. If you have an enterprise environment, you will quickly exceed your licensing quickly. You should know this before going in."
"Nagios XI, WhatsUpGold, Uptime Software, PRTG, Manage Engine, and SpiceWorks are the other tools that have lower pricing and licensing costs. However, they can't compete with SolarWinds when it comes to the features and functionality that SolarWinds can provide."
"The product is expensive."
"The price is too high."
"I think SolarWinds' pricing is very decent compared to other competitors in the market."
"When compared to other licensed models in the market, it stands out as one of the more cost-effective options."
"Pricing and licensing is fair for what you get. It does have a great bang-for-the-buck appeal."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Outsourcing Company
21%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Computer Software Company
8%
Manufacturing Company
6%
Educational Organization
13%
Financial Services Firm
8%
University
7%
Government
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business96
Midsize Enterprise14
Large Enterprise41
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?
The pricing, setup cost, and licensing for One Identity Active Roles are enterprise-oriented and typically based on the number of managed users or accounts. While setup requires moderate implementa...
What needs improvement with One Identity Active Roles?
One Identity Active Roles can be improved with a more modern user interface, better reporting and analytics capabilities, simplified workflow customization, improved troubleshooting tools, and stro...
What is your primary use case for One Identity Active Roles?
One Identity Active Roles serves as our centralized Active Directory administration platform for identity lifecycle management, including automated user provisioning, delegated administration, role...
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: April 2026.
899,258 professionals have used our research since 2012.