AWS Directory Service vs Axiad Conductor comparison

Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Axiad are both solutions in the Identity and Access Management as a Service (IDaaS) (IAMaaS) category. Amazon Web Services (AWS) is ranked #16 with an average rating of 9.0, while Axiad is ranked #14 with an average rating of 10.0. Amazon Web Services (AWS) holds a 1.8% mindshare in IAMS, compared to Axiad’s 0.3% mindshare. Additionally, 93% of Amazon Web Services (AWS) users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 100% of Axiad users who would recommend it.

AWS Directory Service

Read 15 AWS Directory Service reviews

830 Views
567 Comparison Views

93% willing to recommend

Axiad Conductor

Read 6 Axiad Conductor reviews

425 Views
92 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

AWS Directory Service

Axiad Conductor

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Mar 16, 2025

AWS Directory Service and Axiad Conductor compete in identity management. AWS Directory Service excels in AWS integration, whereas Axiad Conductor provides superior security features for complex environments.

Features: AWS Directory Service offers seamless integration with AWS, automatic scaling, domain trust, and flexible deployment options. Axiad Conductor provides passwordless authentication, centralized credential management, and strong security capabilities to ensure a secure unified user experience.

Room for Improvement: AWS Directory Service could enhance its support for non-AWS environments, improve detailed insight capabilities, and expand its security features. Axiad Conductor may benefit from simplified deployment processes, better user interface customization, and expanded integration with third-party applications.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: AWS Directory Service offers easy deployment within AWS, with minimal infrastructure handling. Axiad Conductor involves a more complex setup due to diverse configurations, but provides robust customer support to guide through deployments.

Pricing and ROI: AWS Directory Service offers cost-effective pricing with a pay-as-you-go model, presenting a strong ROI for AWS-centric businesses. Axiad Conductor, despite higher initial costs, delivers ROI through advanced security features that are crucial for stringent security needs.

To learn more, read our detailed AWS Directory Service vs. Axiad Conductor Report (Updated: March 2025).

Buyer's Guide

AWS Directory Service vs. Axiad Conductor

March 2025

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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

AWS Directory Service

Ranking in Identity and Access Management as a Service (IDaaS) (IAMaaS)

16th

Average Rating

8.6

Reviews Sentiment

7.3

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Axiad Conductor

Ranking in Identity and Access Management as a Service (IDaaS) (IAMaaS)

14th

Average Rating

9.6

Reviews Sentiment

7.7

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Authentication Systems (12th), Privileged Access Management (PAM) (15th), Passwordless Authentication (4th), Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) (5th)

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2025, in the Identity and Access Management as a Service (IDaaS) (IAMaaS) category, the mindshare of AWS Directory Service is 1.8%, down from 2.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Axiad Conductor is 0.3%, down from 0.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Identity and Access Management as a Service (IDaaS) (IAMaaS)

Featured Reviews

Basa Saiteja

Consultant at Infosys

A valuable access management system with a user-friendly and straightforward setup

The solution is scalable, and we can scale according to our needs. I rate the scalability a nine out of ten. In our organization, our access to our AWS comes from IAM. We use AWS consoles using our credentials and don't have route access, so each person will log in through our IAM programmatic access, and everyone on our team can work on cloud. Over 10,000 people in our organization utilize the solution.

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Eric Brown

Cybersecurity Director - Enterprise Identity & Access Management at SAIC

The day-to-day tasks, running the servers, and making sure that everything is patched is all handled by the platform

The most valuable feature is the overhead management of the platform. There is less for my team to worry about. The day-to-day tasks, running the servers, and making sure that everything is patched is all handled by the platform. We just consume the service and work with them to refine it, making it even more valuable. Aside from Active Directory, anything that is a multi-factor platform is handled through Axiad Cloud. It is critical for helping to enforce usage of authentication devices across our organization. One of our requirements to continue some of our contracts is to have multi-factor authentication across all devices accessing the network. It is extremely easy to enroll a user with “One Click Issuance”. I have had very few calls to the service desk regarding enrollment. It takes a couple of minutes to enroll a user with "One Click Issuance". Deploying and managing authenticators is very easy, either done by a mobile application or enrollment of an OTP token. It is very simple. This is important to my userbase, which makes it important to me. Functionality-wise, it is pretty solid.

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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The pricing is very good because it is low and there is no management cost."

"I would rate AWS Directory Service nine out of ten."

"I like the manageability. Activate Connect makes it easier to assign information and to manage the resources in the network."

"Two-step authentication is very useful and important."

"The solution integrates well with other tools, particularly through single sign-on, allowing users to connect to various applications using just one password, including email."

"The most valuable feature of AWS Directory Service is cost-cutting features."

"AWS Directory Service is secure."

"The most valuable feature is ease of use."

More AWS Directory Service pros

"The solution has also saved us time by having end-users troubleshoot issues through the MyCircle feature, and has definitely reduced the efforts of our administrators. It is saving us five to 10 minutes per incident."

"And when it comes to enrolling a user, it's super easy with One Click Issuance... It's so easy now that we can offload the process to our clients who can self-enroll. Previously, we would have to do the enrollment process because it was so complicated."

"What I have found most valuable is the overall way Axiad listened to our problems and helped us solve them. They provided guidance and expertise, with their experience, that enabled us to be successful in a very challenging space."

"It's very user-friendly. We're issuing YubiKeys for our corporate users and they just plug it in, go to the Axiad Cloud portal, and click the issue button. It's a couple of steps."

"The life cycle management of credentials is the aspect that we have found to be the most useful... The differentiator that Axiad provided was the ability to provide users a way to self-serve the updating of their credentials on their private keys. That was the feature we were most interested in and Axiad does an excellent job of it."

"Aside from Active Directory, anything that is a multi-factor platform is handled through Axiad Cloud. It is critical for helping to enforce usage of authentication devices across our organization."

Cons

"Accessing the data needs improvement."

"I would like to see better integration with other business solutions."

"We had a problem with the schema uploading and setting up the directory when we are migrating our users from on-premises to cloud infrastructure."

"Some of the security protocols are difficult to understand."

"The AWS Directory Service should be easier to integrate."

"I would like to grant partial access to a table contained in a database without having to provide full access to the whole database."

"The solution lacks certain features."

"Our only complaint is that you cannot integrate your Exchange server. Or, if you are planning to install an Exchange server on your Amazon EC2 instance, then you need to configure Active Directory on EC2 instance. We would like for this limitation to be lifted."

More AWS Directory Service cons

"With their licensing model, it becomes hard to scale. For example, we couldn't roll it out enterprise-wide because if you scale it across more than 100,000 users, the cost becomes too exorbitant."

"We would prefer that the solution be hosted in Canada because we're a Canadian entity. That would be nice to have. It's not a feature, as such, but it would really make us a lot happier if it could be located in Canada."

"I'm looking forward to seeing how they move to FIDO U2F as their primary authentication method across all of their solutions."

"macOS is notoriously ever-evolving and it's difficult to keep pace with it as it pertains to certain kinds of crypto authentication. That's really not even on Axiad. That's a decision by Apple, but it makes it a moving target."

"I would like a more modern look to the portal."

"There are just some minor tweaks that could be made on the front end. It would be cool to have nicknames for authenticator devices. If you have more than one, it's hard to discern what you have."

Pricing and Cost Advice

"AWS' pricing is fair, and costs can be cut if you look carefully at when you're using it."

"The pricing is reasonable."

"The pricing depends because with AWS there are two types of directory objects: 30,000 and 500,000. It varies. AWS provides the pricing calculators so we can get an estimate from there as per the company requirement of how many users and objects that we need to create. So we can go to that portal, put in the data, and get the quotation. There are no extra licensing fees. It's all included."

"We pay an annual subscription fee."

"It's very cheap on a per-year basis. The cards themselves last about three years and the license is on the order of double-digit dollars per user, and not hundreds of dollars per user, per year."

"The pricing is very competitive for what is offered at the level that we need. They are right there with what the industry standards are. They tend to be a little bit less, in terms of cost, when we are talking about security at government standards. So, I would say that they have a slight advantage on cost compared to the industry average. They are the lower cost solution and the best bargain out on the market today."

"Axiad's pricing was what we were expecting. It was at the right spot. They were competitive."

"Don't just focus on the hardware or software costs of acquiring a solution, but look at it from the perspective that so much of what it takes to run a PKI environment has to do with the people who are running it.... look at the total cost of ownership and not just the cost of acquisition."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

17%

Healthcare Company

10%

Financial Services Firm

10%

Manufacturing Company

Computer Software Company

19%

Government

12%

University

Manufacturing Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

No data available

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about AWS Directory Service?

The most valuable feature of AWS Directory Service is cost-cutting features.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for AWS Directory Service?

The pricing is very good because it is low and there is no management cost. You do not need to hire any system administrator to manage your Active Directory.

See all answers

What needs improvement with AWS Directory Service?

Currently, there is no option to integrate our on-premises Cisco AWS Directory Service, requiring some manual configuration. If AWS Active Directory Service provided additional domain controller fu...

See all answers

What do you like most about Axiad Cloud?

The life cycle management of credentials is the aspect that we have found to be the most useful... The differentiator that Axiad provided was the ability to provide users a way to self-serve the up...

See all answers

What is your primary use case for Axiad Cloud?

Our use case is credential management for one of the business units. Axiad provides credential management for those users, including the creation of new credentials and life cycle management of the...

See all answers

What advice do you have for others considering Axiad Cloud?

You have to understand the number of users and the number of devices that are going to use the solution. I'm saying that because of my experience with the licensing part. That's my one gripe. If yo...

See all answers

Comparisons

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Compared 80% of the time

Microsoft Entra External ID vs AWS Directory Service

Compared 20% of the time

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Venafi vs Axiad Conductor

Compared 41% of the time

Cisco Duo vs Axiad Conductor

Compared 31% of the time

Yubico YubiKey vs Axiad Conductor

Compared 29% of the time

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Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Identity and Access Management as a Service (IDaaS) (IAMaaS)

April 2025

Download AWS Directory Service product report

Buyer's Guide

Axiad Conductor

April 2025

Download Axiad Conductor product report

Also Known As

AWS Managed Microsoft AD

Axiad Cloud

Overview

AWS Directory Service lets you run Microsoft Active Directory (AD) as a managed service. AWS Directory Service for Microsoft Active Directory, also referred to as AWS Managed Microsoft AD, is powered by Windows Server 2012 R2. When you select and launch this directory type, it is created as a highly available pair of domain controllers connected to your virtual private cloud (VPC). The domain controllers run in different Availability Zones in a region of your choice. Host monitoring and recovery, data replication, snapshots, and software updates are automatically configured and managed for you.

Amazon Web Services (AWS)

Axiad Conductor offers a user-friendly platform for managing multifactor authentication and credential lifecycle, supporting seamless transitions to cloud environments for enhanced security compliance and access control.

Axiad Conductor stands out with intuitive management of multifactor authentication systems, assertive device lifecycle management, and a managed cloud solution that streamlines operations. It promotes user self-service for credential updates, minimizing the need for extensive training. With the capability to handle large networks, it enhances efficiency while meeting contract demands. Addressing user suggestions, plans include interface design updates and Canadian hosting, although macOS's frequent updates pose integration challenges.

What are the principal features of Axiad Conductor?

"One Click Issuance": Simplifies user enrollment through easy interface actions.
Multifactor Authentication: Manages critical authentication processes securely.
PKI Support: Facilitates seamless management in PKI environments.
Credential Self-Service: Empowers users to handle updates independently.
Cloud Management: Reduces operational burdens due to its managed environment.

What should users look for in terms of ROI and benefits?

Efficiency: Streamlined operations boost productivity across large networks.
Flexibility: Adaptability to meet evolving challenges and contract requirements.
User Empowerment: Enables users to manage their credentials autonomously.
Compliance: Supports regulation adherence effortlessly.

In diverse industries, Axiad Conductor is implemented to manage multifactor authentication and PKI elements like smart cards and YubiKeys. Organizations leverage it to ensure compliance, facilitate secure workforce access, and transition PKI systems to the cloud, handling substantial volumes of smart card and machine certificates with ease.

Axiad

Sample Customers

Expedia, Intuit, Royal Dutch Shell, Brooks Brothers

Information Not Available

Buyer's Guide

AWS Directory Service vs. Axiad Conductor

March 2025

Free Report: AWS Directory Service vs. Axiad Conductor

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