AWS Directory Service vs JumpCloud comparison

Amazon Web Services (AWS) and JumpCloud are both solutions in the Identity and Access Management as a Service (IDaaS) (IAMaaS) category. Amazon Web Services (AWS) is ranked #18 with an average rating of 8.7, while JumpCloud is ranked #12 with an average rating of 8.4. Additionally, 93% of Amazon Web Services (AWS) users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 100% of JumpCloud users who would recommend it.

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 18, 2026

AWS Directory Service and JumpCloud offer cloud-based directory services. AWS Directory Service is superior in seamless integration within the AWS ecosystem, while JumpCloud leads in versatility across various IT environments.

Features: AWS Directory Service offers seamless AWS service integration, Microsoft Active Directory support, and managed solutions for hybrid applications. JumpCloud provides cross-platform compatibility, single sign-on, and policy management, making it suitable for diverse IT environments.

Room for Improvement: AWS Directory Service could benefit from improved UI simplicity, more robust cross-platform support, and enhanced documentation. JumpCloud can improve by refining its scalability options, lowering pricing, and expanding its policy management capabilities beyond registry changes.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: AWS Directory Service benefits from quick deployment due to its integration with AWS infrastructure, but may require expertise. JumpCloud offers straightforward deployment without AWS prerequisites and strong customer support, providing accessibility for organizations without specialized support.

Pricing and ROI: AWS Directory Service offers competitive pricing for AWS-integrated firms, yielding good ROI through seamless integrations. JumpCloud has higher initial costs yet provides better long-term value due to its extensive features and cross-platform functionality.

To learn more, read our detailed AWS Directory Service vs. JumpCloud Report (Updated: December 2025).

Buyer's Guide

AWS Directory Service vs. JumpCloud

December 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

iboss

Featured Reviews

reviewer2701851

Managing Director

Enhances web security with a single pane of glass and flexible deployment

I don't see any need for improvement; one of the really good things about iboss as a company is that they listen to customer feedback. I have suggested enhancements, and they are responsive, making changes for the better, and they do a lot of testing. To improve iboss, although we haven't used it, we considered the VPN solution that comes with the highest tier licensing, which includes DLP and various other add-ons. We prefer using another product which automatically logs you back onto your network when turning on your PC. With iboss, the connection is manual, which doesn't meet our needs. Additionally, sizing can be tricky because, although the initial recommendations may seem adequate, actual usage may require more gateways than anticipated.

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Akram Zaki

IT Specialist at FlairsTech

Hybrid directory service has streamlined global server access and supported reliable daily operations

Some features in AWS Directory Service are not automated and are not scriptable, so they require manual work. In today's world where everything is pretty much automated and scriptable using AI, this is a downside. The price is another concern. AWS is really expensive. They provide an awesome service in general, but it's still expensive, very expensive. AD Connector is an application which connects my own Active Directory to AWS Directory Service or AWS infrastructure. There is a bit of latency which is bound by the AD Connector availability. If the AD Connector is having issues, there is a bit of latency, but in general, it's way better than Microsoft Azure. Still, it could be better. The migration was a bit challenging and required intensive planning and migration time. That is always a hassle. No matter which cloud environment you're moving into, the migration is sensitive because you're generally moving from on-premise to a cloud environment, so there is downtime and there are unexpected issues and errors. It needs very careful planning before doing the migration itself. AWS Directory Service is lacking a few things which could be better. Single sign-on federation is missing. SCIM provisioning is not available. In my company, we use other services for SSO federation, SCIM provisioning, and authentication because of these gaps. I would like AWS Directory Service to enroll a multi-factor authentication method. I would like to have an SSO federation where users, if we're hosting applications in AWS, would not need to log in to each application. Single sign-on would log in the user to their account and from there they can open all their applications without requiring a login each time. One of the other cons in AWS is that directories cannot span multiple regions because it's a region-bound architecture. This requires several directories for multi-region deployment. This is the case on my end because my company has several branches all over the world, so it requires several deployments.

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Arun Jose

System Administrator at Mensa Brands

Unified directory and device management has streamlined remote workforce security and onboarding

JumpCloud can be improved in several areas. Some users feel the initial configuration can be complex, especially for larger organizations, and better guided onboarding could be helpful. Additionally, while its reporting and integrations are strong, more granular and customizable metrics and real-time alerts would be beneficial for advanced use cases. From my team's perspective, there is often a desire for even more intuitive administrative controls, particularly when managing complex policy sets. Enhanced integrations with specific industry-specific applications could provide even greater efficiency. It is about refining the user experience and expanding compatibility. Another area for potential enhancement could be customer support and resources. While generally good, faster response times and more comprehensive or specialized documentation could further improve the user experience, especially during complex deployments.

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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 iboss system is highly reliable. The false positive rates are small compared to some other systems we've experienced through other partner agencies who use competing solutions."

"Technical support is pretty sharp and very responsive."

"Its initial setup was straightforward."

"The solution has massively improved our security posture, giving us full visibility into what our staff does online."

"We chose iboss for both zero trust and proxy (SWG) because their SWG was superior."

"iboss is easy to use despite its complexity. Multiple engineers manage it, but it's significantly more straightforward to administer than traditional VPNs and web proxies."

"iboss is among the few products providing inline filtering where no application is needed on the device."

"iboss is pretty scalable. They provide good support. The case managers you work with to coordinate what you need are pretty good."

More iboss pros

"The most valuable feature is ease of use."

"Provides good performance and availability."

"AWS handles everything on the backend requiring minimal legwork from our team. We only require a dedicated database administrator while depending on Amazon for RDS."

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

"We like the fact that it's got such great redundancy."

"AWS has eliminated the downtime we waste when our on-premises resources go down."

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

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

More AWS Directory Service pros

"JumpCloud has positively impacted my organization because we can work more efficiently by focusing on the one user portal to use the applications."

"After deploying to the cloud, we had remote device management on all of our corporate laptops."

"The usual authentication and authorization, which were all controlled into one portal, are very convenient."

"The whole product is great. The device management is amazing. The fact that you can basically set up an entire machine without having the machine in front of you is most valuable."

"I am impressed with the product's remote access which allows admins to control endpoints which is a timesaver."

"The solution is stable."

"Azure Cloud services are on time and run well and if we use a JumpCloud, the benefits we receive are the ease of management and the solution is completely user-friendly. End users can do identity management easily."

"The product enables device management."

More JumpCloud pros

Cons

"One thing I would like to see differently with their Zero Trust platform is that some of the AI aspects related to high-risk activities have more false positives."

"Sometimes when you call in support, you get someone who is just following a sheet. It feels like a runaround. You feel that you are running into that support wall."

"Regarding pricing, setup costs, and licensing, iboss is not cheap, and that's my only concern."

"I'd like to see them accelerate development on the security side, particularly around data loss prevention."

"Its pricing could be better."

"SSL decryption: We had issues with learners using apps instead of using web browsers. This type of encryption is tough for any appliance in a BYOD environment."

"Our biggest problem with their service was it did not recognize the device and filtering did not always work correctly."

"Sometimes the agent stops working in iboss, and we have to reinstall the agent."

More iboss cons

"Can be improved by including on-premises access for services through Identity Access Management."

"Currently, there is no option to integrate our on-premises Cisco AWS Directory Service, requiring some manual configuration."

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

"AWS could improve the number of regions. Azure has passed them. The ned more consistency, as far as the Northeast is concerned."

"AWS Directory Service needs to improve processing."

"AWS is really expensive. They provide an awesome service in general, but it's still expensive, very expensive."

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

"I've encountered challenges, particularly with Amazon WorkDocs, which is being deprecated. This has made it necessary to find an alternative document management solution that can handle editing, sharing, and workflow management for documents like Word files and PDFs."

More AWS Directory Service cons

"There are a few aspects that could be improved. Their API was a little spotty when I last used it, and some of those use cases were around removing systems from our environment."

"The product needs to create its own self-service feature which has been requested by all the admins in the community."

"I would like to see some support for printers, especially network printers, through the application."

"JumpCloud could improve by providing more features. They are only giving the three standard features, such as SSO radius. I would like there to be multi-tenant features. For example, my colleague is from a different organization, and he's using different applications and I'm using different applications, I wanted to access his applications and database with my JumpCloud credentials. However, since it is a multi-tenant instance. I would like it to be open-ended where we can gather all these multi-level organizations to put in a single domain to access one authentication for all the different applications."

"The capability to get alerts would be great when CPU or RAM is high on an endpoint, or when a disk is failing. It would be great to get an alert rather than having to go looking for it."

"I think the reporting in JumpCloud could be improved as it takes a while to pull the exact data you need sometimes."

"The visual tool and interface must be more fine-tuned."

"A nice feature called patch management with different kinds of licensing is not included in JumpCloud."

More JumpCloud cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The overall pricing for iboss is very competitive and transparent."

"It is expensive compared to one of its competitors."

"It is probably in line with other solutions, but I do not deal with the financial side."

"We have not priced the solution recently, but they were competitive with other vendors in the past."

"It is not expensive, and it is also not cheap. iboss is priced right in the sweet spot for the number of features it offers."

"We had the cost of purchasing a new appliance along with the implementation and licensing costs. However, the following year, the cost of just licensing was similar to what was paid the previous year for a new appliance along with the implementation and licensing costs."

"We pay an annual subscription fee."

"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."

"The pricing is all on the JumpCloud website. It's not hidden, you don't have to go through a show me a quote type procedure. The pricing is straightforward to understand."

"The cost was around $5 per user per month."

"JumpCloud offers several subscription plans as a software-as-a-service (SaaS) provider. The pricing is based on the number of users and the services that are required, meaning that you only pay for what you consume and don't have to pay for services that you don't need. When compared to other solutions, JumpCloud can actually be more cost-effective, as it eliminates the need to hire a team, purchase hardware, pay for licenses and software, and worry about updates, security, and backups. Thus, it offers a more efficient and cost-effective solution for managing your needs."

"The pricing model changed about 18 months ago. It used to be that you got 10 users free, and then you paid for any user above 10 users. Now, when you go above 10 users, you pay for every user. It has become a bit more expensive, but it's such a good product. When you take into account Microsoft licenses, if you were to run Active Directory, you'd need a server to put it on, or you would need a couple of servers, backup, etc. It's a no-brainer. JumpCloud is so much easier to manage from my perspective, regardless of the cost increase. It's just brilliant."

"I rate the product's pricing a five on a scale of one to ten, where one is cheap, and ten is expensive."

"Licensing cost can be anywhere between $2 and $18 a month depending on what you want to do."

"We are using an enterprise license for JumpCloud. We have purchased a license for approximately $3,000 a year, but we are charged more than $135,000 annually."

"I am pretty sure that the cost to acquire JumpCloud is less. They have à la carte or per-user pricing. The pricing is there on their webpage. I am not sure if they have any enterprise pricing or discounts if you have more users. But the overall pricing is less than Okta."

More JumpCloud pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

11%

Computer Software Company

10%

Manufacturing Company

Comms Service Provider

Performing Arts

11%

Government

10%

Manufacturing Company

Computer Software Company

Comms Service Provider

18%

Computer Software Company

12%

Financial Services Firm

Manufacturing Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	6
Midsize Enterprise	6
Large Enterprise	5

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	6
Midsize Enterprise	3
Large Enterprise	5

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	18
Midsize Enterprise	5
Large Enterprise	3

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with iboss?

For zero trust implementation, we encountered complexity issues, especially with a large infrastructure company Exxon...

See all answers

What is your primary use case for iboss?

Previously when I used iboss, we did the POC for iboss for ExxonMobil. Four or five people wanted to move from our ol...

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What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for iboss?

Regarding pricing, setup costs, and licensing, iboss is not cheap, and that's my only concern. There are cheaper alte...

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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 admini...

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What needs improvement with AWS Directory Service?

Accessing the data needs improvement. Additionally, integration and compatibility with other AWS ( /products/amazon-a...

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What advice do you have for others considering AWS Directory Service?

I would rate AWS Directory Service nine out of ten. Users need to be aware of how the system works locally to adapt e...

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What do you like most about JumpCloud?

The product enables device management.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for JumpCloud?

My experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing indicates that pricing can be considered competitive with simil...

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What needs improvement with JumpCloud?

JumpCloud can be improved in several areas. Some users feel the initial configuration can be complex, especially for ...

See all answers

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Compared 16% of the time

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Compared 14% of the time

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Compared 11% of the time

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Compared 10% of the time

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Compared 8% of the time

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Compared 8% of the time

Scalefusion vs JumpCloud

Compared 7% of the time

Okta Platform vs JumpCloud

Compared 7% of the time

Microsoft Active Directory vs JumpCloud

Compared 6% of the time

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Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

iboss

January 2026

Download iboss product report

Buyer's Guide

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

November 2025

Download AWS Directory Service product report

Buyer's Guide

JumpCloud

January 2026

Download JumpCloud product report

Also Known As

iBoss Cloud Platform

AWS Managed Microsoft AD

Resmo

Overview

Iboss offers a comprehensive cloud-based security platform valued for its scalability and autonomous features, ensuring robust security with easy deployment and management capabilities.

Renowned for its robust security architecture, Iboss integrates seamlessly within diverse networks, delivering efficient granular filtering and advanced content categorization. Its single pane of glass console provides ease of management, allowing rapid scalability suitable for rapidly deploying environments. Operates in BYOD setups due to inline filtering without device installation. Integration with cloud-based applications enhances user control, and features like SASE, SSL inspection, and ChatGPT risk protection stand as highlights. Despite its strengths, users have pointed out areas for enhancement like direct navigation in reports, SSL decryption, and better cloud integration while having room to improve data loss prevention.

What are the most important features of Iboss?

Scalability: Supports rapid deployment across diverse networks.
SASE: A consolidated approach to secure access.
SSL Inspection: Ensures safe data transmission.
Granular Filtering: Detailed control over accessible content.
Single Pane Management: Unifies control through a centralized console.

What benefits should users consider in reviews?

Cost-effectiveness: Offers competitive pricing with robust features.
Autonomous Operation: Reduces management overhead.
Responsive Support: Provides assistance when needed.
Flexible Deployment: Available for both cloud and on-premises environments.

The usage of Iboss spans educational institutions, specifically K-12, to enforce internet policies, protect data, and support remote work environments. It provides web filtering and security frameworks to ensure safe browsing. Its platform-as-a-service model offers flexibility for both cloud-based and on-premises requirements, integrating seamlessly to deliver enhanced security features suitable for various deployment needs including zero trust, CASB, and network security for work-from-home setups.

iboss

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)

JumpCloud offers efficient device management, single sign-on, and integration capabilities. It integrates seamlessly with Microsoft 365 and Google Workspace, streamlining user management across diverse environments.

JumpCloud delivers device, user, and application management across platforms like Windows, Mac, Linux, and cloud services such as AWS and Azure. Acting as a cloud-based directory, it facilitates single sign-on and identity access management, making it an attractive replacement for Active Directory and LDAP directories. Its policy management and centralized directory simplify user and device administration, offering a user-friendly interface with flexible access control and remote management. Organizations can experience streamlined onboarding and offboarding processes, robust authentication, and scalability. Despite being powerful, room for improvement is noted in alert capabilities, comprehensive MDM for Windows, multi-tenant features, and API reliability.

What are the key features of JumpCloud?

Device Management: Manage Windows, Mac, and Linux devices efficiently.
Single Sign-on: Seamlessly integrate with Microsoft 365 and Google Workspace.
Centralized Directory: Simplifies administration by consolidating user credentials.
Policy Management: Enforce policies and provide VPN access.
Remote Management: Provides flexible access control.

Why should users consider JumpCloud?

Streamlined Onboarding/Offboarding: Efficient user management saves time.
Robust Authentication: Enhances security through strong credential management.
Scalability: Adapts well to growing business needs.
Integration Capabilities: Supports seamless connections with cloud applications.

Companies across industries utilize JumpCloud for comprehensive management of devices and user identities. It is especially beneficial in technology-driven sectors where centralized directory services replace traditional Active Directory and LDAP models. Organizations employing platforms like AWS and Azure find it essential for maintaining efficient and secure access management.

JumpCloud

Sample Customers

More than 4,000 global enterprises trust the iboss Cloud Platform to support their modern workforces, including a large number of Fortune 50 companies.

Expedia, Intuit, Royal Dutch Shell, Brooks Brothers

Cars.com, GoFundMe, Grab, ClassPass, Uplight, Beyond Finance, Foursquare

Buyer's Guide

AWS Directory Service vs. JumpCloud

December 2025

Free Report: AWS Directory Service vs. JumpCloud

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We monitor all Identity and Access Management as a Service (IDaaS) (IAMaaS) reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.