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 #17 with an average rating of 8.0. 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 Oct 12, 2025

AWS Directory Service and JumpCloud compete in the identity and access management category. JumpCloud edges ahead due to its broad feature set, which provides flexibility suited to mixed IT environments.

Features: AWS Directory Service is valued for its seamless Amazon Web Services integration, robust security features, and compatibility with Microsoft Active Directory. JumpCloud stands out with cross-platform identity management, a zero-trust security model, and device management capabilities fitting diverse IT needs.

Room for Improvement:AWS Directory Service could improve in its user interface design, cross-platform support beyond AWS, and integration with non-AWS services. JumpCloud would benefit from refining its documentation, enhancing advanced analytics capabilities, and providing more granular access controls.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service:AWS Directory Service offers simplified deployment through its integration with AWS infrastructure but demands strong AWS knowledge. Its customer service efficiently supports needs within the AWS ecosystem. JumpCloud provides straightforward deployment in varied IT environments, backed by comprehensive support skilled in navigating different platforms.

Pricing and ROI:AWS Directory Service presents competitive setup costs, especially for AWS users, yielding a strong ROI due to minimal extra infrastructure needs. JumpCloud, though potentially pricier, justifies its cost with extensive features and flexibility, leading to significant ROI gains in varied IT landscapes.

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

Buyer's Guide

AWS Directory Service vs. JumpCloud

September 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

Matt Crockford

Head of Cybersecurity at SES Water

It's easy to roll out, and their understanding of our business made it seamless

One aspect we value about iboss is its simplicity. Their customer service is brilliant, and they are super responsive and knowledgeable. It's easy to roll out, and their understanding of our business made it seamless. We were impressed by the solution's mental health function, which can detect if someone needs help. It scans what users are browsing and flags warning signs so we can check to see if they are okay. We've had to use it a couple of times. The user interface is highly intuitive. Our IT team picked it up with minimal training. It's arranged so that it's easy to find where things are. Another advantage is the single pane of glass console, which gives you visibility into what's happening. We're not fully there yet because we haven't implemented zero trust, but we're excited about the possibilities from the demos we've seen. We launched a POC of iboss' ChatGPT Risk Protection feature two weeks ago. AI is a great tool, but you need to be careful what you put into it. My biggest fear is employees inputting sensitive corporate information or customer PII data into one of these chatbots. I was impressed by our trial of the feature. It's exactly what we wanted. Now, when a user goes to ChatGPT, there's a banner warning them not to share information, and we can block conversations containing customer data like bank details and email addresses. I don't want to stop people from using it, but we need visibility. We've only tried it on a test group of 15 people. You can configure it to look for specific keywords or integrate it with your DLP policy if you have that configured

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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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MuhammadAzhar Khan

Senior DevOps Engineer at Alibaba Group

Manage multiple cloud platforms seamlessly with unified credentials

The most impactful feature of JumpCloud is that it allows me to use one credential for all platforms or accounts, reducing the need to remember multiple credentials. This feature is highly beneficial for user management, particularly for clients with multiple cloud accounts. Additionally, JumpCloud simplifies the workflow when I work with different cloud platforms, such as AWS, Azure, and GCP, by integrating directory and credential management.

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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

"Technical support is pretty sharp and very responsive."

"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."

"Valuable features: Within the filter: Controls (Web categories, applications, and Allow/Block list) and Network (local Subnets). Within the reporter: Logs (Event Log) and Reports."

"Iboss is a solution that prevents advanced persistent threats, and has a zero tolerance for attacks."

"Its initial setup was straightforward."

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

"iboss is among the few products providing inline filtering where no application is needed on the device. It operates on the network side and is not device-based. This feature was one of the main reasons why we stayed with them for so long."

"The security aspect of the solution, particularly the malware behind it, is excellent. That's something that really helped us out. It's not just a simple proxy that just blocks the insights of potential threats that come on behind it. They do malware detection and that helps us a lot."

More iboss pros

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

"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 is that because it's all in the cloud, you don't need to manage the infrastructure."

"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."

"We can provide specific access to people based on what they need from our accounts."

"Provides good performance and availability."

"The most valuable feature is ease of use."

More AWS Directory Service pros

"The most impactful feature of JumpCloud is that it allows me to use one credential for all platforms or accounts, reducing the need to remember multiple credentials."

"The most valuable feature of JumpCloud, it provides a convenient and streamlined solution for me to access and manage all of the features I require in one centralized location. This eliminates the need for me to worry about hiring individuals to manage these tasks, as well as eliminating concerns surrounding hardware, updates, and licenses. With JumpCloud, I am able to receive the services I need in a timely and efficient manner, which has significantly reduced my stress and alleviated a great deal of the issues I once faced. This is especially important as I am often bound by laws, regulations, contracts, and customer demands to keep up with various tasks. With JumpCloud, I am able to manage everything I need in one place, giving me visibility and control over aspects that I previously had to manage through multiple systems."

"The product enables device management."

"Some of the most valuable features of Jumpcloud have been the use of the policies. They have been very helpful. There are modules in there for policies where you can create your own which indirectly are GPOs similar to what you have for Microsoft environments, however, they are only doing registry changes. They are very powerful and useful. Additionally, having your directory and SSO in one spot is another thing that they provide in application management. Adding, removing, and updating applications are in one place for desktop administration."

"As a cloud-based directory, JumpCloud allows me to integrate nearly every system I have come across that supports SAML 2.0. That's a specific technology that allows different services to integrate for user authentication and identification purposes. That means that with JumpCloud, I can then have one single password. Single sign-on for a particular user that works with VPN, radius authentication for WiFi, logging into Office 365, and their email. Their individual computers use that same password. It's extensible which allows us to tie in customers' security systems. We don't have to provision a new user, 12 different places with 12 different passwords. I only have to create them once and assign them privileges."

"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."

"Ability to integrate all applications."

More JumpCloud pros

Cons

"To scale up, a new iboss Node Blade Chassis must be purchased."

"The solution could be stronger on the integration side and offer more cloud applications like G Suite or Oracle."

"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."

"Their on-premise hardware's network interface is capped at one gigabit, which is sort of a problem. If you stand a filter up where all traffic flows through that, according to them, in order to go above a gigabit, you have to have multiple devices, which in today's IT seems a little bit silly. They could easily put in an SFP port into their device that could accommodate 10 gigs or at least offer a box."

"Our iboss subscription access should be more secure with an OTP or VPN etc. It is easy to gain access if, for example, hackers obtain my username and password."

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

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

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

More iboss cons

"The group policy can be improved."

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

"AWS Directory Service needs to improve processing."

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

"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."

"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 functionalities, like other on-premises Active Directory, it would be very helpful."

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

"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

"It could dip into CI/CD tooling as well. That would be a very interesting part to see."

"The querying for users in Jumpcloud could be improved, it is sometimes difficult to use. When you're trying to query a user and you spell out their name, you don't receive that person. Sometimes you receive a list of people with the same first name or last name. This could be better."

"They need more straightening of the SSO capabilities."

"JumpCloud can improve in its synchronization of identities. More specifically, groups with Office 365. They've been working on it, but it's not where I would necessarily like it to be."

"Lacks the ability to have various VPN applications."

"Support is not good enough."

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

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

More JumpCloud cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

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

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

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

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

"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 pay an annual subscription fee."

"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."

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

"The cost of the solution is approximately $12 per user. However, the cost depends on what modules you're using. They have an all-in-one package and they do have tiers. For example, the more users you have, the cheaper it ends up being in the end too. I know they've done some changes to the pricing model and I haven't been involved in a lot of the licensing lately. I don't know the exact cost at this time."

"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."

"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."

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

"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."

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

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

"The solution is pretty expensive."

More JumpCloud pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

11%

Computer Software Company

11%

Manufacturing Company

Government

Computer Software Company

12%

Performing Arts

11%

Healthcare Company

Manufacturing Company

Comms Service Provider

17%

Computer Software Company

14%

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	4

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	13
Midsize Enterprise	2
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?

AWS charges per user, which can be costly if I have more than ten users. Third-party platforms tend to be cheaper tha...

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What needs improvement with JumpCloud?

I would like AWS to integrate more cloud platforms with JumpCloud, such as Alibaba or Oracle. This would be helpful, ...

See all answers

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Compared 12% of the time

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Compared 10% of the time

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Compared 14% of the time

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Compared 13% of the time

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Compared 10% of the time

Teleport vs JumpCloud

Compared 9% of the time

Microsoft Active Directory vs JumpCloud

Compared 6% of the time

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Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

iboss

October 2025

Download iboss product report

Buyer's Guide

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

September 2025

Download AWS Directory Service product report

Buyer's Guide

JumpCloud

October 2025

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

September 2025

Free Report: AWS Directory Service vs. JumpCloud

Find out what your peers are saying about AWS Directory Service vs. JumpCloud and other solutions. Updated: September 2025.

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