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Cisco Identity Services Engine (ISE) vs OneLogin by One Identity 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

Cisco Identity Services Eng...
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
142
Ranking in other categories
Network Access Control (NAC) (1st), Cisco Security Portfolio (1st)
OneLogin by One Identity
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
17
Ranking in other categories
Single Sign-On (SSO) (9th), User Provisioning Software (6th), Identity Management (IM) (12th), Identity and Access Management as a Service (IDaaS) (IAMaaS) (10th), Access Management (8th)
 

Mindshare comparison

Cisco Identity Services Engine (ISE) and OneLogin by One Identity aren’t in the same category and serve different purposes. Cisco Identity Services Engine (ISE) is designed for Network Access Control (NAC) and holds a mindshare of 26.3%, down 31.4% compared to last year.
OneLogin by One Identity, on the other hand, focuses on Identity and Access Management as a Service (IDaaS) (IAMaaS), holds 1.8% mindshare, down 2.0% since last year.
Network Access Control (NAC)
Identity and Access Management as a Service (IDaaS) (IAMaaS)
 

Featured Reviews

SunilkumarNaganuri - PeerSpot reviewer
Enhanced device administration hindered by complex deployment and security limitations
Cisco Identity Services Engine (ISE) needs to improve the profiling preauthentication. They are very poor in asset classification and should focus on improving the preauthentication profiling, especially for NAC use cases. This will give them a roadmap for software-defined access (SDA) use cases and network segmentation. Threat detection capabilities are very weak. Additionally, the product is vulnerable and has many bugs.
Pete Snell - PeerSpot reviewer
Staff and students can now reset their passwords using their enrolled two-factor device as the authentication mechanism
We've been a OneLogin customer for several years now. While I like the platform, there have been some challenges. A great example is the amount of work needed with that webhook for the enrollment user experience. This functionality is native to some competing products. That's one area where we've leaned on our account rep over the years. They shouldn't rely on the customer to make this experience better. This is one feature request that hasn't been implemented yet. At the same time, they've implemented other features we've requested. One is the ability to use a personal email address as a factor. Initially, they didn't have that. We pushed hard on our account team for about two years before it was finally released. It's a give-and-take. Some of the product's features aren't perfect, but we've had some success pushing fixes to the development team that needs to happen. They've done a decent job. However, there are some fixes that they don't have an interest in. A lot of what I described was before OneLogin was acquired by Quest/One Identity. Things have changed. It doesn't feel like they're driving the product as OneLogin was. It may be because it's a new product to them, and they're still trying to get the lay of the land, process feature requests, etc., but it's not moving as fast as before. We've been experiencing some pain points since the acquisition. For example, there have been some outages we didn't see previously, which are a big topic with my executive team. You have hundreds of applications relying on this service for login. If the service is unavailable, nobody can log into these applications. The issues have high visibility. It's gotten better, but it's still there. It raises questions about whether One Identity can support the platform they've acquired. How are they enhancing the product? And how are they supporting the product and the service in the future? Those are two essential questions. There are also lots of nice-to-haves, but that's the case with any product.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Cisco ISE's profiling and posturing features ensure that all devices are compliant with regulatory authorities."
"Easy to use and provides good support"
"The posture assessment is a valuable feature because of the ability to do assessments on the clients before they connect to the network."
"It is a good product for what it does...So, it is one of the most critical systems that we have."
"The most valuable features are authentication, we have more granular control on the access policies for the administrators. The solution is easy to use, has a center point administration, and has a good GUI."
"For customers, it's great. It has a GUI, so the customers themselves can edit ACLs or even modify the policies. It's also an all-in-one solution with RADIUS and TACACS."
"We have multiple metal devices from different places that use management, so we need to know who would be accessing all those devices and what changes are being done to those metal devices. With Cisco ISE we have visibility of all the changes happening on those devices."
"The implementation is very simple."
"It's super useful to have a single pane of glass when it comes to access management."
"Ease of integration with AD."
"Simplicity is the most valuable part of OneLogin."
"When it comes to access management, the solution's single pane of glass is extremely important. The single pane of glass for access management enables collaborative work between IT and security. We have access to certain applications that require device trust. Based on the role, we can access those applications through OneLogin Desktop."
"One aspect I particularly appreciate is their exceptional customer support whenever I've needed assistance."
"OneLogin is efficient."
"The directory integration and SCIM provisioning are probably the best features compared to competitors."
"Documentation."
 

Cons

"We face many bugs."
"ISE is a little clunky. The front-end feels like it is from the 1980s."
"In the next release, I would want to see this kind of solution in the cloud as opposed to on prem because when enhancements are made to the software, if it's in the cloud, it's overnight. I mean you're not going to have to respin the servers that the license sits on, it's all microservices kinds of things in the cloud. That would be my recommendation. If I'm a customer, that's what I'm looking at - for cloud based software subscriptions."
"Cisco ISE's real-time data analytics for database logging could be improved."
"I think some areas where ISE could be better are perhaps in the number of integrations that they offer from a virtual standpoint, as well as having a better and more comprehensive pathway for the customer to go from a physical environment to a virtual one."
"Cisco ISE can become quite complex, especially with policy sets, the entire authentication process, and everything involved."
"Cisco ISE integration with Cisco ACI is something that can be done in a less complex way. And the simplification in that area may help us do better."
"Documentation is probably the worst part of the software."
"They have downtime twice a year or once in six months. During the downtime, the SSO page did not come up. When users wanted to get to their email, they were redirected to the OneLogin page, but the page did not come up, and MFA and logins failed. It completely crippled us."
"The tool must be made more robust."
"The solution keeps going down for many hours, which impacts the entire company. You can't access any applications. OneLogin Desktop has a huge problem where it locks your computers and you need to reset the whole computer, which is pretty insane."
"having a RESTful implementation instead of RPC would have been more desirable."
"To offboard, you have to manually click on this checklist, each of the checkmarks. It would actually be really nice if, for offboarding someone, you just click "offboard" and it automatically runs a script to do that."
"OneLogin needs to increase the number of connectors available out of the box to connect to the different endpoints. The number of out-of-box connectors should be increased."
"While I initially used OneLogin's desktop feature to extend SSO, I discontinued it two years ago due to limitations."
"The uptime has not been great recently, with some outages lasting six, seven, or eight hours."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"I think the price is okay."
"It is not that pricey."
"In general, licensing can be quite complex with Cisco products. It would be nice if it was a bit more intuitive and had fewer "gotchas" in there."
"I would rate the pricing an eight out of ten, one being cheap and ten being expensive."
"The pricing is complicated."
"Over the years, licensing has been confusing and complicated because there are so many different licenses for each different product and each different iteration of the product."
"I get very good pricing from Cisco, so I don't have a problem with that. I also don't have a problem with licensing because we get enterprise or global licensing."
"It's damn expensive and the licensing is terrible... If you have perpetual licenses on 2.7 and you upgrade to 3, you are forced to go with Essentials. That is one of the issues that I'm seeing with my clients now."
"The pricing for OneLogin seems to be okay. The pricing and licensing are affordable. If you'd consider OneLogin to be expensive, it's worth it."
"The price of the licensing is fine."
"We were happy with the price we got when we signed up, but I don't know what will happen when the time comes to renew because it is a different company now. We haven't seen any pricing models or had that discussion yet. My renewal is a year and a half away. It's worth what we're paying for it. There's no way we could provide the level of service for cheaper or try to do the same in-house."
"OneLogin's pricing, from the perspective of the education sector, seems quite reasonable for the value it delivers."
"It was cheap in the beginning, and then it became very expensive. We were initially charged $2 per user per month, which was fine, but by the second year, they increased it to $5 per user. That became very expensive for us because we had about 1,500 users. At $2 per user, it comes out to be $3,000 a month, which is $36,000 a year. If we move to $5 per user, it comes out to be $7,500 a month. That made its cost so high. That is why we removed the product because the cost was high."
"While I wish OneLogin's pricing was more affordable, their licensing model, which is based on per user, is acceptable."
"Surprisingly expensive given the price of on-premise solutions."
"The pricing and licensing are reasonable. It is much cheaper than other products."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Educational Organization
25%
Computer Software Company
14%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Government
7%
Computer Software Company
25%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Retailer
6%
Construction Company
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

Which is better - Aruba Clearpass or Cisco ISE?
Aruba ClearPass is a Network Access Control tool that gives secure network access to multiple device types. You can adapt the policies to VPN access, wired, or wireless access. You can securely ...
What are the main differences between Cisco ISE and Forescout Platform?
OK, so Cisco ISE uses 802.1X to secure switchports against unauthorized access. The drawback of this is that ISE cannot secure the port if a device does not support 802.1x. Cameras, badge readers, ...
How does Cisco ISE compare with Fortinet FortiNAC?
Cisco ISE uses AI endpoint analytics to identify new devices based on their behavior. It will also notify you if someone plugs in with a device that is not allowed and will block it. The user exper...
What needs improvement with OneLogin by One Identity?
There have been some outages over the years. The uptime has not been great recently, with some outages lasting six, seven, or eight hours. Improvement in the stability of the infrastructure would b...
What is your primary use case for OneLogin by One Identity?
We use OneLogin by One Identity to provide SAML authentication and single sign-on for all of our SaaS apps.
 

Also Known As

Cisco ISE
OneLogin, OneLogin Workforce Identity
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Aegean Motorway, BC Hydro, Beachbody, Bucks County Intermediate Unit , Cisco IT, Derby City Council, Global Banking Customer, Gobierno de Castilla-La Mancha, Houston Methodist, Linz AG, London Hydro, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Molina Healthcare, MST Systems, New South Wales Rural Fire Service, Reykjavik University, Wildau University
OneLogin has thousands of customers across multiple industries and from around the globe such as Uber, Airbnb, Noom, Petco, Sony, Lucky Brand, Tesco, Airbus, Japan Airlines, Aetna, Compass, Kaplan, Susan G. Komen, AAA and PennyMac.
Find out what your peers are saying about Cisco, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, Fortinet and others in Network Access Control (NAC). Updated: April 2025.
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