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One Identity Active Roles vs Quest Change Auditor for Active Directory 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

One Identity Active Roles
Ranking in Active Directory Management
5th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
21
Ranking in other categories
User Provisioning Software (5th), Non-Human Identity Management (NHIM) (5th)
Quest Change Auditor for Ac...
Ranking in Active Directory Management
8th
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
1
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2025, in the Active Directory Management category, the mindshare of One Identity Active Roles is 5.4%, down from 7.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Quest Change Auditor for Active Directory is 6.7%, down from 8.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Active Directory Management
 

Featured Reviews

Neera Jain - PeerSpot reviewer
Requires minimal training and provides granular control
The granular control has been very helpful for us. We want to be able to control what level users have access to. It is possible to control access levels at the organizational unit or even the attribute level, making it helpful for us. Active Roles helped increase operational efficiency in our organization. We have delegated user provisioning to the help desk so they can create users or manage accounts. We have delegated group management to identified group owners who can manage their groups. Some of them just need read-only access to AD; they do not need to download the native tools. They can just do it via a browser. Active Roles has helped our organization reduce the number of erroneous privileged accounts. We have set the templates, and we have set the standards. It helps standardize all the naming conventions and how they are provisioned with the rules. That is definitely very helpful. We use the change history to see who might have modified what object. We have that tracking, but we use a tool from Quest called Change Auditor that can do the auditing to figure out who did what type of thing for auditing.
RémyMAURAS - PeerSpot reviewer
Real-time notifications and protection for Active Directory accounts with good documentation
The primary use case is to manage human errors, like protecting identities from being modified by the software, and to audit security. This includes monitoring high-privilege accounts and having the ability to back up previous values if unauthorized modifications occur in the Active Directory…

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The most valuable features include auditing, dynamic grouping, and creating dynamic groups based on AD attributes."
"Active Roles helped increase operational efficiency in our organization."
"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."
"Active Roles improved the management of users, groups, and AD objects in the organization."
"Instead of deleting accounts, we like the deprovision option so that we can reverse any accidental deletions. It also gives a higher level of quality control in terms of enforcing any number of variables, such as making sure that an account has a description entered before the account can be created. We can backtrack and know the history of it that way."
"In comparison to native Active Directory tools, using Active Roles for delegation is so much better. It uses an access template and that makes it easy to see who can access what. In fact, you can do that for many objects as well."
"The best part of this Active Roles is the workflow engine. It features an industry-leading workflow automation feature. It's a visual PowerShell that allows task interruption."
"Having a tool to manage all changes to AD from a single pane of glass is awesome."
"The most valuable features are the ability to protect Active Directory accounts and groups, and the real-time notifications that help manage Active Directory more effectively."
 

Cons

"I know they have increased support for Entra ID and mentioned providing support for AWS. A way to connect to various directories and integrate with cloud directories would be beneficial."
"The third area for improvement, which is the weakest portion of ARS, is the workflow engine, which was introduced a few years ago. It's slow and not very intuitive to use, so I would like to see improvement there."
"There is always room to improve the user interface for increased clarity. I believe enhancements to the console are also necessary because it is more confusing than the web interface."
"The solution needs an attestation process that includes certification and recertification attestation."
"Active Roles could add more options for web customization. Our requirements are exceedingly specific. We'd like to get the web interface down to just five buttons, but in some cases, we can only get to six. The web interface in the current version is less customizable than in the previous one."
"I've had a difficult time getting it to cooperate with Azure in the cloud and, while the support staff are very good and very knowledgeable, what they assist with just on a call doesn't go deep enough to help with a number of issues. The answer that comes back is that we'd have to start an engagement with Professional Services, which is fine but that takes time to schedule and it takes budget."
"The way you can search groups could be better."
"There are some features that we think should be included in their next release. We think these things would take them to the next level: the ability to completely force or limit any dynamic group processing to specific servers, change-tracking reporting of virtual attributes, and the ability to use files as inputs to automation workloads. These things have also been talked about. Knowing them, they're probably working on them."
"Areas that could be improved include having more management capabilities with command-line scripts and more flexibility in general."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The pricing for Active Roles is expensive but not as expensive as other solutions like Okta."
"The licensing model is a simple user-based model, not that much complicated."
"It's fairly priced."
"The price is reasonable. It costs us about 1 million Danish kroner annually, and we also spend about half as much on consultants."
"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."
"The pricing is on the higher end."
"It's expensive."
Information not available
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
17%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Government
8%
Healthcare Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
18%
Computer Software Company
13%
Healthcare Company
9%
Manufacturing Company
9%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for One Identity Active Roles?
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.
What needs improvement with One Identity Active Roles?
There is always room to improve the user interface for increased clarity. I believe enhancements to the console are also necessary because it is more confusing than the web interface.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Quest Change Auditor for Active Directory?
The price can vary based on the components purchased and the needs and budget of the organization. It is considered a bit pricey, especially for smaller companies.
What needs improvement with Quest Change Auditor for Active Directory?
Areas that could be improved include having more management capabilities with command-line scripts and more flexibility in general. Often this type of tool could benefit from better scripting capab...
What is your primary use case for Quest Change Auditor for Active Directory?
The primary use case is to manage human errors, like protecting identities from being modified by the software, and to audit security. This includes monitoring high-privilege accounts and having th...
 

Also Known As

Quest Active Roles
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

City of Frankfurt, Moore Public Schools, George Washington University, Transavia Airlines, Howard County, MD. See all stories at OneIdentity.com/casestudies
American Airlines, Bank of America, BARCLAYS, ebay, Ford, intel, MARS, MERCK, Microsoft, UBER, VISA
Find out what your peers are saying about ManageEngine, CrowdStrike, Netwrix and others in Active Directory Management. Updated: March 2025.
844,944 professionals have used our research since 2012.