What is One Identity?
One Identity’s history gives One Identity a mix of old, proven technologies and new ones, especially after buying the cloud-based IDaaS company OneLogin.
The company’s main vision is the "One Identity Fabric." This is an idea for a framework to connect its separate IAM tools—like IGA, PAM, AM, and AD Management—into one system.
The fabric uses built-in Artificial Intelligence (AI) to give early warnings, automate security, and close the gaps between separate tools that attackers often use. This all-in-one approach aims to make business identity simpler, cleaner, and more secure.
One Identity Pricing
One Identity's pricing shows its attention to large companies. Its tools are sold as high-end products that need a full financial review. To understand the cost, you must look at the full Total Cost of Ownership (TCO), not just the license fees.
While exact prices are given to each customer, available data shows a general idea of its pricing.
Pricing Models
One Identity uses different pricing models across its products, which can be hard to figure out.
- Platform Pricing: Main tools like Identity Manager are generally seen as high-end products. Data from 43 sales collected by Vendr shows a median annual cost of $31,216. The reported range was from $6,991 to $85,090 per year, showing different setup sizes.
- Per-User/Month SaaS Pricing: The OneLogin tools follow a typical IDaaS model with pricing based on use. For example, features like SSO or MFA are listed at $2/user/month. More advanced features like SmartFactor Authentication are $3/user/month. Bundled plans are also available.
- Other Pricing: The Safeguard PAM tools are often licensed based on the number of people using them at the same time. This is a common model for PAM tools.
Licensing Concerns
One Identity has a support site for customers to manage licenses. But user comments have raised big red flags about how clear and fair its licensing is for some products.
- A Gartner Peer Insights review for one product was very negative about its licensing model. It said the model demands payment "regardless if the accounts aren't in use or not." This led the reviewer to call the company a "scam company."
- Because of this feedback, buyers must get clear details on all licensing rules and audit policies for every product. This will help them avoid surprise costs.
Total Cost of Ownership (TCO)
The TCO for One Identity tools can be large and is more than the starting price.
- Expert Services: User reviews often mention a steep learning curve and complex setup. This often requires paying for expert help, which adds to the TCO. Bad experiences with these services are a major concern.
- Maintenance Costs: A competitor, Netwrix, claimed that One Identity Manager's "legacy technology" could lead to higher TCO. This is because of more maintenance work and expensive moves to the cloud.
- Vendor Claims: On the other hand, One Identity advertises TCO benefits for some products. Its "PAM Challenge" claims to deliver PAM tools at "half the cost and in half the time" of others. Buyers should be careful with vendor claims and do their own cost study for their specific situation.
Key Features of One Identity
One Identity's set of tools is large. It is organized under the main pillars of IGA, PAM, AM, and AD Management. These are all brought together by the "One Identity Fabric" idea.
1. Identity Governance and Administration (IGA)
One Identity’s IGA tools are centered on the Identity Manager product. They are designed to help companies govern user access, lower risk, and meet compliance rules.
- The platform gives full identity lifecycle management. This includes automatic user setup and removal for both on-premises and cloud systems.
- A key feature is Behavior-Driven Governance. It aims to show exactly how people are using their access rights. This helps find and fix risks from accounts with too much power.
- Special modules exist to protect sensitive data. However, some user reviews have pointed out missing features for certain IGA tasks.
2. Privileged Access Management (PAM)
The PAM tools, sold under the Safeguard brand, are designed to secure and watch special accounts. This helps create a Zero Trust security model.
- The tools include products for managing special passwords, sessions, and user behavior.
- Safeguard for Privileged Sessions gives a full audit of sessions. It has recording, replay, and real-time alerts.
- Safeguard for Privileged Analytics studies user behavior to spot strange activity and find advanced threats. Even with these strong features, users report a steep learning curve and bad documentation.
3. Access Management (AM)
Thanks to the purchase of OneLogin, One Identity's AM features are large and modern. The main products are OneLogin Workforce Identity and OneLogin Customer Identity (CIAM).
- It gives strong Single Sign-On (SSO). This allows for smooth access to cloud and local apps.
- SmartFactor Authentication is a key feature. It uses an AI engine to check risk in real-time. It then changes MFA needs as required (adaptive MFA).
- Many password-free options are supported. These include biometrics (Windows Hello, TouchID) and security keys. This matches modern security trends.
4. Active Directory (AD) Management and Security
This is a core strength for One Identity. It is built on the long-running and well-liked Active Roles product.
- Active Roles is designed to secure and automate the management of AD, Microsoft Entra ID (Azure AD), and Microsoft 365. It has a key function of giving unified governance for hybrid AD systems.
- User reviews for Active Roles are very good, with a 4.7 out of 5 rating on Gartner Peer Insights. Users praise its self-service page, high level of customization, and easy delegation of tasks.
- The main challenge is making sure it connects smoothly into the bigger "One Identity Fabric" with newer tools.
5. Log Management and Analytics
One Identity has tools for log management to help with security and compliance.
- These tools are centered on collecting, handling, storing, and searching log data from different company systems.
- The value of these tools depends on how well the log data connects to the "One Identity Fabric." This connection is needed to give context for the AI-based analysis.
One Identity Usability and Interface
The user experience with One Identity's tools is not consistent. This is a big challenge for the company as it tries to make its different products work well together in the "One Identity Fabric."
A Tale of Two Experiences:
User comments show a clear split between different parts of the toolset. The experience depends heavily on which product a person is using.
- The Modern Cloud Experience (OneLogin): The purchased OneLogin parts get great reviews for their user experience. On TrustRadius, it scores a 9.6 out of 10. Users praise its "ease of use" and "intuitive interface." This shows the strength of its modern, cloud-based design.
- The Traditional Company Experience: In contrast, other parts get much more mixed comments. On G2, users praise "Easy Management" while others report "Complex Usability" and a big "Learning Curve." One product was heavily criticized on Gartner for an "Extremely slow UX."
Administrator vs. End-User Divide:
The user experience often changes based on the user's role. Some products have good self-service pages for end-users. But the experience for administrators can be much harder.
- Steep Learning Curve for Admins: The interface for some parts is called "complicated for beginners." Users say that "one will get used to it" over time. This points to a hard learning process instead of an easy design.
- Needing Guides to Get By: The need for training to use products like Active Roles, plus complaints of bad documentation, suggests the interfaces are not simple. When the user experience is not easy, good documentation becomes essential. Flaws here can make users more upset.
One Identity Reviews and Ratings
How the market sees One Identity is complex. It gets praise from analysts for its ideas. But it receives mixed and sometimes very bad reviews from users about how well it works, its support, and its ease of use.
- Gartner: Gartner has named One Identity a "Visionary" in its 2024 report for Privileged Access Management. This rewards the company's future direction but also suggests it may not perform as well as market "Leaders." In product ratings, Active Roles scores a high 4.7 out of 5 stars. The Safeguard suite scores a lower 4.2 out of 5 stars and gets bad marks for its expert services and support.
- G2: G2 reviews show sharp differences, with an overall rating of 3.5 out of 5 stars. Users like the large set of tools but also report "Complex Usability," a steep "Learning Curve," and big connection problems.
- TrustRadius: This website shows the big differences between One Identity's products. The purchased OneLogin tool gets an excellent 9.6 out of 10. In contrast, One Identity Identity Manager has a much lower score of 6.0 out of 10, with users noting problems with web forms.
- Collected Feedback: Other platforms like Zluri collect comments that point to a high price, limited reports, a complex UI, and hard setups as common problems.
Overall View of One Identity
One Identity is a major business IAM seller with many products and a big, future-thinking idea called the "One Identity Fabric."
- It has a full set of tools that can appeal to large companies that want one seller for all their IAM needs. This is especially true for those with a lot of Microsoft Active Directory. Strengths like its top-rated Active Roles product and the modern features of OneLogin are big assets.
- The company's support for hybrid systems and its proven ability to scale are a good match for the needs of its large business customers.
But in reality, there are big challenges with how it works. The "One Identity Fabric" seems to be more of a goal than a finished product. Users report connection issues and a very uneven user experience. The varied quality of support and unfair licensing are serious problems. The platform is complex, which often means a high TCO. This makes it a poor fit for companies with small budgets or without expert technical staff.
Infisign: the Right One Identity Alternative
While One Identity often feels like a patchwork of different products, Infisign is built from the ground up as a single, cohesive platform. Users get a consistent and easy-to-navigate interface, whether using the Infisign IAM Suite for employee access or Infisign’s UniFed for customer identity.
Moreover, with over 6,000 APIs and SDKs, Infisign is designed for seamless integration, not complex custom work. With no hidden costs and a truly unified access control platform, Infisign directly addresses the main challenges faced by One Identity customers.
Here are the features that make Infisign the superior alternative:
- Works with Cloud, On-Premises, and Legacy Ecosystems: Infisign provides the truly unified fabric that modern enterprises need. This allows consistent, centralized access control across every layer of your infrastructure, solving the integration challenges common with multi-product vendors.
- Universal Single Sign-On (SSO): This is the foundation of a modern, non-fragmented identity strategy. Infisign’s SSO simplifies identity workflows for a smooth user experience while reducing the attack surface that comes from multiple login credentials.
- Network Access Gateway: Infisign's network access gateway allows you to manage and secure who has access to critical internal on-premisis apps using the same powerful, centralized framework you use for your cloud services for complete visibility and control.
- Adaptive MFA: Infisign analyzes real-time context—such as the user's device, location, and behavior—to determine the appropriate level of authentication. Step-up challenges are only prompted when risk actually increases, which keeps workflows smooth for trusted users and eliminates the inconsistent experience of less advanced systems.
- Attribute-Based Access Control (ABAC) for Granular Control: Infisign uses attribute-based rules to define access rights based on a user's role, department, project, or any other business context. This allows your teams to apply fine-grained security policies without having to hardcode permissions into individual applications.
- AI Access Assist Infisign's AI-driven engine proactively flags risky access patterns and suggests policy adjustments to tighten security. It provides the deep, actionable security knowledge that companies need.
- Scalable for Any Business Size Whether you're managing access for 100 users or 100,000, Infisign’s architecture adapts to your needs without adding complexity or requiring expensive reconfiguration. It is built to support rapid expansion as your business grows.
Want to know more about Infisign? Schedule a free demo call today!
One Identity FAQs
What is One Identity?
One Identity is an Identity and Access Management (IAM) software company. It gives a full set of tools for Identity Governance (IGA), Privileged Access Management (PAM), Access Management (AM), and Active Directory (AD) Management.
Who owns One Identity?
One Identity is a brand inside the Quest Software family. Quest was bought by Dell in 2012 and later sold to private owners in 2016, who re-launched it as its own company.
What is the One Identity Fabric?
The "One Identity Fabric" is the company's idea for a framework to connect its different IAM tools into one smooth system. It uses AI to give security warnings and improve security.
Is One Identity a PAM solution?
Yes, One Identity has a full Privileged Access Management (PAM) set of tools called "Safeguard." It covers password management, session management, and behavior analysis. Gartner named One Identity a "Visionary" in its 2024 PAM report.
