Top 5 Active Directory management tools

Active Directory has been a staple of IT infrastructure for decades. It helps businesses handle user access, devices and security policies in one place. But as modern environments grow more complex, native AD tools alone often fall short.

Admins need better ways to handle user provisioning, group management, auditing, automation and compliance. This is why Active Directory management tools exist. In this piece, we’ll look at five top AD management tools that are worth your consideration.

Before we get into the tools, here’s a quick look at why it’s important to have dedicated AD management tools:

• Stay ahead of security risks by tracking changes, permissions and privileged accounts
• Automate repetitive admin tasks to reduce human error and free up IT resources
• Meet compliance requirements with audit-ready reports and activity logs
• Clean up stale or inactive accounts that could be misused
• Troubleshoot account lockouts and other common issues faster
• Gain better visibility across hybrid or multi-cloud environments
• Keep delegated permissions under control with role-based access and least privilege

One Identity Active Roles is an AD management tool developed by One Identity, a well-known name in cybersecurity and access management. It’s the most comprehensive solution on our list, built to simplify identity security and management across hybrid environments. With Active Roles, you get visibility into all your Entra ID (Azure AD) and Microsoft 365 tenants and on-premises Active Directory domains from a single dashboard. It helps you make sure users, groups and objects have the right level of privilaccess only when they need it.

Benefits of One Identity Active Roles

• Use fine-grained delegation with least privilege and role-based access control to limit standing privileges

  

• Automate lifecycle tasks for users, groups, roles and cloud objects with custom workflows and scripts

  

• Gain AWS Managed AD support and keep on-prem and cloud identities in sync
• Track stale objects and standing privileges to tighten security
• Keep an audit trail of user activity and changes to prepare for compliance checks
• Connect with other platforms like ServiceNow, Salesforce and Workday through real-time synchronization
• Strengthen privileged access management with dynamic delegation across your hybrid setup

Active Roles awards & recognition in 2025

One Identity Active Roles has been recognized as a leader in hybrid Active Directory protection, earning top honors in the 2025 Cybersecurity Excellence Awards. This award underscores the product’s ability to simplify and strengthen identity security across hybrid environments by automating policy-based management, streamlining administrative tasks and enhancing regulatory compliance.

The 2025 KuppingerCole Identity Fabrics Leadership Compass report, which gives an overview of the Identity Fabrics technology provider market, notes:

"One Identity product differentiation lies in its comprehensive coverage across IAM domains. Their strategic acquisitions and subsequent, yet ongoing integration work have strengthened their standing, particularly with the capabilities of OneLogin for access management, including identity federation and passwordless MFA."

Reviews & testimonials in 2025

SolarWinds Access Rights Manager (ARM) is designed to help you manage and audit access rights across your entire IT environment. ARM combines automated Active Directory provisioning with detailed AD reporting, so you can see who has access to what data and when they used it. It also helps you meet strict compliance requirements by giving you the tools to monitor user activity, track changes and keep records ready for auditors.

Benefits of SolarWinds Access Rights Manager

• Quickly access detailed user data to meet compliance needs for GDPR, PCI and HIPAA
• Delegate AD permission management securely to data owners to reduce IT workload
• Identify and isolate insecure accounts to protect against credential theft and misuse
• Keep a full audit trail of permission and access level changes to support cybersecurity investigations
• Get extra visibility into cloud and on-premises activity when used with SolarWinds Hybrid Cloud Observability and Security Event Manager

Srawbacks of SolarWinds Access Right Manager

• Interface can feel outdated and cluttered
• Third-party integrations can be complex to set up and maintain
• No built-in tools for privileged access management
• Lacks fine-grained delegation and zero standing privilege features

ManageEngine ADAudit Plus is an Active Directory auditing and reporting tool designed to help IT teams keep track of what’s happening across their Windows Server and hybrid cloud environments. It provides detailed change tracking, logon monitoring and audit-ready reporting for on-prem AD as well as Entra ID.

Benefits of ManageEngine ADAudit Plus

• Get real-time alerts on who made changes, what was changed, when and from where
• Detect AD attacks and risky configurations across Azure, AWS and GCP, and automate your incident response
• Monitor Windows logon activity to keep tabs on logon failures, logon history and unusual behavior
• Prepare for audits with compliance-ready reports for SOX, PCI DSS, HIPAA, GDPR and other mandates
• Receive alerts about account lockouts and find the root cause of authentication failures
• Audit privileged user activity to hold admins responsible for sensitive actions
• Use file integrity monitoring to track OS and local file changes and maintain system integrity

Drawbacks of ManageEngine ADAudit Plus

• No built-in provisioning or user management features, as it’s focused mainly on auditing and reporting
• You’ll likely need additional tools for full AD lifecycle management
• According to some user reviews on Gartner, real-time results can be slow to load

Next on our list is AD Pro Toolkit, which is a relatively lightweight tool designed to fill the gaps left by native Active Directory tools. It helps admins avoid spending hours writing PowerShell scripts by providing an all-in-one toolkit to manage key AD tasks more easily.

Benefits of AD Pro Toolkit

• Bulk import new users from CSV files and set their group memberships and properties at once
• Find and handle stale or inactive user and computer accounts with the AD Cleanup Tool
• Access over 200 built-in reports covering logins, passwords, group policy, group membership and more
• Troubleshoot account lockouts and reset passwords with the Lockout Tool
• Perform AD health checks on your domain controllers and schedule them to run automatically
• Easily modify, disable, delete or move users from a single interface

Drawbacks of AD Pro Toolkit

• No dedicated privileged access management (PAM) features
• No fine-grained delegation or role-based access control
• You need a separate tool for reporting
• May not scale well for large, complex enterprise environments

Last on our list is Netwrix Account Lockout Examiner. As the name indicates, it’s not a full-fledged Active Directory management tool, but it still deserves a spot because it can save admins a lot of time and headaches. This tool is built to help you quickly find the root cause of AD account lockouts, which are a common source of help desk tickets and lost productivity.

Benefits of Netwrix Account Lockout Examiner

• Pinpoint the root cause of lockouts in a single click – whether it’s stale credentials, outdated saved passwords, misconfigured services or anything else
• Give your help desk clear lockout details so they can fix issues quickly and reduce downtime
• Reduce the overall load on your IT support team by solving lockout problems more efficiently.
• Minimize the business impact when a critical service account or domain controller account gets locked out

Drawbacks of Netwrix Account Lockout Examiner

• Pinpoint the root cause of lockouts in a single click – whether it’s stale credentials, outdated saved passwords, misconfigured services or anything else
• Give your help desk clear lockout details so they can fix issues quickly and reduce downtime
• Reduce the overall load on your IT support team by solving lockout problems more efficiently.Minimize the business impact when a critical service account or domain controller account gets locked out