ManageEngine ADSolutions Vs Quest (formerly Dell Quest)

ADSolutions is an umbrella term for a set of ManageEngine tools that simplify identity and access management (IAM). Quest also offers a range of IAM solutions. This document compares IAM solutions for Windows environments offered by ManageEngine ADSolutions and Quest.

Features	Description	ManageEngine ADManager Plus	Quest ActiveRoles
Active Directory Account Management
User Life Cycle Management	Create, manage and delete user accounts, computers, groups and contacts in Active Directory
User account deprovisioning	Delete user accounts when they become inactive or disabled or get expired
Restore deleted users in bulk	Restore deleted users in Active Directory
Group life cycle management	Create and manage security and distribution groups in Active Directory
Computer life cycle management	Create and manage computers in Active Directory
Restore deleted computers	Restore deleted computers in bulk
Contact life cycle management	Create and manage contacts in Active Directory
Bulk provisioning / reprovisioning with CSV import	Create users, computers, groups and contacts and edit their attributes in bulk by importing them from a CSV file
Template based provisioning / reprovisioning	Create custom templates with common attributes for provisioning / reprovisioning of users, computers, groups and contacts
Active Directory Reporting
Predefined reports User, computer, group reports Contact, OU, password reports NTFS reports Exchange reports Office 365 reports Google Workspace reports Skype for Business reports			Doesn't support Google Workspace / Google Workspace
Purpose-built reports for SOX, HIPAA, GLBA, FISMA and ISO
Export reports
Schedule report generation and email delivery
Printing directly from reports			*
Perform management tasks from reports			*
Exchange Mailbox Management
Bulk Exchange mailbox provisioning	Create Exchange mailboxes in bulk by importing a CSV file
Bulk mailbox reprovisioning / deprovisioning	Modify attributes of mailboxes in bulk or delete mailboxes in bulk
Bulk mailbox migration	Migrate Exchange mailboxes from one Exchange version to another in a single click
Shared, room, equipment, and remote mailbox provisioning	Create shared, remote, room, and equipment mailboxes
Help Desk Delegation
Role-based secure delegation	Delegate different tasks to a particular user with a scope limited to specific organizational units and also track their activities
Technician audit reports	Track actions of help desk technicians
Admin audit reports	Track actions of administrators
Active Directory Workflow
Customizable workflow	Build a workflow structure, with required number of workflow agents based on your needs
Active Directory Automation
Complete automation of vital AD tasks	Automate crucial and repetitive Active Directory tasks
Automate AD processes	Automate a complete process such as AD clean up
Workflow-controlled automation	Implement workflow for controlled automation
Other Platforms
Office 365	Office 365 management & reporting
Google Workspace / Google Workspace	Google Workspace management & reporting
Skype for Business (Lync / LCS / OCS)	Skype for Business (Lync / LCS / OCS) management & reporting
Additional Features
File Server management	Add file servers in your network and manage their NTFS and share permissions
GPO management	Create GPO objects and link them to computer and user objects
AD Search & Employee Search	Search Active Directory for users, computers, groups and employees' contact information		*
Mobile apps
iOS app
Android app
Licensing
Licensing criteria	Licensing based on	No. of domains+help desk technicians. Unlimited no. of AD objects can be managed.	No. of objects
Pricing	Price of the products	Starts at $495	On a much higher end

Features	Description	ManageEngine ADAudit Plus	Quest Change Auditor for Active Directory
Active Directory Auditing
Who, when, where and what AD changes	Reports on who changed what, when, and where in Active Directory
Logon / logoff audit reports	Exact time of user workstation logon & logoff time along with the logon duration
Compliance ready reports	Predefined reports for SOX, HIPAA, PCI-DSS, GLBA, and FISMA compliance
Before and after values of a change	Reports on before and after attribute values of an object
GPO audit reports	Report on changes to Group Policy Objects
DNS, permission, schema, contacts, container, configuration, domain change auditing	Auditing of DNS, permission, schema, contacts, container, configuration, & domain changes
Real-time alerts	Real-time notifications on selected Active Directory changes via email
Custom reports	Create your own custom reports or put up a request for one based on your requirements.		*
History reports	Get reports on Active Directory from a particular period of time in the past
Account lockout analyzer	Provide details and point the reason for the domain account lockout.
Printer auditing and removable storage auditing	Track all files printed; monitor USB and other removable storage devices used within the network		*
Schedule reports	Schedule Active Directory reports for automated email delivery
File Server Auditing
File Server auditing	Reports on file and folder permission, shares and access changes		Available in another Quest product
Supported File Servers	File Servers supported for auditing	Windows File Server, Windows File Server FailOver Cluster, NetApp Filer	Available in another Quest product
File integrity monitoring	Monitor changes to the Windows system, configuration, program files, file attributes, and folders		*
Access permission changes	Reports on folder and file permission changes (DACL and SACL)
Failover Clusters	Audit and monitor the Windows File Server Failover Cluster
Additional Auditing Capabilities
Custom rule-based filter	Create report profiles based on custom rules with a filter
Alert profile	Configure thresholds / filters to trigger alerts
Archival	Sustain compliance by archiving and storing audit data	Stored in a preferred location and easily reproducible	Data is stored in the product
Graphical reports	Graphical representation of audited data
Agentless auditing	Agentless collection of audit data
Multi-user role-based access	Give help desk technicians secure access to essential reports based on their role
Audit trail of events	Complete report on the sequence of events that resulted in a particular change
Licensing & Pricing
Licensing criteria	Licensing based on	No. of Domain Controllers	No. of enabled user accounts
Pricing	Price of the products	Starts from $495 for 2 Domain Controllers	$4142 for 250 enabled user accounts

Features	Description	ManageEngine ADSelfService Plus	Quest Password Manager
Key Features
Password reset / account unlock	Users can reset their forgotten passwords and unlock their locked out Windows accounts without calling help desk
Password expiry notification	Notify users to change password before it expires via email		*
Multi-platform password synchronizer	Synchronize password and account changes with a wide range of cloud-based and on-premises applications	(Supports Google Workspace, Office 365, Salesforce, Zendesk, Microsoft Dynamics CRM, Zoho, IBM i/AS400, HP UX, OpenLDAP, AD LDS, Oracle DB, Oracle Ebusiness Suite)	(The exact list of platforms supported is not available with us)
Employee directory update	Employees can update their profile information in Active Directory
Employee search	Users can search for their colleagues' information
Password policy enforcer	Enforce custom password policies with varying complexities
Single Sign-On	Provide one-click access to cloud applications based on Active Directory identities
Group subscription	Users can opt-in and opt-out of security and distribution groups at their will based on policies set by administrator
Change password	Users can change their passwords from anywhere, anytime
Cached credentials update	Update cached credentials when users reset their passwords even if they are not connected to the corporate network		*
Help desk assisted password reset and account unlock		Can integrate ADSelfService Plus with ADManager Plus, ManageEngine's review and approval based help desk software	Offers a help desk interface
Mobile password management	Self-service password reset and account unlock via mobile devices
Windows & Mac Logon Agent	Users can access the self service portal from the Windows login prompt as well as Mac OS X login prompt		Doesn't support Mac Logon Agent
Built-in reporting mechanism	Reports on various aspects of user actions and their password status
Identity verification methods	Users' identities are verified before they can reset their password or unlock their account	Security Q&A, SMS / email based PIN code verification, Google Authenticator	Security Q&A and SMS / email based PIN code verification
Additional Features
Installation and deployment	Easy installation and deployment		Installation is difficult and may require assistance
Multi-language support	Support for multiple languages	(Supports 17 languages)	(Supports 17 languages)
Automatic password reset / account unlock	Expired passwords / locked-out accounts are automatically reset / unlocked
Password reset and account unlock limit	Limit the number of times that users can reset passwords and unlock accounts in a specific time duration		*
Multiple enrollment options	Force enrollment, enrollment reminders and automatic enrollment options		Automatic enrollment is not supported
Encryption standards	Encryption protocols used to securely store the security questions & answers	SHA-2 and MD5	3DES, MD5, SSL and CryptoAPI
Licensing & Pricing
Licensing criteria	Licensing based on	No. of domain users	No. of enabled user accounts
Pricing	Price of the products	Starts from $595 for 500 domain users	$652 for 100 domain users

Features	Description	ManageEngine Exchange Reporter Plus	Quest Change Auditor for Exchange
Exchange Monitoring
Database backup monitoring	View a comprehensive list of information regarding all backups of your Exchange database, regardless of your backup application.
Email response time	View the response time (received time vis-s-vis. reply time) for all email messages in an Exchange mailbox within a selected period.
CPU and memory utilization	Complete information about the CPU usage of servers and the memory usage by servers		Available in Foglight for Exchange
DAG monitoring	Insight on DAGs		Available in Foglight for Exchange
OWA and Active-Sync Reports
OWA Access report	Reports on OWA access to Exchange with information on the user, client IP, browser, and server used in the process
ActiveSync request and general reports	Reports on sync requests coming from all ActiveSync devices and on policies concerning ActiveSync		*
Exchange Traffic Reports
Mailbox traffic report	Real time mailbox traffic data based on both numbers and size
Organization traffic report	Track the overall number and size of messages sent and received in an Exchange organization
Exchange Mailbox Reports
Mailbox size report	Get the current mailbox size of Exchange users
Mailbox size growth report	Report on mailbox size growth over a period of time
Mailbox size restrictions report	Report on users with specific mailbox storage limits
Mailbox content report	Report to monitor emails based on keywords, attachment size, extension, etc.
Room mailbox report	Report on room mailboxes
Other Reports
Distribution lists report	Reports on distribution lists, its members, and inactive distribution lists
Exchange Auditing
Non-owner mailbox logon auditing	Report on all non-users who have gained excessive rights to access other users? mailboxes
Mailbox permission changes auditing	Reports on all critical changes made to mailbox permissions with details of who changed what
Mailbox property changes auditing	Report on the changes made to the mailbox properties
Store changes auditing	Report on any store mount or dismount and store status
Address list and recipient policies auditing	Report on changes to the Exchange address lists and recipient policies		*
Store group auditing	Auditing of addition, deletion and modifications of storage groups and stores		*
Additional Features
Report scheduler	Reports can be exported for later use in a targeted file format and scheduled for automatic email delivery
Custom reports	Create your own custom reports based on your requirements
Licensing & Pricing
Licensing criteria	Licensing based on	No. of mailboxes	No. of mailboxes
Pricing	Price of the products	Single license for Exchange management, change auditing & reporting capabilities; $495 for 200 mailboxes	Doesn't offer monitoring capabilities. Need to buy Foglight for Exchange for monitoring needs. Change Auditor for Exchange is priced at $4102 for 250 mailboxes

Features	Description	ManageEngine RecoveryManager Plus	Quest Recovery Manager
General
Bare-metal backup & restoration	Bare-metal backup and restoration capabilities
AD user backup & recovery	AD users can be backed up & recovered
AD group backup & recovery	AD groups can be backed up & recovered
AD GPO backup & recovery	AD GPOs can be backed up & recovered
AD OU backup & recovery	AD OUs can be backed up & recovered
AD DNS backup & recovery	AD DNS can be backed up & recovered
AD computer backup & recovery	AD computers can be backed up & recovered
AD contact backup & recovery	AD contacts can be backed up & recovered
Exchange attributes backup & recovery	Users' Exchange attributes can be backed up & recovered
Group membership backup & recovery	Group memberships can be backed up & recovered
Custom attribute backup & recovery (Extended schema attributes)	Custom attributes can be backed up & recovered
AD rollback	Restore AD to a previous backup point
Recycle bin	Restore deleted AD objects and heir attributes in a single click
Advanced backup options
Multiple domain support	Support for multiple domains
Backup scheduler	Customizable backup scheduler
Incremental backups	Perform scheduled and incremental backups of all AD objects
Backup retention	Define retention period for your AD backups
Technicians	Provide non-admin operators with restoration capabilities
Attribute level restoration	Recover only specific attributes of desired objects.
Forced replication after recovering linked objects	Force replicate the data in all Domain Controllers after recovering linked objects
Version management	Maintain each backup of an object as a separate version and restore an object to any preferred version
Version comparison	Compare different values across multiple versions of backups so that the preferred values could be easily identified and restored
Backup notifications	Send email notifications on the status of backup operations to multiple users.
Restart free recovery	Recover deleted AD objects from Windows 2003, 2008, or 2012 servers without having to restart your Domain Controller.
Licensing & Pricing
Licensing criteria	Licensing based on	No. of users backed up	No. of users backed up
Pricing	Price of the products	$395 for 250 Domain Users	$1367 for 100 Domain Users

* Could not find sufficient information regarding the availability of this feature

Conclusion: ManageEngine ADSolutions and Quest solutions are both well-equipped to take care of your IAM needs in Windows environment and offer a similar feature set. They differ mainly in the following areas:

• ADSolutions products are known for their easy installation capabilities. Installing Quest solutions is time consuming and one may require assistance for the same.
• ADSolutions offers flexibility in licensing. For example, in the case of ADManager Plus, you can choose the licenses based on number of domains and help desk technicians deployed, or the number of workflow requesters, and allows unlimited no. of AD objects to be managed. Most Quest solutions are licensed based on the number of objects to be managed.
• ADSolutions products are priced much lower than any Quest product, without compromising on the feature set.
• ADSolutions products can be purchased individually or as a single unified software portfolio AD360, which contains various ADSolutions products. AD360 can be further customized as per an organization's specific requirements. Quest solutions have to be purchased individually.

Disclaimer: The comparison juxtaposes the features of ManageEngine ADSolutions suite of products and Quest suite of products based on the publicly available information as of January 15, 2016. The data provided could vary in the actual products.