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Amazon Cognito vs F5 BIG-IP Access Policy Manager (APM) comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Aug 11, 2024

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

Amazon Cognito
Ranking in Access Management
7th
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
12
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
F5 BIG-IP Access Policy Man...
Ranking in Access Management
10th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
14
Ranking in other categories
Secure Web Gateways (SWG) (19th), Network Access Control (NAC) (8th), SSL VPN (5th), Remote Access (13th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2025, in the Access Management category, the mindshare of Amazon Cognito is 7.6%, up from 7.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of F5 BIG-IP Access Policy Manager (APM) is 2.8%, down from 3.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Access Management
 

Featured Reviews

Erik Aceiro - PeerSpot reviewer
Good integration with AWS services but not feasible for B2C because MFAs are nonexistent
The developer experience for mobile apps is terrible. Documentation is very poor and it is difficult to read the documents available to put things into practice. Our team has issues finding information related to using the solution. SDK and libraries available for mobile apps are terrible. For example, if you use MFA to migrate one user from your database to the pool, you need to use Lambda functions or other methods in AWS to get the solution enabled. It is extremely difficult to put a very, very scalable project into practice. Our team doesn't think you can use the solution for B2C on a large scale. We thought the solution would provide an agile experience but it does not. The solution needs to keep a history of passwords. For example, you should be able to check if customers used the same password in the past when connecting to a company by username and password. This type of feature is a must for our project. The MFA related to the solution's side is nonexistent. MFA should occur on the Facebook or Google side and also on the solution's side. This is a big problem because we have wallets, credit cards, and sensitive data stored for each customer. One layer of security is totally missing.
Ashish Kumar Rai - PeerSpot reviewer
Offers remote access control, good GUI and easy to configure
I'd suggest improved documentation integration directly within the GUI. Right now, finding comprehensive documentation often requires going to external websites like the community portal. In the APM interface itself, they could add direct hyperlinks to relevant online documentation. This would provide easy access to admin guides and other resources when working within the GUI.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The solution is proto connective and integrates well with other AWS services."
"The most valuable features of Amazon Cognito are the pre and post-token generation, and the different Cognito triggers. It has lots of functionality and flexibility."
"I appreciate Amazon Cognito's ability to scale with demand and its seamless user verification features."
"They offer a permission tool to help us manage multi-factor authentication."
"Cognito speeds up our development and saves us time."
"The features most valuable to us are the ability to integrate with various IDPs and the capability to sync with multiple applications."
"The most valuable features of Amazon Cognito are OTP validation and email validation."
"This is a scalable solution. If our app or general usage increases, this solution can support it."
"In my opinion, the GUI is perfect with the configuration options provided. F5 BIG-IP has given customization options and policy configuration tools in the GUI. It's good and good enough to work."
"The most valuable feature is the virtual IP creation. It's our most frequently used feature."
"Our organization is small - a college with about 3,500 students. We use F5 BIG-IP Access Policy Manager to protect our site, especially from the Iranian attacks we faced last year. We restrict access to only inside the country."
"The solution is stable and reliable."
"Stickiness is the most valuable feature of the product."
"F5 BIG-IP APM is relatively easy to use."
"The product allows us to create customized portals for your users."
"The load balancing features are valuable."
 

Cons

"The setup and configuration can be complex, especially for advanced use cases."
"There is room for improvement in Amazon Cognito."
"What I found generally lacking in AWS is privileged access management (PAM)."
"The ease and simplicity of integration could be improved when using this solution. When using Okta, scope is a single endpoint with a parameter as a scope. In the Cognito for each scope, there is a separate endpoint."
"Amazon Cognito’s UI needs improvement while onboarding new users."
"The secure authentication of Amazon Cognito has benefited our company. We were previously using legacy signup systems."
"You need to evaluate the export users. The multifactor authentication, much less this room for improving the configuration setup of that."
"In a future release, we would like to have different methods to validate the characteristic of a user. For example, we would like to use biometric data to analyze the behavior of users."
"I'd suggest improved documentation integration directly within the GUI. Right now, finding comprehensive documentation often requires going to external websites like the community portal."
"The price of this product can be improved."
"In my opinion, the GUI side needs some improvement based on my usage. Sometimes, it doesn't work as efficiently as the CLI side."
"The operational deployment is not great."
"The initial setup was complex."
"The solution’s GUI looks very old."
"The technical support’s response time must be improved."
"The solution is quite costly."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The price of Amazon Cognito is low. The pricing model is based on the users."
"The pricing of this solution is good compared to other solutions on the market."
"The product is relatively inexpensive compared to other tools."
"The price of the solution depends on the number of users using it."
"On a scale from one to ten, where one is cheap and ten is expensive, I rate the solution's pricing a five out of ten."
"The pricing is bad so I rate it a two out of ten."
"We pay $600 monthly per user for licences and there are no other additional costs."
"The price of Amazon Cognito is expensive. We are on an annual subscription."
"The product is very expensive."
"The tool is a little bit expensive."
"Recently, they have simplified the licensing"
"I rate the tool's pricing an eight out of ten."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
17%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Healthcare Company
6%
Educational Organization
5%
Financial Services Firm
14%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Government
10%
Computer Software Company
10%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Amazon Cognito?
The most valuable feature of the solution is its swift authentication.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Amazon Cognito?
Pricing is considered expensive for smaller organizations. Cognito's pricing was rated seven out of ten due to its cost.
What needs improvement with Amazon Cognito?
The setup and configuration can be complex, especially for advanced use cases. A dedicated documentation portal with comprehensive information would be helpful. The user interface could be more int...
What do you like most about F5 BIG-IP Access Policy Manager (APM)?
In my opinion, the GUI is perfect with the configuration options provided. F5 BIG-IP has given customization options and policy configuration tools in the GUI. It's good and good enough to work.
What needs improvement with F5 BIG-IP Access Policy Manager (APM)?
Regarding price, I'm not directly involved in purchasing, but our CIO thinks the product is very expensive. He's considering moving from the tool to Citrix NetScaler WAF because it's cheaper, and w...
 

Also Known As

No data available
F5 Access Policy Manager
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Expedia, Intuit, Royal Dutch Shell, Brooks Brothers
City Bank, Ricacorp Properties, Miele, American Systems, Bangladesh Post Office
Find out what your peers are saying about Amazon Cognito vs. F5 BIG-IP Access Policy Manager (APM) and other solutions. Updated: January 2025.
831,265 professionals have used our research since 2012.