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AWS Secrets Manager vs BeyondTrust Password Safe comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 16, 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

AWS Secrets Manager
Ranking in Enterprise Password Managers
3rd
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
15
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
BeyondTrust Password Safe
Ranking in Enterprise Password Managers
7th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
26
Ranking in other categories
Privileged Access Management (PAM) (9th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of July 2025, in the Enterprise Password Managers category, the mindshare of AWS Secrets Manager is 17.3%, down from 21.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of BeyondTrust Password Safe is 3.5%, up from 3.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Enterprise Password Managers
 

Featured Reviews

Mahadev Metre - PeerSpot reviewer
Consistent security and efficiency improvements optimize IT infrastructure with effective management
When creating AWS Secrets Manager, it should be automated using tools such as Terraform, Puppet, or Ansible. With Terraform code, you specify the encryption key, secret name, rotation policy, and secret replication. Human error occurs when feeding secret values manually, especially with large amounts of secrets to input. Secrets should never be protected only by IAM. They should be protected by multiple layers, such as IAM and one or two KMS keys. Additional security measures could be beneficial if necessary. The rotation policy is crucial because some secrets may become obsolete, require updates, or get compromised. With a weekly rotation policy, if unauthorized access occurs, the exposure is limited to seven days. The rotation policy can be customized according to needs.
Ali Hatamleh - PeerSpot reviewer
Smart tooling streamlines account organization and access through advanced grouping features
The features I find valuable in Password Safe include password retention and management, session privilege monitoring, live monitoring and recording, and the use of PS automation scripts for creating connections. The smart tooling and smart group features are also important as, after finalizing discovery, they auto-collect accounts in the environment and organize them in Smart Groups for easy access.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Integrating with other services was straightforward, especially within the AWS environment."
"AWS Secrets Manager is used for storing secret information that has to be a secret from your customer and your employees."
"Secrets Manager helps in retrieving the enrollment variables used by the code."
"The product is easy to use and is inexpensive."
"The solution is very scalable."
"The most valuable feature is usability, as it is quite user-friendly."
"The most valuable feature of AWS Secrets Manager is the ability to keep data secret and assign access permissions to people to grant or restrict access."
"The most valuable feature is security."
"The flexibility of the licensing model is significantly better as it offers both unlimited users and unlimited devices, unlike Delinea, which is based on the number of users."
"The features I find valuable in Password Safe include password retention and management, session privilege monitoring, live monitoring and recording, and the use of PS automation scripts for creating connections."
"I like the session recording feature. I also like the analytics and reports. You can pull up a report, and the UI is fantastic. The system is recording when nobody's there, so we have a record of what's happening."
"Its number one feature is discovery. The discovery engine in BeyondTrust is off the charts. When they perform a discovery, you know everything there is about a server, including what software is installed. For example, if you want to group all of your database servers together, you can do that by using discovery and Smart Rules. If a server has Microsoft SQL installed, it gets put into a group based on a Smart Rule. It makes it very easy to determine what is what in your environment. As organizations grow or acquire other companies and merge, they lose track of what they have. BeyondTrust can help you throw a rope around it very rapidly."
"Overall, I rate BeyondTrust Password Safe as nine out of ten."
"Screen recording is valuable, and integration with applications is easy. We can customize whatever we want. We did a lot of application integration using scripting."
"The technical support and customer services are phenomenal."
"The most valuable feature is the architecture capabilities, which allow designated server components for high availability and failover. It works well with identity and access management solutions, allowing users to be automatically onboarded and offboarded. The account mapping feature makes rollout seamless. The session monitoring capabilities are excellent, with keystroke and graphical monitoring. This enhanced our security posture by providing detailed accounts of user actions. It helped us pass our SOX audits."
 

Cons

"There is room for improvement in terms of integrating with certain other platforms."
"There is a need for better environmental implementation, such as having a security fund as a solution."
"If you don't have enterprise support, then you will not be able to get through to them to get the help. It is not only applicable to AWS Secrets Manager. It is also applicable to any service on AWS."
"We occasionally have problems with rate limits, although that is a problem more generally with AWS."
"It would be good if the AWS Secrets Manager were more customizable."
"An area for improvement in AWS Secrets Manager could be expanding integration options beyond AWS services."
"The sidecar feature has room for improvement."
"If you add one more layer of security to AWS Secrets Manager, even the programmer will not be able to see the secrets."
"The integration with Secure Remote Access must be improved."
"The effectiveness of BeyondTrust Password Safe's session management capabilities for SSH and RDP is pretty much robust, but it needs more improvement for other applications and web-based applications."
"Adding user behavior analysis to the server or messaging would be beneficial."
"The only feature they could improve is the banners because they aren't informative. For example, if something is not correct and I open the error notification, the dialogue box simply says, "This is an error." It would be great if they could provide some valuable comments about how to fix the errors."
"Documentation is the primary area of improvement."
"The product needs to have better integration with SAP products."
"I think that BeyondTrust Password Safe could be improved with more testing. In the beginning, they were practically using customers as beta testers. Maybe the product has evolved since I last used it, but if you look at PAM, privileged access management, whatever's out there has already been done. I don't see there being any other enhancements that are being made regarding PAM, except to support more cloud-based applications."
"If there was one thing, it would be having the documentation standardized. They should keep the documentation consistent. For example, when BeyondTrust updated one of their admin guides, they left out the information on the discovery account requirements, and then over a period of time, we ended up having to search multiple different documents to put together a string of information for a specific topic, which was problematic. It was minor, but it was problematic. Standardized documentation would be the one thing I would suggest."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The cost is somewhat high."
"We've observed that AWS Secrets Manager pricing is based on a per-secret-per-month model. As a result, we prefer to divide our secrets into individual pieces to increase security and grant specific access permissions to certain secrets, systems, or individuals. However, this approach results in higher costs. Therefore, we have been exploring ways to combine our secrets into groups to reduce expenses and simplify management. Nonetheless, we acknowledge that this issue may not be related to the secret manager's functionality."
"We purchase a monthly license for the product."
"I don't believe there is a license cost for the solution."
"The solution is expensive."
"When you buy Password Safe and perform your initial Discovery, you have all these servers that are added to your assets in BeyondTrust, but you're not using a license until you actually start managing the systems. BeyondTrust's licensing is based on the systems when they're managed, which means when an administrator is able to connect to the server through BeyondTrust with a managed account. There would be a privileged account on the endpoint when the licensing starts. A significant advantage to that is that there are many organizations that want to evaluate their environment prior to automatic management."
"The pricing of BeyondTrust is very good as compared to other products. That was the main reason we decided to go with BeyondTrust at first."
"We just pay for Password Safe. Session management is included, but we don't use it. There aren't any additional costs besides the standard licensing fees. We pay for an annual license."
"I would rate the pricing a seven out of ten, where one is cheap and ten is expensive."
"At the time, BeyondTrust was significantly cheaper than CyberArk. Pricing-wise, if I remember correctly, it goes by assets. The pricing was negotiated for our instances based on the number of assets that we onboard into the system. It is a little different from CyberArk, where the pricing is by users. So, it depends. If you have a lot of assets, it can get very expensive."
"This solution is not cheap—it's a very expensive solution. Very, very expensive compared to the features and functions that they offer."
"It has subscription-based licensing. BeyondTrust is three times less expensive than CyberArk."
"The pricing structure is better than the competitors. It's much cheaper than CyberArk. They do the licensing on the basis of assets, not on the number of users. For CyberArk, they base the licensing on the number of users, and they have an expensive model of pricing. BeyondTrust has a cheaper model."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
15%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Insurance Company
6%
Financial Services Firm
16%
Computer Software Company
15%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Government
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

Which is better - Azure Key Vault or AWS Secrets Manager?
Azure Key Vault is a SaaS solution. You can easily store passwords and secrets securely and encrypt them. Azure Key Vault is a great solution to ensure you are compliant with security and governanc...
Which is better - HashiCorp Vault or AWS Secrets Manager?
HashiCorp Vault was designed with your needs in mind. One of the features that makes this evident is its ability to work as both a cloud-agnostic and a multi-cloud solution. As a cloud-agnostic sol...
What do you like most about AWS Secrets Manager?
The most valuable feature of AWS Secrets Manager is its seamless integration with various AWS services.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for BeyondTrust Password Safe?
My experience with BeyondTrust Password Safe's pricing, setup cost, and licensing has been positive, primarily due to its asset-based licensing model. This is a significant advantage for us because...
What needs improvement with BeyondTrust Password Safe?
While generally a strong product, BeyondTrust Password Safe has a few areas that could use some polish. From an administrator's viewpoint, we sometimes see keystroke capturing fail. More significan...
What is your primary use case for BeyondTrust Password Safe?
The main purpose of BeyondTrust Password Safe is for Privileged Access Management, with session monitoring being very effective for risk mitigation. It ensures we adhere to the control standards se...
 

Also Known As

No data available
BeyondTrust PowerBroker Password Safe
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Autodesk, Clevy, Stackery
Aera Energy LLC, Care New England, James Madison University
Find out what your peers are saying about AWS Secrets Manager vs. BeyondTrust Password Safe and other solutions. Updated: June 2025.
861,524 professionals have used our research since 2012.