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CyberArk Identity vs Okta Workforce Identity vs Symantec Siteminder comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

Review summaries and opinions

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

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2025, in the Access Management category, the mindshare of CyberArk Identity is 3.1%, up from 2.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Okta Workforce Identity is 11.5%, up from 9.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Symantec Siteminder is 3.8%, down from 4.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Access Management
 

Featured Reviews

Julio Montero - PeerSpot reviewer
Access management system provides strong security and effortless user authentication
The solution can be deployed on cloud or on-premises. CyberArk is more on the cloud than on local hardware. The deployment is initially quite difficult. That said, when you are doing the implementation of CyberArk, there are so many tutorials that make the learning process very easy. The only complaint could be the language barrier. It's difficult if you don't have a very good level of English. Otherwise, it is very easy. You can have it set up within three months without much difficulty. It's hard to get started, however, once you get going, it gets easier. A full deployment takes half a year or less. There is some maintenance necessary. A company is constantly hiring and letting go of employees. The access is always changing, so access must always be adjusted. Or, if we need another law of filter, we would need to add those, or even take them away. That's another aspect of maintenance.
Tor Nordhagen - PeerSpot reviewer
Extremely easy to work with, simple to set up, and reasonably priced
The drawback of this solution is that in our shops, many staff members sometimes have to be borrowed from one shop to another and the solution does not really support having multiple roles. The user experience we would like to have when a person works in shop A which pays their salary is that they should have access to pretty much everything. Maybe you have somebody who is a manager in that shop A, he should be able to order new wear, he should be able to change the pricing, he should be able to empty the cash registry, and ship it to the bank. But when for instance, in COVID, people had to fill in for people in shops where a lot of people were sick, then they had to actually use user accounts of people that work in shop B. If you were employed in shop A, you could not work in shop B without borrowing somebody else's user ID and password. Which is really bad. We haven't been able to work around that and Okta Workforce Identity does not have a solution for it. We are now piloting their identity governance solution. Obviously, it's easy to give somebody access, give them an account, and give them roles, but it's hard to maintain that. For example, if you moved from, say working in a shop to working in a warehouse. But why do you still have all this shop access? The solution has until now not had anything to really support the process of taking away access. But now we are in a better release program of Okta's identity governance solution. Although it's very basic, the solution has started on a journey, but identity governance is something that Okta Workforce Identity really needs to improve. The ability or the options in the solution for changing the look and feel are not good enough because in our partner portal, essentially what they have is an ugly admin interface. The admin interface is good enough for us technical people because that's all we need. We work with the product and we're able to see the data but when it comes to presenting the service portal, Okta Workforce Identity does not have any capabilities really for making it look pretty. To add branding and different graphical user interface elements than Okta basic for essentially delegated admin for the business-to-business portal is horrifying because you're essentially using the tech admin. The only option we had and used, was to take the tech admin console and strip it. so that a vendor that has some goods that are sold in the shops, when they want to add a user on their side, say a driver or a packer on their side who should know how much they've packed in a truck to come to our warehouse, then the user interface that this vendor is using, these functional people will then have to use an extremely basic user interface.
Muzi Lubisi - PeerSpot reviewer
Improved user experience with seamless integration and easy installation
The feature that I mostly valued is the ease of installation on different systems, especially on Windows. Additionally, it is very beneficial for deploying single sign-on sessions between different windows on a web browser, provided I am connected to the right identity provider. That seamless integration significantly improves user experience and efficiency.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Overall, I would rate CyberArk Identity a nine out of ten."
"The most valuable features of CyberArk Identity are its ability to control access to administrative staff."
"I had one machine that I could not use due to an invalid token. They resolved the problem immediately after I reported it, on the same day, within one hour. It is a very good experience."
"The features that I personally find most effective in terms of security stem from the fact that it is easy to integrate and also the adoption is faster."
"It has machine learning and can help clients to learn the environment and understand what is happening."
"The tool helps with authentication. It acts as an MFA for any kind of privileged access that occurs in our organization."
"I found the solution to be stable."
"The setup, via cloud, is simple."
"One of the most beneficial features of the solution is the user provisioning and the de-provisioning feature."
"The product is easy to use."
"It made things a lot easier, especially with passwords."
"The most valuable aspects of the solution are the integration with external websites one-factor authentication."
"The most valuable features are ease of operation and visibility."
"It is dependent on the evolution of your user base. It depends on usage per user, so the more sign-ins there are, the more expensive it becomes, so it works best for smaller companies from a financial perspective."
"The support for YubiKey is really good because you don't actually have to type in your username and password."
"Okta has introduced the Universal Directory. It has custom attribute capability and user permissions to read/write on their profiles or hide them. Profile sources and identity profile sourcing are two different components that I haven't seen in other products."
"That seamless integration significantly improves user experience and efficiency."
"Ease of use is very good, for administrating it. It's very well known."
"I liked the debugging part. There are only two files (trace file and log file) that you need to look into while performing debugging, and the logs give you the exact info on where and what needs to be fixed."
"IWA is an out-of-the-box feature. The SAML-based federation is standard for all tools. However, CA Single Sign-On has made the federation configuration way too simple and handy to set up and use."
"The solution is easy to use for our managers."
"The Directory is secure. It's our user store, and it's important to keep our members safe. The product does well with that."
"A valuable feature of Siteminder is the way it handles bulk traffic. The features it has, in terms of routing the traffic and load balancing, are good."
"You can quickly deploy the entire product with a basic config within couple of hours."
 

Cons

"To enhance the product, they can consider improving the user interface of the software and possibly the customer support team."
"They could improve their UI and make everything more user-friendly."
"I'm not sure what needs improvement. It is a good platform."
"When you translate the page from one language to another, it can be a difficult process. The translation isn't always good, and it may have a completely different name. I've noticed this in the English to Spanish translation."
"We would like to see an improvement in the ability to manage mobile devices."
"Integration or deployment is extremely difficult for CyberArk Identity."
"The user interface could be improved."
"CyberArk Identity could improve by having the ability to better manage the network, such as Cisco. There seem to be some issues in this area."
"Support could be a bit faster."
"The pricing could be improved."
"A room for improvement in Okta Workforce Identity is its price. It could be cheaper. The biggest benefit of the solution is that everything works securely without extra steps, so you're saving on your workforce's time and effort because your applications work smoothly and securely, but you'd need to pay some amount of money for that. Another area that could be improved, though not necessarily regarding Okta Workforce Identity, is the SSO applications because so many of the source applications charge extra money to put the SSO to work, which means you have to buy a more expensive license. Nowadays, SSO is a mainstream functionality and it should be out-of-the-box in those applications because it's so easy to set up."
"Okta could improve by making their learning materials more user-friendly."
"The solution lacks an on-premises deployment model so it can't offer a hybrid solution. It would be ideal if clients had options that weren't just cloud-based."
"There should be automated aggregation and complete classification processes included in it."
"The solution can be quite expensive."
"The only aspect in which it can be improved is that the interface could be cleaner. I found this even when I was trying to do my certification exam because the certification is hands-on. You find yourself fumbling around a little bit to find simple things. This happens even when you start to get familiar with the product."
"If the reporting feature can be integrated into SSO itself that will be an icing on the cake."
"We're currently unable to find information about if the solution can do a full implementation with SQL. Some better and more accessible documentation for new users or those curious about the product would be helpful."
"CA has reporting at the moment. With the reporting, every particular segmented product has a reporting engine. I would like to see centralized reporting for all of them together."
"I would prefer to see their SAML integration be a more streamlined and easier interface."
"In future releases, I would like to see maybe more capabilities with some more modern authentication."
"Siteminder needs to improve its user experience."
"We are finding some compatibility issues. We're still working with CA on them."
"The Federation part of CA Single Sign On, it's a bit complex to implement because it involves the SSL certificates, exchange of certificates, and lot of technical details. The documentation misses some important parts of this, so that's the reason it took some time for us to go live."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"We find that the pricing and licensing of this solution is adequate, as compared to the other competitors in the market."
"The pricing is acceptable. It is worth considering what we are protecting with the amount charged."
"In terms of pricing, BeyondTrust and CyberArk tend to be more expensive, with CyberArk receiving an eight out of ten, in this regard."
"It's not that affordable compared to Delinea or other products. They're less expensive and allow more customization. For the cost, it is expensive."
"The solution is cheap and I rate its pricing an eight out of ten."
"CyberArk Identity is an expensive solution."
"The pricing of CyberArk Identity is competitive."
"I would rate the tool’s pricing a seven out of ten. The product’s pricing is expensive and is on a yearly basis. You will need to pay around 10,000 GBP for 500 users."
"The solution’s pricing needs to be reasonable. You are dealing with a lot of components and the pricing is component-based."
"This is an expensive solution but the security makes it worthwhile."
"It has a yearly subscription. As compared to its competitors, it is quite expensive. It also has a complex licensing model."
"The product is expensive compared to other vendors."
"It could be a bit too pricey for small companies. Okta Workforce Identity can add a lot of benefits, but smaller companies may not have a lot of applications that need to be managed by Okta Workforce Identity. In larger organizations, there are more departments, applications, and users to manage. Okta Workforce Identity adds a bit more value to those bigger organizations. In addition to standard licensing fees, there are also additional costs for things"
"Price-wise, Okta Workforce Identity is a cheap solution. The overall cost depends on the license since you can negotiate with Okta or any of Okta's partners only if you opt for many licenses."
"The licensing model is fine for general service usage. However, the charges for API features and API tokens can be quite high."
"The pricing for Okta Workforce Identity could still be improved or made cheaper. It costs from 50 to 100 euros a year per user. Okta Workforce Identity has different packages you can choose from, and my previous company had all of them, particularly the full Okta suite."
"I recommend conducting a PoC on every available product before choose one."
"The solution's pricing is competitive."
"Symantec Siteminder is expensive; they could definitely do better on the price."
"The licensing is fair for this solution."
"Siteminder is a little costly. You pay for licensing, and they offer packages, so if you have less users, then you have to buy different products at different prices. If you have more of a user base, then the package is different. They also include other features—for example, if you have a database and you're using Siteminder, then it's good to use a Semantic-specific database, but if you are using less, then you have to purchase the database separately. Whereas if you are going for a bigger license, then it comes within the package. It depends on which plan you are using."
"CA solutions are generally expensive but for the customer the ROI is big."
"The price is quite comparable to the other enterprise-level solutions in that market."
"The pricing is reasonable."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
17%
Computer Software Company
14%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Healthcare Company
6%
Computer Software Company
16%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
7%
Financial Services Firm
36%
Insurance Company
12%
Computer Software Company
8%
Manufacturing Company
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about CyberArk Identity?
The integration capabilities, ability to integrate CyberArk into the overall IBB strategy of our current clients.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for CyberArk Identity?
The pricing point is very good. I compared it with other products, and it does not require a heavy investment.
What needs improvement with CyberArk Identity?
It does not have global market penetration, and sometimes, there are support issues. CyberArk Identity can definitely...
What do you like most about Okta Workforce Identity?
Okta has introduced the Universal Directory. It has custom attribute capability and user permissions to read/write on...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Okta Workforce Identity?
Pricing for Okta is reasonably not that much, however, I don't have access to the commercial aspect.
What needs improvement with Okta Workforce Identity?
Okta should have at least a local presense for countries that align with or comply with GDPR or data sovereignty, so ...
What do you like most about Symantec Siteminder?
It's agent-based. It's convenient to deploy and integrate.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Symantec Siteminder?
When considering pricing, I have usually advised on the Microsoft solution, but compared to that, Symantec SiteMinder...
What needs improvement with Symantec Siteminder?
I need to check the latest documentation, however, being able to expand or at least communicate with other identity p...
 

Also Known As

Idaptive
No data available
SiteMinder, CA SSO, Layer7 SiteMinder
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

MLB, Citi, Pfizer, SulAmerica, GE Capital, Shiseido
FedEx, Zoom, Takeda, Lululemon Athletica, GrunHub, jetBlue, McKensson, Bain & Company, Engie, Peloton, Sonos, T-Mobile, Hewlett Packard, MGM Resorts, Ally Financial, Priceline, Albertsons, Itercom, Classy, FICO, Kensho, Live Nation, Drata, Rotary, and others.
British Telecom, CoreBlox, DBS, HMS, Itera ASA and Simeo
Find out what your peers are saying about Microsoft, Okta, Auth0 and others in Access Management. Updated: April 2025.
849,190 professionals have used our research since 2012.