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Fortra's Powertech Identity & Access Manager vs Idira Privileged Access Manager comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jun 2, 2026

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

Fortra's Powertech Identity...
Ranking in Privileged Access Management (PAM)
33rd
Average Rating
5.0
Number of Reviews
1
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Idira Privileged Access Man...
Ranking in Privileged Access Management (PAM)
1st
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
230
Ranking in other categories
User Activity Monitoring (1st), Enterprise Password Managers (2nd), Mainframe Security (1st), Operational Technology (OT) Security (3rd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2026, in the Privileged Access Management (PAM) category, the mindshare of Fortra's Powertech Identity & Access Manager is 1.0%, up from 0.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Idira Privileged Access Manager is 9.2%, down from 17.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Privileged Access Management (PAM) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Idira Privileged Access Manager9.2%
Fortra's Powertech Identity & Access Manager1.0%
Other89.8%
Privileged Access Management (PAM)
 

Featured Reviews

reviewer910470 - PeerSpot reviewer
Practice Lead at a computer software company with 51-200 employees
Inexperienced support for old product, but good flexibility for use case customization
HelpSystems Powertech is scalable if you throw more servers at it. Then you can distribute the load, which is a Microsoft SQL Server backend, and as long as you allocate enough resources to those things, then it is scalable. That's good enough. It would be an entire organization that uses it. So at a hospital for example, a healthcare system, a bank, and it would be the entire workforce on it. I haven't see a lot of customer's specific use cases, but it is for the whole workforce, everyone. The CEO of the company to the janitor. In terms of maintaining it, that requires application administrators or system administrators. There is a manual process to update the product, at least with the on-premise version.
Atul-Gujar - PeerSpot reviewer
CyberArk manager at a comms service provider with 10,001+ employees
Secures critical infrastructures with essential user session audit records
A potential area for improvement is enhancing support for cluster environments and distributed Vaults. Clients in multiple countries that need central access have different challenges that require better solutions from CyberArk. For financial services, CyberArk can improve incident response by ensuring fast support for critical priority tickets to meet compliance requirements. Providing more documentation on CyberArk is recommended for new team members to enhance their troubleshooting capabilities. I understand it's up to the client, but 99% fail to change the demo key, so it's crucial for CyberArk to emphasize changing the key and documenting it as part of the installation process.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"HelpSystems Powertech's feature that I have found most valuable is its flexibility."
"HelpSystems Powertech's feature that I have found most valuable is its flexibility. It is able to be extended. A lot of the products these days, especially the ones on the cloud, are limited and can't handle all the use cases. Often there is not even a way to customize the application to meet uncommon use cases and HelpSystems provides an infrastructure that lends itself to the ability to be customized."
"Before CyberArk, our developers would connect from the VPN directly to the jump servers to get all of their access; we have removed the jump servers to connect to CyberArk, security has improved, we know who is accessing and what they are doing, the access is secure, and CyberArk has increased our security."
"It is a leading solution and one of the best SaaS solutions in the market."
"The accounts are maintained automatically. Hence, resource and administration costs are less."
"AIM has been a great help in automating password retrieval which removes the need for hard-coded credentials."
"If properly set up, CyberArk Enterprise Password Vault has good stability, and is a very solid tool. It can run by itself. Its most valuable features are auto password recycling and PSM."
"Overall, as a partner in our digital transformation, CyberArk has been great."
"The module called PTA, Privileged Threat Analytics, is very useful. When you give access to a user, it monitors and detects if the user's behavior is unusual. After giving access, it continually checks if the user is the same user."
"CyberArk is the best out there."
 

Cons

"I would not necessarily recommend customers use it."
"In terms of what could be improved, I would say the support of the product. It's hard to get support for it. I think this is emblematic of the fact that they don't have a lot of employees who have long-term experience with it."
"Privileged Threat Analytics (PTA) that can function in more that one AD domain at a time."
"If there is an area that has room for improvement, it's probably working with their support and getting people on the phone. That is hard to do with most products in general, but that seems to be the difficult area. The product is fantastic, but sometimes we want somebody on the phone."
"It would be good to have integrations with other tools and firewalls, such as Zscaler and CrowdStrike. Although I am not fully aware of recent updates, more cross-platform integration would be valuable. A SOC analyst would like to have centralized access in terms of information flowing in even for privileged access management. They would like to have control over everything instead of opening four to five tabs for different sorts of information."
"As they grow, the technical support is having growing pains. One of the things is just being able to get somebody on the phone sometimes."
"A notable request I have regarding CyberArk Privileged Access Manager is to address the issues of database corruption identified in cluster environments experienced by multiple clients."
"The pricing is too expensive and should be reduced."
"If you are an administrator or architect, then the solution is kind of complicated, as it is mostly focused on the end user. So, they need to also focus on the people who are implementing it."
"Occasionally, there are lagging issues. Sometimes users have to re-login. When users copy passwords, there is sometimes a lag, so they have to log out and log in, but these are very rare cases."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available
"The product's licensing is yearly. I would rate the solution's pricing a six out of ten."
"The price of this solution is expensive."
"With reducing the privileged account access, there has been a huge improvement. They are now bringing more accounts on a little at a time."
"This solution is considered to be more expensive than others out there on the market today."
"The solution is cost-effective for the features."
"Previously, the pricing was very meager. They started publicizing and advertising the solution, growing CyberArk, as an organization. They also changed their pricing with that growth, e.g., the pricier the product, the more people who will purchase it."
"Quite expensive"
"Since CyberArk is at the top of the Gartner list, the cost is indeed on the higher side, but customers must discern which entities are essential to purchase. They should weigh the cost against the quality received."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
No data available
Financial Services Firm
12%
Outsourcing Company
10%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Construction Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business59
Midsize Enterprise42
Large Enterprise175
 

Questions from the Community

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How does Sailpoint IdentityIQ compare with CyberArk PAM?
We evaluated Sailpoint IdentityIQ before ultimately choosing CyberArk. Sailpoint Identity Platform is a solution to manage risks in cloud enterprise environments. It automates and streamlines the m...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for CyberArk Privileged Access Manager?
My thoughts on the pricing of CyberArk Privileged Access Manager depend entirely on the vendors' requirements. If they want their things to be secure, they have to spend accordingly. We have four t...
What needs improvement with CyberArk Privileged Access Manager?
I believe account discovery and rolling support need to be improved. Account discovery is important when integrating with other systems, as other PAM solutions can perform account discovery and onb...
 

Also Known As

HelpSystems Powertech Identity & Access Manager, Powertech Identity & Access Manager, BoKS, BoKS ServerControl, Fox Technologies ApplicationControl, ApplicationControl
CyberArk Privileged Access Security, CyberArk Enterprise Password Vault
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Integris Health
Rockwell Automation
Find out what your peers are saying about Idira by Palo Alto Networks, One Identity, Okta and others in Privileged Access Management (PAM). Updated: July 2026.
910,437 professionals have used our research since 2012.