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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 (3rd), Mainframe Security (1st), Operational Technology (OT) Security (3rd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of June 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 9.8%, down from 18.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Privileged Access Management (PAM) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
CyberArk Privileged Access Manager9.8%
Fortra's Powertech Identity & Access Manager1.0%
Other89.2%
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. 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."
"HelpSystems Powertech's feature that I have found most valuable is its flexibility."
"The most valuable feature is the ability to delegate access to admins when they need it, allowing us to have some kind of proof on the approval process, rather than give people standing access on a full-time basis."
"Technical support is very helpful whenever we have any questions."
"With this product and the protection it offers, you can witness ROI immediately."
"If your business/organization has crown-jewel data, this is the tool to use."
"The password protection itself is the most important feature. It's something we didn't have before."
"It has improved the way our company functions on the basis that they're expanding, and the SDDC management solution and the decision to bring on security licenses under the system umbrella, then has passwords and the system management be a requirement in the coming quarters."
"The best feature of CyberArk Privileged Access Manager is its core function: automatically managing and securing credentials."
"The PSM is excellent and the ability to write your own connectors and plugins is invaluable as far as flexibility goes."
 

Cons

"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."
"I would not necessarily recommend customers use it."
"In terms of mean time to respond, I acknowledge variable response time. The L1 team is proactive, yet the vendor often pushes to close incidents swiftly, even when issues remain unresolved."
"The only problem involves granting access to people who are authorized to view it."
"CyberArk Privileged Access Manager can be improved because I have experienced one issue where a user connected through RDP to a Linux server and the PAM could not fetch any commands or key store logging from the Linux server, which works fine on Windows servers."
"Having a cloud version would be very helpful. You have to invest a lot of money for the infrastructure hardware so the cloud version would help."
"The solution is too complicated to use and should be simplified. It took me a long time to understand how to use it. There is a lot that the solution can improve for the future."
"In complex network infrastructure environments, sporadic network disruptions could create issues accessing the various CyberArk network devices."
"There is a bit of a learning curve, but it's a pretty complex solution."
"Pricing is a concern for me because it is not very user-friendly for startups, new users, or very small organizations."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available
"No, I do not have any advice on the price of the product."
"I would rate the tool’s pricing a six out of ten."
"Our risk is definitely significantly lower. Also, our resources are low."
"CyberArk DNA is free if you purchase the CyberArk solution. There is no additional charge for CyberArk DNA, which is great."
"There are additional features added to our CyberArk Privileged Access Manager license. For example, features that allow us to integrate into various kinds of platforms."
"Quite expensive"
"I haven't seen the numbers. I know it is not cheap, but I don't know what it is. I would rate it a six out of ten in terms of pricing. It is definitely more expensive than the other product, but it also provides more functionality, and it is modular too. So, we pay for the functionality we're actually going to use, and that's nice."
"It's not a cheap application. It's very expensive."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
No data available
Financial Services Firm
13%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Construction Company
7%
Computer Software Company
6%
 

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 CyberArk, One Identity, Okta and others in Privileged Access Management (PAM). Updated: June 2026.
902,495 professionals have used our research since 2012.