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F5 BIG-IP Access Policy Manager (APM) vs Okta Workforce Identity 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:
 

ROI

Sentiment score
8.0
Organizations experience significant ROI from F5 BIG-IP Access Policy Manager through cost savings, security improvements, and critical access availability.
Sentiment score
8.0
Okta Workforce Identity boosts productivity with enhanced security and automation, saving time but ROI varies with company size.
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
7.6
F5 BIG-IP Access Policy Manager support is professional and helpful, but users suggest improved response times and communication.
Sentiment score
7.4
Okta Workforce Identity's support is generally praised as fast, effective, and reliable, despite occasional issues with responsiveness and clarity.
Most of the technical support is managed in-house due to our extensive experience with F5 products.
If there is a solution, they don't always communicate it.
F5 technical support is responsive and helpful.
They are very supportive; they just open a ticket, and they support us very professionally.
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
7.8
F5 BIG-IP APM offers high scalability and usability for enterprises, with straightforward scaling and valuable traffic analysis tools.
Sentiment score
7.8
Okta Workforce Identity offers scalable solutions for large enterprises, ensuring ease of expansion and adaptability across cloud and on-premises environments.
The product's flexibility and company culture contribute to resolving these challenges.
I would rate the scalability of F5 BIG-IP Access Policy Manager (APM) between seven and eight.
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
8.0
F5 BIG-IP APM is highly rated for stability, enabling reliable remote work despite minor log issues.
Sentiment score
8.2
Okta Workforce Identity offers reliable performance with 99.9% uptime, minor issues related to internet dependency, and responsive support.
On a scale from one to ten for stability, I would rate F5 BIG-IP Access Policy Manager (APM) a ten.
Sometimes, the logs are not quite informational or easy to understand.
 

Room For Improvement

F5 BIG-IP APM needs improvements in usability, integration, documentation, reporting, and support to enhance cloud integration and competitiveness.
Okta Workforce Identity needs better integration, usability, lifecycle management, support, pricing, and enhanced API capabilities for third-party tools.
The main improvement needed for F5 BIG-IP Access Policy Manager (APM) is to integrate into the cloud-delivered services from F5.
If I could copy and paste objects instead of picking and configuring them from scratch each time, it would be great.
F5 BIG-IP Access Policy Manager (APM) does not have a direction for SaaS.
Okta should have at least a local peering partner for countries that align with or comply with GDPR, so there are no compliance or audit questions.
 

Setup Cost

F5 BIG-IP Access Policy Manager is costly but valued for its reliability; licensing is simplified, though cloud costs vary.
Okta Workforce Identity's pricing is considered competitive yet costly, with scalability benefits but improvements needed for small and medium businesses.
F5 products are more expensive than other solutions but are valued for their quality and reliability.
 

Valuable Features

F5 BIG-IP APM offers a robust, scalable platform with secure remote access, customization, and easy integration, ideal for corporate environments.
Okta Workforce Identity offers user-friendly identity management with seamless integration, robust security, and streamlined provisioning and deprovisioning.
APM is quite flexible for customers to use, providing secure remote access through various host-checking conditions for both machines and users.
It provides robust security and offers integration with multi-factor authentication systems, which is crucial for an organization's security policy.
A lot of features are useful to me, including mostly the authentication, SAML, or SSO, with no sign-on.
You can only log in if you have the access, which protects the applications by avoiding cross-site scripting.
Any API can also be added, making it mature in terms of integrating with other identity providers, particularly Active Directory or Inter ID.
 

Categories and Ranking

F5 BIG-IP Access Policy Man...
Ranking in Access Management
10th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
17
Ranking in other categories
Secure Web Gateways (SWG) (17th), Network Access Control (NAC) (8th), SSL VPN (5th), Remote Access (10th)
Okta Workforce Identity
Ranking in Access Management
2nd
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
65
Ranking in other categories
Single Sign-On (SSO) (3rd), Authentication Systems (5th), Privileged Access Management (PAM) (6th), Identity and Access Management as a Service (IDaaS) (IAMaaS) (2nd), ZTNA as a Service (10th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2025, in the Access Management category, the mindshare of F5 BIG-IP Access Policy Manager (APM) is 1.9%, down from 2.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Okta Workforce Identity is 11.5%, up from 9.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Access Management
 

Featured Reviews

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.
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.
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
14%
Computer Software Company
12%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Government
10%
Computer Software Company
16%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

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 is your experience regarding pricing and costs for F5 BIG-IP Access Policy Manager (APM)?
F5 products are more expensive than other solutions but are valued for their quality and reliability, akin to purchasing a Bentley as opposed to an Audi.
What needs improvement with F5 BIG-IP Access Policy Manager (APM)?
F5 BIG-IP Access Policy Manager (APM ( /categories/application-performance-monitoring-apm-and-observability )) does not have a direction for SaaS. Most solutions focus more on remote access and acc...
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 their profiles or hide them. Profile sources and identity profile sourcing are ...
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 there are no compliance or audit questions. There are integration issues with Of...
 

Also Known As

F5 Access Policy Manager
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

City Bank, Ricacorp Properties, Miele, American Systems, Bangladesh Post Office
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.
Find out what your peers are saying about F5 BIG-IP Access Policy Manager (APM) vs. Okta Workforce Identity and other solutions. Updated: April 2025.
848,989 professionals have used our research since 2012.