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Microsoft Entra ID vs Symantec Siteminder 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:
 

Categories and Ranking

Microsoft Entra ID
Ranking in Single Sign-On (SSO)
1st
Ranking in Access Management
1st
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
236
Ranking in other categories
Authentication Systems (1st), Identity Management (IM) (2nd), Identity and Access Management as a Service (IDaaS) (IAMaaS) (1st), Microsoft Security Suite (2nd)
Symantec Siteminder
Ranking in Single Sign-On (SSO)
12th
Ranking in Access Management
11th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
75
Ranking in other categories
Web Access Management (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of October 2025, in the Single Sign-On (SSO) category, the mindshare of Microsoft Entra ID is 19.1%, down from 25.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Symantec Siteminder is 2.3%, down from 3.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Single Sign-On (SSO) Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Microsoft Entra ID19.1%
Symantec Siteminder2.3%
Other78.6%
Single Sign-On (SSO)
 

Featured Reviews

Bahram Piri - PeerSpot reviewer
Security focus and seamless implementation increase platform productivity
Microsoft Entra ID can be improved in many ways, and there's a big wish list.If we're focusing on security, something that I definitely expect is improvement in the UI and UX for frontline workers. This is important, especially for non-tech savvy individuals. It is something Microsoft Entra ID could do to improve for a wider audience. It's important to focus on the frontline workers since they are non-tech savvy individuals. They are not like those back-office engineering C-level employees who are constantly dealing with computers, and we need to build a specific user experience and user interface for them to handle this stuff. That's something I expect Microsoft to focus on more for Microsoft Entra ID.
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

"Microsoft Entra ID scales effectively with the growing needs of our organization, as we have never faced any challenges with its scalability."
"Azure AD has features that have helped improve our security posture."
"Entra ID enables us to implement security easily and effectively."
"Many of its features are valuable, including: facilitating application authentication, privileged access management, processes for attestation, and access reviews."
"Entra ID provides an excellent overview of the applications and the options applied to them."
"The most valuable feature of Entra ID is having a cloud-based identity, similar to Google's single sign-on."
"Azure Active Directory has useful policy assigning and management."
"It's a very intuitive platform. It's easy to create groups and add people."
"Symantec Siteminder has simplified user access for our customers from user login to their web applications."
"The authentication and single sign-on features of Symantec Siteminder are valuable."
"Authentication & Authorization are important because all the sites need authentication for security purposes. That has been handled pretty well all these years with SSO."
"Ease of use is very good, for administrating it. It's very well known."
"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."
"You can quickly deploy the entire product with a basic config within couple of hours."
"That seamless integration significantly improves user experience and efficiency."
"The solution is easy to use for our managers."
 

Cons

"The only issue is the OU is not properly synced. Therefore, you have to do a manual sync sometimes or you might lose the connector due to AD Connect or sync servers."
"From an admin perspective, I would like to see improvement in the Microsoft Graph API."
"Something that I definitely expect is improvement in the UI and UX for frontline workers, especially for non-tech savvy individuals."
"Entra ID has limited integration with non-Microsoft solutions like iOS or Ubuntu. If it worked across different software and all kinds of devices could be managed under it, that would be great."
"It would be awesome to have a feature where you can see the permissions of a user in all their Azure subscriptions. Right now, you have to select a user, then you have to select the subscription to see which permissions the user has in their selected subscriptions. Sometimes, you just want to know, "Does that user have any permissions in any subscriptions?" That would be awesome if that would be available via the portal."
"There is no great solution in the cloud for Conditional Access authentication and RADIUS-type authentication."
"The area that needs improvement is integrating IDs between multiple environments and forests. In our case, it's hard to get the identities from multiple forests into one location."
"One challenge with Entra ID is its complexity, stemming from integrating many components into a single solution."
"We would like to the OAuth be more stable, more issues being fixed rather than not."
"I'd like to see a rework of the user directory configuration."
"The maintenance cost has increased significantly, and we are concerned about this."
"Symantec Siteminder needs to have adaptive authentication and multi-factor authentication as integrated features."
"Symantec SiteMinder is not easy to set up and maintain at an infrastructure level."
"Siteminder needs to improve its user experience."
"An area Siteminder could improve on is that there are a few limitations, in terms of new protocols for OpenID. If I want to have different scopes, the features are limited. They also do not have APIs exposed, which is a major drawback. API is a feature I would like to see included in the next release."
"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."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"I think the pricing is efficient, but the licensing is overly complicated and difficult to understand. There are many tricks in the licensing that weigh against us."
"I'd recommend Azure Active Directory if you are a big company. For small or medium companies, it's probably not the best idea in the world because of the pricing. If you are a small company, you can probably deploy your own solutions because you're not handling a website with tons of traffic. If you are not like Adidas, Nike, or Walmart, you can do it in a way that is more localized than handling everything through a big price solution. However, Azure tends to provide you with solutions that are easier to use. If it was cheaper, I'd definitely recommend going for it."
"Pricing could always be better. You pay the premium for Microsoft. Sometimes, it is worth it, and at other times, you wish to have more licensing options, especially for smaller companies."
"The P1 version costs $6 per user per month."
"It is worth the money."
"We got a good deal. If you get rid of all the products providing features that Azure Suite can provide, then it makes sense cost-wise."
"MFA and P2 licenses for two Azures for fully-enabled scenarios and features cost a lot of money. This is where Okta is trying to get the prices down."
"If you're on Azure, it can be free or it's incorporated, at no extra cost, or it can become extremely complicated."
"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."
"The pricing is reasonable."
"The solution's pricing is competitive."
"CA solutions are generally expensive but for the customer the ROI is big."
"Symantec Siteminder is expensive; they could definitely do better on the price."
"The price is quite comparable to the other enterprise-level solutions in that market."
"The licensing is fair for this solution."
"I recommend conducting a PoC on every available product before choose one."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
12%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
8%
Financial Services Firm
30%
Insurance Company
12%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Government
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business80
Midsize Enterprise36
Large Enterprise132
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business8
Midsize Enterprise3
Large Enterprise69
 

Questions from the Community

How does Duo Security compare with Microsoft Authenticator?
We switched to Duo Security for identity verification. We’d been using a competitor but got the chance to evaluate Duo for 30 days, and we could not be happier. Duo Security is easy to configure a...
What do you like most about Azure Active Directory?
It is very simple. The Active Directory functions are very easy for us. Its integration with anything is very easy. We can easily do third-party multifactor authentication.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Azure Active Directory?
The cost of Microsoft Entra ID is around $8 per month, which I find very reasonable.
What do you like most about Symantec Siteminder?
It's agent-based. It's convenient to deploy and integrate.
What needs improvement with Symantec Siteminder?
Symantec Siteminder needs to have adaptive authentication and multi-factor authentication as integrated features. Currently, multi-factor authentication is available as a separate solution, and it ...
 

Also Known As

Azure AD, Azure Active Directory, Azure Active Directory, Microsoft Authenticator
SiteMinder, CA SSO, Layer7 SiteMinder
 

Interactive Demo

Demo not available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Microsoft Entre ID is trusted by companies of all sizes and industries including Walmart, Zscaler, Uniper, Amtrak, monday.com, and more.
British Telecom, CoreBlox, DBS, HMS, Itera ASA and Simeo
Find out what your peers are saying about Microsoft Entra ID vs. Symantec Siteminder and other solutions. Updated: September 2025.
871,688 professionals have used our research since 2012.