Try our new research platform with insights from 80,000+ expert users

Okta Platform vs Symantec Siteminder comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 15, 2025

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

Okta Platform
Ranking in Single Sign-On (SSO)
2nd
Ranking in Access Management
2nd
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
96
Ranking in other categories
Authentication Systems (5th), Privileged Access Management (PAM) (5th), Identity and Access Management as a Service (IDaaS) (IAMaaS) (2nd), ZTNA as a Service (3rd), Customer Identity and Access Management (CIAM) (1st), AI IT Support (2nd)
Symantec Siteminder
Ranking in Single Sign-On (SSO)
13th
Ranking in Access Management
12th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
75
Ranking in other categories
Web Access Management (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of February 2026, in the Single Sign-On (SSO) category, the mindshare of Okta Platform is 9.1%, down from 11.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Symantec Siteminder is 2.6%, down from 3.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Single Sign-On (SSO) Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Okta Platform9.1%
Symantec Siteminder2.6%
Other88.3%
Single Sign-On (SSO)
 

Featured Reviews

SS
Specialist Solutions at a university with 10,001+ employees
Automated lifecycle management has cut onboarding times and now drives secure, clean access
Although I am a fan of Okta Platform overall, there are areas where it could improve security outcomes and reduce admin friction. My top improvement areas include the system log and analytics upgrade, which are great for point troubleshooting, but trending and root cause analysis across large tenants still require exporting to SIEM. Verbose queries and long-range retention costs can add up. Additionally, while certificate rotations are better than most, the process is still manual for busy portfolios, especially concerning multi-SP SAML certificate rotations and app metadata drift. Two more buckets of potential improvements for Okta Platform involve user experience and security. There is the issue of push fatigue and prompt sprawl, where users receive multiple prompts across different apps and sessions. I arrived at the rating of eight because the core controls are strong and reliable, but a few operational UX and UI gaps prevent it from being rated higher. The reasons for not giving it a nine or ten include ongoing issues concerning safety and change safety, the complexity of group rules and mappings, and the lack of robustness in policy management. Additionally, there remains a need for more manual involvement than necessary, especially for large portfolios and dual certificate rotation, along with proactive SP data metadata validation.
Muzi Lubisi - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior technical Consultant at CA Africa
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

"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."
"Okta Platform has positively impacted our organization because our staff can connect to all tools and applications we use from a single location, which has saved us time."
"Other than Okta being an easy and awesome integration tool, one of the best features it has is the provisioning and deprovisioning, which makes management way easier. You don't need to be too technical to understand how it works."
"There is no password hash saved on the cloud, which is the part that I like the most."
"The most valuable aspects of the solution are the integration with external websites one-factor authentication."
"My total rating for Okta is ten out of ten."
"The support for YubiKey is really good because you don't actually have to type in your username and password."
"Having a single sign-on to all our applications."
"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."
"It provides the breadth and the width to provide solutions for the different kinds of technologies which we have."
"The Directory is secure. It's our user store, and it's important to keep our members safe. The product does well with that."
"The most valuable feature is that it meets the requirements of the customer. You have a lot of features in the product. Every product has them, but the question is, are these products going to meet the requirement of the customer?"
"It has considerably reduced the amount of time that new users would take to join into the organization. Previously, it was a lengthy, manual process because it's a very secure environment, where they need to verify the user before they can actually grant him a user-ID and password. Integrating with the built-in custom application, and exposing CA Single Sign On to the internet, we were able to get the employees onboard. The time that we gained was: previously it would generally take from four to eight weeks for each employee, we brought it to one to two days."
"If you look at our organization, and really all financial institutions, we have a lot of legacy apps. So it really helps to get Single Sign-On."
"Federation is valuable, for sure, because we have a lot of third-party vendors that we need to integrate with, and this is a turnkey solution in some ways."
"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."
 

Cons

"The initial setup could be easier to do."
"What I'd like to see improved in Okta Customer Identity is the process of exporting users. Currently, it lacks this feature, and you have to use a third-party tool to export users from the group. Exporting users should be very easy, though I did notice that Okta Customer Identity is being upgraded from time to time, and I've been seeing much improvement in it compared to the previous years."
"RESTful Web Service calls and their response seem a bit slow."
"We've not had any problems with Okta."
"Okta Customer Identity analytics and reporting tools do not help much to improve customer engagement strategies."
"The integration with third-party tools needs to be improved."
"You can't hide the device when you're checking logs."
"I would appreciate it if Okta Workforce Identity becomes more user-friendly. Its API technology is complicated. Certain applications may pose challenges in terms of integration, especially when they require IDP technologies that aren't easily codable. While I can't provide specific examples, some applications may not integrate with Okta Workforce Identity."
"To add more value to this solution it needs to be more user-friendly."
"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."
"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."
"We are finding some compatibility issues. We're still working with CA on them."
"We would like to the OAuth be more stable, more issues being fixed rather than not."
"Symantec Siteminder needs to have adaptive authentication and multi-factor authentication as integrated features."
"The initial setup of Symantec SiteMinder was a bit tricky. I would rate it a seven on a scale of one to ten, where ten indicates an easy setup."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The product has a user-based license model."
"The price of Okta Workforce Identity is reasonable."
"The solution is not the cheapest but not the most expensive. They are in the middle rating."
"This is an expensive solution but the security makes it worthwhile."
"The licensing is per user per month and includes full technical support."
"The product's price is high. For each feature, a certain payment is required."
"The cost per user for this solution is really high and could be reduced."
"License is around US$20,000 annually."
"I recommend conducting a PoC on every available product before choose one."
"The solution's pricing is competitive."
"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 licensing is fair for this solution."
"The pricing is reasonable."
"The price is quite comparable to the other enterprise-level solutions in that market."
"Symantec Siteminder is expensive; they could definitely do better on the price."
"CA solutions are generally expensive but for the customer the ROI is big."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Single Sign-On (SSO) solutions are best for your needs.
882,813 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Manufacturing Company
11%
Computer Software Company
9%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Educational Organization
7%
Financial Services Firm
24%
Insurance Company
9%
Marketing Services Firm
8%
Manufacturing Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business41
Midsize Enterprise21
Large Enterprise47
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business8
Midsize Enterprise3
Large Enterprise69
 

Questions from the Community

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?
Currently, in Okta Workforce Identity we get the two-digit authentication code. Instead of getting the two-digit authentication code, if we had an option to do fingerprint verification, that would ...
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

Okta Customer Identity, Workforce Identity
SiteMinder, CA SSO, Layer7 SiteMinder
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

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 Okta Platform vs. Symantec Siteminder and other solutions. Updated: January 2026.
882,813 professionals have used our research since 2012.