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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
6.8
Number of Reviews
90
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

SumitMundik - PeerSpot reviewer
Lead Admin Systems at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees
Authentication process improves security with quick and intuitive user interface
The best feature is the speed and execution of Okta Workforce Identity. The moment you click on single sign-on, you immediately get the notification on your mobile phone, then you do the authentication and within a second you get authenticated. The entire customer experience is very good. The user interface is pretty simple, straightforward, and really good. Multi-factor authentication in Okta Workforce Identity is very useful so people who do not have access or are trying to access using just a user ID and password will be completely blocked because of this two-factor authentication. You will get the code, and as your device is authorized in the system, only that device can be used for the authentication purpose. A third person trying to access or hack your data will not be able to do that anymore. Additionally, you don't have to remember your passwords going forward. Previously, every 60 days or 90 days, passwords kept changing. With the two-factor authentication or single sign-on option in Okta Workforce Identity, you don't have to remember it anymore or write down passwords in plain text. If something goes wrong, we have the IAM team which can unlock your account immediately if you have issues.
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

"Adaptive authentication in Okta Customer Identity is a flexible feature that is very secure and user-friendly."
"The initial setup is easy."
"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."
"Its simplicity and its integration with various vendor-agnostic platforms are the most valuable features."
"Stability-wise, I rate the solution a ten out of ten."
"It's reliable and it does what it is advertised to do."
"Okta Workforce Identity is reliable, and its user experience and user interface are great."
"One of the features that I have found to be very valuable is its interoperability and compatibility with all types of resources, whether it's networking, infrastructure, or applications. That is, it is compatible as well as interoperable, as far as the federated authentication is concerned."
"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."
"Authentication & Authorization are important because all the sites need authentication for security purposes. That has been handled pretty well all these years with SSO."
"It provides the breadth and the width to provide solutions for the different kinds of technologies which we have."
"All of our applications get a point, click, and you are in, while we increase security at the same time."
"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."
"It is very scalable. We have a very large customer base: 75 million customers."
"Siteminder allows us to manage identity and portability control efficiently."
 

Cons

"It only facilitates provisioning and not de-provisioning."
"In the future, we'd like to see the product implement more security features, like, for example, zero-trust."
"We faced some challenges during the Okta Identity Workforce deployment. Integrating with AWS and other cloud services posed some limitations with federated options. For instance, features like automatic user addition from AWS to the tool were missing, requiring manual intervention. The API is limited compared to the manual configuration possible through the UI."
"It would be pricing, which is a tough one because it goes against Microsoft. A lot of companies say they're a Microsoft partner, and they get all their software for free. Okta is like a luxury product, and it's not the most affordable one. I would say if they could work on pricing, it would help. Other than that, they've done great strides in developing a product that is really good. The companies that do see the value tend to invest in it."
"There is a need for Okta to provide an end-to-end solution without needing a separate product like Zscaler for multifactor authentication."
"The guest user access could be improved."
"Some limitations in scalability. Each application we work with can be completely different, resulting in highly variable implementation processes."
"We still had to write several internal programs/scripts to complete the user-provisioning process. Okta does not have the ability to provision mailbox accounts for on-premise Exchange or in a hybrid O365 environment. The Group Push function from Okta to AD did not work reliably in our environment."
"Siteminder needs to improve its user experience."
"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."
"I would prefer to see their SAML integration be a more streamlined and easier interface."
"Some of the new protocols, like OAuth 2.0, could be improved."
"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."
"The Federation part of CA Single Sign On, it's a bit complex to implement because it involves the SSL certificates, exchange of certificates, and lot of technical details. The documentation misses some important parts of this, so that's the reason it took some time for us to go live."
"The support could be faster."
"To add more value to this solution it needs to be more user-friendly."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The licensing is per user per month and includes full technical support."
"We pay 23 pence (approximately $0.30 USD) per user, annually, for 150,000 users."
"The price of this product could be lower."
"The solution is really expensive."
"Though I don't know about the licensing model of the product, I wouldn't be surprised if Okta offers a per user license subscription model."
"The solution's pricing model could be better for SMBs."
"The pricing is reasonable."
"Okta Customer Identity is not an expensive solution."
"The solution's pricing is competitive."
"Symantec Siteminder is expensive; they could definitely do better on the price."
"The pricing is reasonable."
"CA solutions are generally expensive but for the customer the ROI is big."
"I recommend conducting a PoC on every available product before choose one."
"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 price is quite comparable to the other enterprise-level solutions in that market."
"The licensing is fair for this solution."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Manufacturing Company
11%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Computer Software Company
8%
Educational Organization
6%
Financial Services Firm
25%
Insurance Company
10%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Performing Arts
5%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business37
Midsize Enterprise21
Large Enterprise44
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.
881,360 professionals have used our research since 2012.