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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
6.7
Number of Reviews
97
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 March 2026, in the Single Sign-On (SSO) category, the mindshare of Okta Platform is 9.7%, down from 11.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Symantec Siteminder is 2.6%, down from 2.9% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Single Sign-On (SSO) Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Okta Platform9.7%
Symantec Siteminder2.6%
Other87.7%
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 has a wide range of MFA options. I prefer "Okta Verify" out of them all."
"The most valuable aspects of the solution are the integration with external websites one-factor authentication."
"The most valuable feature of Okta Customer Identity is its SSO because it's very easy to use and it's user-friendly. Even the admin portal of the solution is very user-friendly, and you can walk through it with ease. Okta Customer Identity is not a complicated solution, and even the workflow automation feature is very, very easy to understand."
"My total rating for Okta is ten out of ten."
"As far as our security team is concerned, the ease of implementing multifactor authentication is definitely the biggest value for our organization."
"The support for YubiKey is really good because you don't actually have to type in your username and password."
"Time saved is a great example of return on investment, as Okta Workforce Identity has saved approximately 50 to 80 percent of our time."
"One of the best features of Okta Workforce Identity is its integration with different SaaS applications, which makes it a better product than the competitors."
"Siteminder allows us to manage identity and portability control efficiently."
"As our identity model continues to mature, probably the Federation is most valueable."
"Symantec Siteminder Is both scalable and stable."
"The authentication and single sign-on features of Symantec Siteminder are valuable."
"The feature that I mostly valued is the ease of installation on different systems, especially on Windows."
"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 is very scalable. We have a very large customer base: 75 million customers."
"It provides the breadth and the width to provide solutions for the different kinds of technologies which we have."
 

Cons

"Okta doesn't have a partial push. It pushes down the full profile schema for lifecycle management or provisioning."
"There are some issues with the interface that can be improved."
"Okta could improve by making their learning materials more user-friendly."
"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 stability could be better."
"We had an issue with the Okta Workforce Identity dashboard once in 2023 when we had an outage, but it recovered in a few minutes."
"We experienced some technical glitches that need to be resolved."
"SSO and MFA for improved end-user experience, and protection against password spray attacks, account password self-service."
"The support could be faster."
"The maintenance cost has increased significantly, and we are concerned about this."
"We would like to the OAuth be more stable, more issues being fixed rather than not."
"Some of the new protocols, like OAuth 2.0, could be improved."
"In future releases, I would like to see maybe more capabilities with some more modern authentication."
"The technical support could be better."
"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."
"The tech support has not been very good for us so we don't use them anymore. We have had some issues. Nobody is perfect."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The product is expensive compared to other vendors."
"The price of the solution is fair for what it offers."
"The pricing is reasonable."
"I believe it competes well. The pricing is pretty competitive. I know that Microsoft also provides something similar with its MFA and identity services."
"The product has a user-based license model."
"The pricing for Okta Workforce Identity could still be improved or made cheaper. It costs from 50 to 100 euros a year per user. Okta Workforce Identity has different packages you can choose from, and my previous company had all of them, particularly the full Okta suite."
"The cost per user for this solution is really high and could be reduced."
"Okta has fairly competitive pricing."
"The licensing is fair for this solution."
"The price is quite comparable to the other enterprise-level solutions in that market."
"The solution's pricing is competitive."
"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 pricing is reasonable."
"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."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Manufacturing Company
11%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Computer Software Company
8%
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: March 2026.
883,026 professionals have used our research since 2012.