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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
101
Ranking in other categories
Authentication Systems (4th), Privileged Access Management (PAM) (3rd), Identity and Access Management as a Service (IDaaS) (IAMaaS) (2nd), ZTNA as a Service (4th), Customer Identity and Access Management (CIAM) (1st), AI IT Support (2nd)
Symantec Siteminder
Ranking in Single Sign-On (SSO)
13th
Ranking in Access Management
13th
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) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Okta Platform9.7%
Symantec Siteminder2.6%
Other87.7%
Single Sign-On (SSO)
 

Featured Reviews

SN
iam enginee 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

"Overall, I would rate Okta Customer Identity a ten."
"The product is easy to use."
"It has a wide range of MFA options. I prefer "Okta Verify" out of them all."
"The main benefits Okta Customer Identity provides to users include single point of login for all applications and single authentication, which saves time and reduces frustration."
"The initial setup is easy."
"The most valuable functions are Single Sign-On (SSO) and Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA)."
"It's easy to use and straightforward."
"We primarily use it to manage the community onboarding and offboarding of users, and it's quite a simple solution for that."
"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."
"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?"
"Siteminder allows us to manage identity and portability control efficiently."
"All of our applications get a point, click, and you are in, while we increase security at the same time."
"A valuable feature of Siteminder is the way it handles bulk traffic. The features it has, in terms of routing the traffic and load balancing, are good."
"The single sign-on is the solution's most valuable feature"
"Siteminder allows us to manage identity and portability control efficiently."
"It's quite scalable."
 

Cons

"We've not had any problems with Okta."
"The only area of concern in the solution stems from the fact that my company needs some help regarding the setup phase from a partner."
"There is a need for Okta to provide an end-to-end solution without needing a separate product like Zscaler for multifactor authentication."
"The only issue with Okta Customer Identity is after the upgrade process; we have some issues with the integration between Okta Customer Identity and Jamf."
"It's not compatible with on-premises installations, unless you host it as a SaaS. We were not able to do that. For example, imagine a scenario where the cloud is not available. Then, Okta will not work for you. That use case will readily fail because it doesn't have an on-premises installation that you can use to authenticate or provide identity and access management. If you have a purely on-premises solution that is not connected to the internet, then this will not work. This is one area that can be improved."
"The product is expensive compared to other tools."
"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."
"In Okta Identity Governance and Okta Privileged Access, some features are still being developed. Integration with Active Directory servers, Cisco routers, and switches is not currently available."
"We would like to the OAuth be more stable, more issues being fixed rather than not."
"All the problems that we reported actually have never been resolved. We could not capture enough information for CA to be able to debug the problem."
"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."
"We are finding some compatibility issues. We're still working with CA on them."
"While I have some integration with a few major providers, support for more would be advantageous."
"Some of the new protocols, like OAuth 2.0, could be improved."
"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

"This solution is costly. Pricing is decent if you have less users, but it significantly goes up the more users you have, with its cost not justified."
"The price of the solution is fair for what it offers."
"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 price of Okta Workforce Identity is reasonable."
"The price of the solution is good."
"The licensing model is fine for general service usage. However, the charges for API features and API tokens can be quite high."
"The licensing is per user per month and includes full technical support."
"The licensing is fair for this solution."
"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."
"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."
"The solution's pricing is competitive."
"The price is quite comparable to the other enterprise-level solutions in that market."
report
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Manufacturing Company
11%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Computer Software Company
8%
Educational Organization
6%
Financial Services Firm
23%
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 Business44
Midsize Enterprise23
Large Enterprise50
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.
884,371 professionals have used our research since 2012.