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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 (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) 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 offers very helpful support. The technical team is very helpful."
"In my opinion, Okta Platform's best features include federation, which is very important, especially when you work with different systems."
"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."
"Enabled MFA to access federated applications as well as increased user satisfaction through improved provisioning times and more reliable processes."
"One of the most beneficial features of the solution is the user provisioning and the de-provisioning feature."
"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 two different components that I haven't seen in other products."
"Okta integrates well with other solutions. Once you have integrated an application into Okta and onboarded a user, they will be onboarded for just-in-time provisioning."
"It has a wide range of MFA options. I prefer "Okta Verify" out of them all."
"The feature that I mostly valued is the ease of installation on different systems, especially on Windows."
"It is pretty easy to learn."
"That seamless integration significantly improves user experience and efficiency."
"It provides the breadth and the width to provide solutions for the different kinds of technologies which we have."
"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."
"The solution is easy to use for our managers."
"It is very scalable. We have a very large customer base: 75 million customers."
"It is reliable."
 

Cons

"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."
"I would consider the scalability of Okta Platform to be a six."
"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."
"A room for improvement in Okta Workforce Identity is its price. It could be cheaper. The biggest benefit of the solution is that everything works securely without extra steps, so you're saving on your workforce's time and effort because your applications work smoothly and securely, but you'd need to pay some amount of money for that. Another area that could be improved, though not necessarily regarding Okta Workforce Identity, is the SSO applications because so many of the source applications charge extra money to put the SSO to work, which means you have to buy a more expensive license. Nowadays, SSO is a mainstream functionality and it should be out-of-the-box in those applications because it's so easy to set up."
"It is challenging to obtain a comprehensive backup."
"The integration with third-party tools needs to be improved."
"They also have single sign-on (SSO). When we bought Okta Workforce Identity a year and a half ago, I was also looking at SSO, but not much documentation was available for SSO. The documentation for SSO should be a little more robust for somebody who is implementing it for the first time."
"We experienced some technical glitches that need to be resolved."
"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 GUIs are not very clear, especially when integrating with other products from CA."
"As we are moving in to the mobility space, this is where we really see SiteMinder and their other product really come together to provide a solution base to a different area where the IoT is coming, the different business communications are happening. All of those things require authentication and we really want to see this product grow into that role."
"The initial setup was complex, painful. But that is to be expected of any new setup. When you're a big bank like us, any kind of migration to a new product is hard. I expect it to be painful, and it was painful. But it's not something that you can avoid."
"If the reporting feature can be integrated into SSO itself that will be an icing on the cake."
"The support could be faster."
"Some of the new protocols, like OAuth 2.0, could be improved."
"I think they need to integrate some of the newer types of authentication into the product. I'm not seeing the innovation when it comes to biometrics in the product."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The product has a user-based license model."
"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 price of this product could be lower."
"Okta has fairly competitive pricing."
"We pay 23 pence (approximately $0.30 USD) per user, annually, for 150,000 users."
"This is an expensive solution but the security makes it worthwhile."
"The product is expensive compared to other vendors."
"It could be a bit too pricey for small companies. Okta Workforce Identity can add a lot of benefits, but smaller companies may not have a lot of applications that need to be managed by Okta Workforce Identity. In larger organizations, there are more departments, applications, and users to manage. Okta Workforce Identity adds a bit more value to those bigger organizations. In addition to standard licensing fees, there are also additional costs for things"
"The solution's pricing is competitive."
"Symantec Siteminder is expensive; they could definitely do better on the price."
"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."
"I recommend conducting a PoC on every available product before choose one."
"The pricing is reasonable."
"CA solutions are generally expensive but for the customer the ROI is big."
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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.
883,044 professionals have used our research since 2012.