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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

"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."
"It offers very helpful support. The technical team is very helpful."
"The solution has great multifactor authentication."
"Overall, I would rate Okta Customer Identity a ten."
"The feature that is most valuable to me is the automated user provisioning that we set up using Okta as a major part of that process."
"It made things a lot easier, especially with passwords."
"The most valuable aspects of the solution are the integration with external websites one-factor authentication."
"In my opinion, Okta Platform's best features include federation, which is very important, especially when you work with different systems."
"It's agent-based. It's convenient to deploy and integrate."
"The single sign-on is the solution's most valuable feature"
"We almost never have outages nor see slowdowns."
"It is pretty easy to learn."
"The solution has features that allow you to easily distinguish between protected and unprotected resources."
"All of our applications get a point, click, and you are in, while we increase security at the same time."
"Symantec Siteminder Is both scalable and stable."
"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."
 

Cons

"UD attribute mapping, Okta group rules, and dynamic usage could use improvement. It also needs more in-depth functionality and features to integrate with RADIUS solutions."
"RESTful Web Service calls and their response seem a bit slow."
"The lifecycle management part can be improved. It should also have identity governance and the ability to choose a specific factor authentication at the application level. Its licensing and pricing can also be improved."
"Some limitations in scalability. Each application we work with can be completely different, resulting in highly variable implementation processes."
"I would like to see the provisioning simplified."
"There is a need for Okta to provide an end-to-end solution without needing a separate product like Zscaler for multifactor authentication."
"The stability could be better."
"The integration with third-party tools needs to be improved."
"I'd like to see a rework of the user directory configuration."
"Siteminder needs to improve its user experience."
"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."
"The technical support could be better."
"The maintenance cost has increased significantly, and we are concerned about this."
"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."
"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."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The licensing is per user per month and includes full technical support."
"The price of Okta Workforce Identity is competitively priced. We pay annually for the use of the solution."
"The licensing model is fine for general service usage. However, the charges for API features and API tokens can be quite high."
"It is costly for large companies."
"The price of Okta Workforce Identity is reasonable."
"The cost per user for this solution is really high and could be reduced."
"We pay 23 pence (approximately $0.30 USD) per user, annually, for 150,000 users."
"License is around US$20,000 annually."
"The pricing is reasonable."
"The licensing is fair for this solution."
"The price is quite comparable to the other enterprise-level solutions in that market."
"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."
"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."
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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 Business43
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.
884,328 professionals have used our research since 2012.