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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

"The most valuable feature in Okta Workforce Identity is the single sign-on, universal directory, and lifecycle management."
"The MFA part is the best. MFA provided most of the security that we were looking at with respect to the second level of authentication. Okta Workforce Identity provides a number of options with respect to multifactor authentication, such as the app, phone call, and text. These options provide different ways of logging in for users, and they were a lot more than what we needed. This is certainly a very good feature of Okta Workforce Identity."
"Okta Platform has positively impacted my organization with easy single sign-on, as we need single sign-on multifactor authentication for various things and Okta Platform is very secure."
"The most valuable aspect of Okta Customer Identity is the server's reliability, especially for directory and node management."
"First of all, the solution is very simple."
"The solution has great multifactor authentication."
"It's reliable and it does what it is advertised to do."
"Its integration components are most valuable. It integrates with everything in some way. There are some products, such as O365 or AD, with which it completely and 100% integrates. So, you can seamlessly create accounts across the board with some of these products. For some of the products with which it doesn't completely integrate, you can do some kind of interfacing."
"It has the ability to authenticate and authorize users. It is the main feature for our security."
"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 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?"
"The most valuable feature is the integration with the Active Directory."
"The feature that I mostly valued is the ease of installation on different systems, especially on Windows."
"The most valuable feature is the Federation part of Single Sign On, which is customizable and is easily integrated with any customer application or any third party application."
"We almost never have outages nor see slowdowns."
"The Directory is secure. It's our user store, and it's important to keep our members safe. The product does well with that."
 

Cons

"There is a need for Okta to provide an end-to-end solution without needing a separate product like Zscaler for multifactor authentication."
"Okta Workforce Identity could improve the way passwords are reset and how it interfaces with Microsoft."
"Okta Platform can be improved by enhancing the mobile application because sometimes it has issues."
"I would like to see the provisioning simplified."
"There are some issues with the interface that can be improved."
"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."
"Okta Workforce Identity could improve provisioning it can be made simpler."
"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."
"If the reporting feature can be integrated into SSO itself that will be an icing on the cake."
"To add more value to this solution it needs to be more user-friendly."
"The support team could work on their response time and overall competence."
"We would like to the OAuth be more stable, more issues being fixed rather than not."
"While I have some integration with a few major providers, support for more would be advantageous."
"Better documentation. I went through some sessions on single sign-on for version 12.7."
"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."
"An area Siteminder could improve on is that there are a few limitations, in terms of new protocols for OpenID. If I want to have different scopes, the features are limited. They also do not have APIs exposed, which is a major drawback. API is a feature I would like to see included in the next release."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Okta's pricing is right where it needs to be and right in the middle of the market."
"The product has a user-based license model."
"The solution’s pricing needs to be reasonable. You are dealing with a lot of components and the pricing is component-based."
"We pay 23 pence (approximately $0.30 USD) per user, annually, for 150,000 users."
"The price of Okta Workforce Identity is reasonable."
"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 is really expensive."
"The cost per user for this solution is really high and could be reduced."
"The price is quite comparable to the other enterprise-level solutions in that market."
"The licensing is fair for this solution."
"The solution's pricing is competitive."
"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."
"I recommend conducting a PoC on every available product before choose one."
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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.
883,448 professionals have used our research since 2012.