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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 features of Okta Workforce Identity are MFA, and SSO, which have high security."
"The most valuable feature in Okta Workforce Identity is the single sign-on, universal directory, and lifecycle management."
"Valuable features include UD, SSO functionality, MFA and Adaptive MFA functionality, ability to link multiple Directory databases with UD."
"It is dependent on the evolution of your user base. It depends on usage per user, so the more sign-ins there are, the more expensive it becomes, so it works best for smaller companies from a financial perspective."
"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."
"As an integrator, I find Okta Platform user-friendly with a good number of connectors, making it easy to integrate with applications, and it is easy for SSO implementation and MFA implementation."
"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."
"You get a real value for your money; whatever amount you spend, you get a bang for it, as Okta Platform is decently priced, delivers the features and functionality you need, and satisfies your use cases without hidden costs or add-ons for integration."
"It is very scalable. We have a very large customer base: 75 million customers."
"As our identity model continues to mature, probably the Federation is most valueable."
"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."
"It's agent-based. It's convenient to deploy and integrate."
"It is reliable."
"It's quite scalable."
"SAML is the best thing we're using right now because there is no need for creating an external account."
"All of our applications get a point, click, and you are in, while we increase security at the same time."
 

Cons

"I would like to see the provisioning simplified."
"The initial setup can be complex at first."
"The only aspect in which it can be improved is that the interface could be cleaner. I found this even when I was trying to do my certification exam because the certification is hands-on. You find yourself fumbling around a little bit to find simple things. This happens even when you start to get familiar with the product."
"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."
"There is a need for Okta to provide an end-to-end solution without needing a separate product like Zscaler for multifactor authentication."
"SSO and MFA for improved end-user experience, and protection against password spray attacks, account password self-service."
"Users sometimes have difficulty getting verification codes."
"There is no proper documentation on integrating test cases with Okta, and this issue is troubling whenever I try to implement it."
"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."
"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."
"The support could be faster."
"The support team could work on their response time and overall competence."
"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 main thing is we do not have the traceability and good monitoring that CA can provide us to capture problems when they occur."
"We're currently unable to find information about if the solution can do a full implementation with SQL. Some better and more accessible documentation for new users or those curious about the product would be helpful."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The price of this product could be lower."
"The solution's pricing model could be better for SMBs."
"Okta's pricing is right where it needs to be and right in the middle of the market."
"The price of the solution is good."
"The solution is not the cheapest but not the most expensive. They are in the middle rating."
"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."
"Okta Customer Identity is not an expensive solution."
"The solution’s pricing needs to be reasonable. You are dealing with a lot of components and the pricing is component-based."
"The solution's pricing is competitive."
"Symantec Siteminder is expensive; they could definitely do better on the price."
"The licensing is fair for this solution."
"CA solutions are generally expensive but for the customer the ROI is big."
"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."
"The price is quite comparable to the other enterprise-level solutions in that market."
"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.
883,089 professionals have used our research since 2012.