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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
96
Ranking in other categories
Authentication Systems (5th), Privileged Access Management (PAM) (5th), Identity and Access Management as a Service (IDaaS) (IAMaaS) (2nd), ZTNA as a Service (3rd), Customer Identity and Access Management (CIAM) (1st), AI IT Support (2nd)
Symantec Siteminder
Ranking in Single Sign-On (SSO)
13th
Ranking in Access Management
12th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
75
Ranking in other categories
Web Access Management (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of February 2026, in the Single Sign-On (SSO) category, the mindshare of Okta Platform is 9.1%, down from 11.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Symantec Siteminder is 2.6%, down from 3.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Single Sign-On (SSO) Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Okta Platform9.1%
Symantec Siteminder2.6%
Other88.3%
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

"We find the solution to be reliable for our customers and it is nice that it is cloud-based and can be accessed from anywhere."
"The tool provides a single place of contact for managing users. We only need to manage users in Okta Workforce Identity, eliminating the need to duplicate efforts across different systems. For example, if a user needs to be decommissioned, we don't have to go through all the systems and cloud services; we delete the user in one place. This process is automated with our HR system for both organizations, simplifying user lifecycle management."
"Okta Workforce Identity is reliable, and its user experience and user interface are great."
"The impact of SSO on my IT overhead and user experience has been significant because it reduced authentication fatigue, password sharing, and password reusing."
"The solution's technical support is good."
"The most valuable aspects of the solution are the integration with external websites one-factor authentication."
"It is flexible and easy to install."
"The most valuable functions are Single Sign-On (SSO) and Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA)."
"It's agent-based. It's convenient to deploy and integrate."
"It has the ability to authenticate and authorize users. It is the main feature for our security."
"Symantec Siteminder has simplified user access for our customers from user login to their web applications."
"It is pretty easy to learn."
"You can quickly deploy the entire product with a basic config within couple of hours."
"Siteminder allows us to manage identity and portability control efficiently."
"The Directory is secure. It's our user store, and it's important to keep our members safe. The product does well with that."
"Siteminder allows us to manage identity and portability control efficiently."
 

Cons

"Support could be a bit faster."
"The product must be provided for free."
"I would like to see the provisioning simplified."
"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."
"Okta could improve by making their learning materials more user-friendly."
"Okta doesn't have a partial push. It pushes down the full profile schema for lifecycle management or provisioning."
"I think the setup in the beginning can be a bit of a learning curve."
"The product does not offer enough integration capabilities."
"The support could be faster."
"Siteminder needs to improve its user experience."
"I would like to see a move towards the newer technologies, which is what we are doing right now. I think that's in the roadmap that's coming, in the 12.8 and 14 releases, but we would like to have it sooner than later."
"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."
"Symantec SiteMinder is not easy to set up and maintain at an infrastructure level."
"In future releases, I would like to see maybe more capabilities with some more modern authentication."
"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."
"The maintenance cost has increased significantly, and we are concerned about this."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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 solution’s pricing needs to be reasonable. You are dealing with a lot of components and the pricing is component-based."
"The price of Okta Workforce Identity is reasonable."
"Price-wise, Okta Workforce Identity is a cheap solution. The overall cost depends on the license since you can negotiate with Okta or any of Okta's partners only if you opt for many licenses."
"The licensing model is fine for general service usage. However, the charges for API features and API tokens can be quite high."
"The cost per user for this solution is really high and could be reduced."
"Workforce Identity is well-priced."
"The price of this product could be lower."
"The price is quite comparable to the other enterprise-level solutions in that market."
"The pricing is reasonable."
"Symantec Siteminder is expensive; they could definitely do better on the price."
"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."
"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 licensing is fair for this solution."
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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: January 2026.
882,961 professionals have used our research since 2012.