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Akamai Enterprise Application Access vs Symantec Siteminder comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Aug 11, 2024

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

Akamai Enterprise Applicati...
Ranking in Access Management
22nd
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.5
Number of Reviews
4
Ranking in other categories
Cloud Access Security Brokers (CASB) (18th), ZTNA as a Service (20th), Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) (26th)
Symantec Siteminder
Ranking in Access Management
11th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
75
Ranking in other categories
Single Sign-On (SSO) (12th), Web Access Management (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2025, in the Access Management category, the mindshare of Akamai Enterprise Application Access is 0.5%, down from 0.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Symantec Siteminder is 3.7%, down from 4.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Access Management
 

Featured Reviews

Bill Lee - PeerSpot reviewer
Very scalable, convenient, and stable protection against attacks
Our company uses the solution as a cloud perimeter and VPN. We don't need to use on-premises devices to open firewalls to inbound or outbound traffic.  The solution is very convenient and stable because you don't have to worry about attacks to public IPs or public networks.  The solution has two…
Muzi Lubisi - PeerSpot reviewer
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

"Application Access's most valuable feature is the accessibility of enterprise tech protection."
"The solution is very convenient and stable because you don't have to worry about attacks to public IPs or public networks."
"The capability of Akamai Enterprise Application Access is what you're looking for, it's giving you the service that you're looking for. It's simple and doesn't use an agent. It uses LCSD responders, and they have a lot of services around the globe. That's the reason that we were very interested in using it because it has a lot of coverage. This is because it's under the GDS umbrella."
"My favorite part of the Akamai Enterprise Application Access service is its SSO and auto-scaling capabilities."
"It has the ability to authenticate and authorize users. It is the main feature for our security."
"The single sign-on is the solution's most valuable feature"
"It's agent-based. It's convenient to deploy and integrate."
"We almost never have outages nor see slowdowns."
"As our identity model continues to mature, probably the Federation is most valueable."
"Ease of use is very good, for administrating it. It's very well known."
"The solution has features that allow you to easily distinguish between protected and unprotected resources."
"It provides the breadth and the width to provide solutions for the different kinds of technologies which we have."
 

Cons

"The technical enablement sessions are quite limited, and Akamai could help by providing more of them."
"The solution has two agents so should combine its enterprise application and security access into one agent."
"We need another approach to bring the solution to the cloud. In addition to Access Management, we would like to see if we can jump into Directories. I think ADs are going to go away and everything is going to be cloud-based and minimize the use of ADs because of the cost and some other dependencies to the cloud. Every time you buy AD it is more hardware, and everything's changing to software. The network's changing, the applications are changing, and for IT it is hard to keep up with it."
"The pricing could be lower for Akamai Enterprise Application Access."
"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 technical support could be better."
"To add more value to this solution it needs to be more user-friendly."
"If the reporting feature can be integrated into SSO itself that will be an icing on the cake."
"In future releases, I would like to see maybe more capabilities with some more modern authentication."
"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."
"We would like to the OAuth be more stable, more issues being fixed rather than not."
"Symantec SiteMinder is not easy to set up and maintain at an infrastructure level."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The license can be shared based on the number of active users."
"The price is great it is all-inclusive, they use an enterprise cost model. That's what we like compared to other users. This is one of the main attractions of Akamai Enterprise Application Access. It's already an enterprise cost model established with us for services."
"Licensing is based on user count."
"The pricing is reasonable."
"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 solution's pricing is competitive."
"The licensing is fair for this solution."
"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
17%
Computer Software Company
15%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Healthcare Company
5%
Financial Services Firm
36%
Insurance Company
12%
Computer Software Company
8%
Manufacturing Company
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with Akamai Enterprise Application Access?
The pricing is a bit expensive for our market. Although it is cheaper compared to alternatives, Akamai Enterprise Application Access offers a more robust solution overall, particularly for authenti...
What is your primary use case for Akamai Enterprise Application Access?
We use Akamai Enterprise Application Access ( /products/akamai-enterprise-application-access-reviews ) for centralized authentication for our global customers. It provides a solution for consolidat...
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

Soha
SiteMinder, CA SSO, Layer7 SiteMinder
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Bugcrowd, InPowered, Spirent Communications
British Telecom, CoreBlox, DBS, HMS, Itera ASA and Simeo
Find out what your peers are saying about Akamai Enterprise Application Access vs. Symantec Siteminder and other solutions. Updated: April 2025.
850,028 professionals have used our research since 2012.