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Amazon Cognito vs Safe-T Secure Application Access comparison

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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

Cisco Duo
Sponsored
Ranking in Access Management
5th
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.6
Number of Reviews
176
Ranking in other categories
Single Sign-On (SSO) (5th), Authentication Systems (2nd), ZTNA as a Service (2nd), Cisco Security Portfolio (1st), Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) (1st), AI Data Analysis (7th)
Amazon Cognito
Ranking in Access Management
9th
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.5
Number of Reviews
17
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Safe-T Secure Application A...
Ranking in Access Management
35th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.7
Number of Reviews
8
Ranking in other categories
Enterprise Infrastructure VPN (26th), ZTNA (19th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of November 2026, in the Access Management category, the mindshare of Cisco Duo is 3.1%, down from 3.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Amazon Cognito is 2.6%, down from 5.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Safe-T Secure Application Access is 1.2%, up from 0.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Access Management Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Cisco Duo3.1%
Amazon Cognito2.6%
Safe-T Secure Application Access1.2%
Other93.1%
Access Management
 

Featured Reviews

Charles Slaustas - PeerSpot reviewer
Information Technology Contractor at Insight global
Supports seamless authentication for users across multiple organizations and personal portals
The features I use in Cisco Duo include Duo Pushes to confirm my identity to the device, and eventually as MFA security was increased, I actually had to use exchange passcodes. Sometimes, I have to go into the site and get into Cisco Duo to retrieve the passcode, and many of them have been two-factor, where the sites send a passcode that I have to enter into Cisco Duo. It has been more of the latter. I have not seen issues with lagging or crashing on Cisco Duo's end; it was usually on the client end, often because someone set up a bad upgrade or there were connection issues with the Cisco Duo cloud through the administrative site.
BM
Staff Software Engineer at Visa
Custom authentication has enabled secure multi-factor logins and unified access across apps
The features or capabilities of Amazon Cognito that I have found the most valuable so far include its seamless operation and the requirement of fewer integrations from the client side. All the features are there, enabling us to create the users, manage the groups, and manage access. Mostly, the access management is very good in Amazon Cognito, I would say. The benefits and positive impacts that Amazon Cognito has had in my experience include the fact that earlier we needed to implement so many things on behalf of the product itself. Now, the go-to-market strategy requires less than a week to complete integrations of the user flow, specifically mentioning that a basic authentication flow could be completed in a week itself. We don't have to care about how we manage the passwords, how we manage groups, and how we manage access management because all those things are there. It's handy, the documentation is very good, and it is easy to integrate. That's the reason I would say that the impact AWS is building on the product is great.
it_user787671 - PeerSpot reviewer
Network and Security Engineer
Needs to be easier to configure and to display logs more simply
We use only it for scanning files for viruses. That's the only feature we use in this product It needs to be easier to configure, it should be something that's working well with other sources. It should be something that allows me to see the logs simply. One to three years. Sometimes it doesn't…

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"The product is really amazing, and I think it is one of the best documentation sets I have ever seen."
"I now have the Identity Intelligence feature, which makes me very happy, and it was indeed the big feature, the big step ahead that we achieved thanks to Cisco Duo."
"It meets our security needs very well. It is easy to use, and documentation is also available. It is also very stable and scalable, and its support is also very good. We are satisfied with this solution."
"Cisco Duo has positively impacted our organization by improving our overall access security by adding an extra layer of protection beyond passwords."
"Cisco Duo has strengthened the ability to defend against both phishing and identity-based attacks."
"My advice to others looking into using Cisco Duo is that it is a great product, and I recommend it for everyone, specifically for those using Cisco Secure Client."
"The feature I like the most about Cisco Duo is how simple it is to understand, as the UI is designed such that you don't need very specific, in-depth training."
"The best feature Cisco Duo offers is its simplicity."
"The features most valuable to us are the ability to integrate with various IDPs and the capability to sync with multiple applications."
"The solution is proto connective and integrates well with other AWS services."
"Amazon Cognito was particularly helpful and clear to use."
"The multi-factor authentication setup has room for improvement."
"This is a scalable solution. If our app or general usage increases, this solution can support it."
"They offer a permission tool to help us manage multi-factor authentication."
"The federation is one of the most efficient features as the pricing is competitive."
"Cognito speeds up our development and saves us time."
"From a technical point of view, products are stable and scalable, and we do appreciate the personal touch the sales engineers (SE) support and development bring, as well as the personal touch of the sales support, the free online, and web-based training."
"Safe-T SDA has allowed my organization to secure my office applications and makes it harder for hackers to be able to hack into my internal office web applications."
"This product allows us to actually send it straight from our email to the other person's email in a safe way, where we can meet all our regulations and still keep the data in our control."
"the security level is very high. After we tested it and checked all the security aspects of the product, we found that it's highly secure."
"We use only it for scanning files for viruses."
"You can easily integrate it and fit the system to your organization's needs, and that's a very huge advantage."
"At the end of the day it's really good and really improved."
"Safe-T is very good for users because it has a plug-in for Outlook."
 

Cons

"The technical engineers in the first line of support should improve their knowledge."
"Cisco Duo can be improved, but additional features that should be included in the next release are not my area of responsibility."
"It is not easy to maintain network connectivity."
"The pain point for us at one point was the Duo Authentication Proxy since we're on-premises and not in the cloud. We had to have a proxy machine that's in our DMZ to talk to Duo for us. The configuration of that was a little complicated."
"Cisco Duo is a really good product and I am very happy with it, but sometimes we have to authenticate multiple times, which may be part of our administration."
"Regarding the stability and reliability of the Cisco Duo solution, we have experienced some outages over the last few years that are significant because people can't log in."
"Cisco Duo is not MSP ready by default."
"The only time I really had some negative feedback for them was about the UI of their mobile app, but they improved it in the last version. It is good on the functionality side, but their pricing model is a little bit weird. Currently, there is no price advantage in signing up for yearly contracts. If you are on a monthly term or a yearly contract, you basically pay the same price, and that is very unusual. Normally, there is a discount when someone signs up for the 12-month system."
"The setup and configuration can be complex, especially for advanced use cases."
"I believe this product could improve by enriching user profiles."
"The MFA related to the solution's side is nonexistent."
"Amazon Cognito’s UI needs improvement while onboarding new users."
"In a future release, we would like to have different methods to validate the characteristic of a user. For example, we would like to use biometric data to analyze the behavior of users."
"The ease and simplicity of integration could be improved when using this solution. When using Okta, scope is a single endpoint with a parameter as a scope, but in Cognito, for each scope, there is a separate endpoint."
"Amazon Cognito could be improved by making it easier for us to add more data to the token, allowing customization of JWT. It requires a complex program to customize the token currently, however, the UI could support this configuration better."
"The secure authentication of Amazon Cognito has benefited our company. We were previously using legacy signup systems."
"I'm not sure what advice I would give others about this product because I don't like Safe-T."
"When we have something that we want improved, it takes a little bit of time until it can be fixed."
"One important thing that we haven't found in this product is the ability to provide a read-only view for documents. Also, the ability for the customer to add annotations to these documents."
"Better UI. A better UI for the people that manage all the processes of Safe-T. Some of the UI is not as intuitive as you would like it to be."
"The Outlook agent is not working well for installing it in the entire office."
"The cloud solution is not that great especially with Swiss customers."
"In terms of improvement, they need to be much more strict regarding the roadmap, about timelines and when new features will be up in production."
"Setting up Safe-T SDE is very complex. It is not straightforward, and it requires much understanding on the concepts of the product."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It has a fair pricing model. I know they have different tiers, but it would be nice to have different types of licenses for certain groups of users in our organization. That way, we wouldn't have to lump everybody into one group. That would be also one complaint."
"With regard to pricing, for a small business buying a one off, it's pretty expensive. If it's an enterprise that has thousands of employees, however, it's really nothing to protect your data because if your network goes down or it's breached, you're losing millions of dollars every minute. When it comes to a large enterprise, it's priced where it should be because you're talking business to business. You're not talking business to consumer."
"I haven't seen it in a while, but it's at par with everything else licensing-wise."
"Its price is reasonable. It is not highly expensive."
"I only need the solution for IT staff, which makes it relatively cheap. If I deployed it for the whole company, it would be costly, so it depends on the number of users. Duo Security is affordable compared to other products in the segment."
"The product’s pricing is reasonable."
"It's a bit confusing because we're on a three-year plan with a certain number of licenses, and we've gone over that number. They told us that when we renew, they will add all these licenses. We've expanded quickly, so everyone's kind of scared because no one knows what the bill is with the long pricing cycle."
"It is affordable for what's coming to the table with it, but in this day and age, the cost is looked at under a microscope, and companies need to very finely define what is needed versus what is critical. In some cases, it might not be cost-effective for a company to have it. In a lot of other cases, it is the cost of doing business."
"We pay $600 monthly per user for licences and there are no other additional costs."
"On a scale from one to ten, where one is cheap and ten is expensive, I rate the solution's pricing a five out of ten."
"The pricing is bad so I rate it a two out of ten."
"The product is relatively inexpensive compared to other tools."
"The price of Amazon Cognito is low. The pricing model is based on the users."
"The pricing of this solution is good compared to other solutions on the market."
"The price of Amazon Cognito is expensive. We are on an annual subscription."
"The price of the solution depends on the number of users using it."
Information not available
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Outsourcing Company
12%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Comms Service Provider
9%
Comms Service Provider
13%
Construction Company
9%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Outsourcing Company
13%
Construction Company
10%
Comms Service Provider
10%
Transportation Company
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business66
Midsize Enterprise29
Large Enterprise93
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business8
Midsize Enterprise4
Large Enterprise5
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

How does Duo Security compare with Microsoft Authenticator?
We switched to Duo Security for identity verification. We’d been using a competitor but got the chance to evaluate Du...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Duo Security?
Regarding the pricing, what actually happened was that we got the product purchased through our HQ, so the costing as...
What needs improvement with Duo Security?
I do not have a straight answer for how Cisco Duo can be improved at this time. With the implementation that we are g...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Amazon Cognito?
I am aware that the pricing of Amazon Cognito is not managed by me directly but is managed by some other teams, speci...
What needs improvement with Amazon Cognito?
I think Amazon Cognito provides less flexibility to customize at the moment. It is very tightly coupled with its own ...
What is your primary use case for Amazon Cognito?
The usual use cases for Amazon Cognito that I have been working with mostly involve working for TLG Apps for three an...
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Also Known As

Duo Security
No data available
Safe-T SDA, Safe-T, Safe-T Software-Defined Access
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Information Not Available
Expedia, Intuit, Royal Dutch Shell, Brooks Brothers
Government of Israel, eviCore Healthcore, Glen Imaging, Sarin, LBG, Rollomatic, Boegli-Gravures SA, Banque Heritage, Groupe Minoteries, Temenos, ZEK, RLM Finsbury, Harel Insurance, Meitav Dash
Find out what your peers are saying about Amazon Cognito vs. Safe-T Secure Application Access and other solutions. Updated: September 2026.
921,665 professionals have used our research since 2012.