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Amazon Cognito vs Symantec Siteminder 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

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
Symantec Siteminder
Ranking in Access Management
15th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
75
Ranking in other categories
Single Sign-On (SSO) (13th), Web Access Management (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of November 2026, in the Access Management category, the mindshare of Amazon Cognito is 2.6%, down from 5.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Symantec Siteminder is 3.7%, up from 2.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Access Management Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Amazon Cognito2.6%
Symantec Siteminder3.7%
Other93.7%
Access Management
 

Featured Reviews

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.
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 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."
"What I find most valuable about Amazon Cognito is the single sign-on feature that provides a token for accessing protected APIs."
"The solution is proto connective and integrates well with other AWS services."
"The features most valuable to us are the ability to integrate with various IDPs and the capability to sync with multiple applications."
"The multi-factor authentication setup has room for improvement."
"Cognito speeds up our development and saves us time."
"One of the key benefits of this software is its ease of integration with a wide range of applications, including mobile apps and web applications. This simplifies the process of integration, and it can be seamlessly incorporated with Azure, Kubernetes, and other software systems."
"I appreciate Amazon Cognito's ability to scale with demand and its seamless user verification features."
"Single Sign-On is the number one feature of SiteMinder that we're using."
"Ease of use is very good, for administrating it. It's very well known."
"It’s definitely an industry leader in the web access realm."
"It provides single sign on for our company’s intranet, so when you log in, you don't need to enter your name and a password, providing simple, secure access to company intranet sites."
"It has performed very well, it does what we need it to do, it's reliable, and it doesn't impose any overhead on the user or on the platform."
"For the most part, SSO is very stable."
"Symantec Siteminder has simplified user access for our customers from user login to their web applications."
"It is one of the most stable products in the banking organization that I am in."
 

Cons

"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."
"I would rate its scalability as five out of ten. Moving users between different pools or accounts creates new identities, which means IDs stored in our database must also be changed."
"I think Amazon Cognito provides less flexibility to customize at the moment."
"You need to evaluate the export users. The multifactor authentication, much less this room for improving the configuration setup of that."
"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 improve by simplifying the configuration."
"Cognito has the possibility to render the login screen and all the customer flows related to managing the account. Still, it's useless in an international setup. They are unable to localize these screens, so we had to write our own screens and just use the Cognito API."
"Cognito triggers can improve by providing more direct use cases rather than giving a white paper. A white paper is not at all interesting, it has too many details. It would be a benefit to provide a smaller document that is summarized. The smaller version would bring microdata, macro data is not helpful."
"The performance could be better. The support could be faster."
"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."
"I'd like to see the federation piece made a little simpler."
"Symantec Siteminder needs to have adaptive authentication and multi-factor authentication as integrated features."
"I'd like to see a rework of the user directory configuration."
"For us, getting to that person or to the second level of support is time consuming."
"It’s really difficult to initially configure, but once you know where the traps are, it’s not a big deal."
"I would like to see more usability; more customer usability."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The price of Amazon Cognito is expensive. We are on an annual subscription."
"The price of Amazon Cognito is low. The pricing model is based on the users."
"We pay $600 monthly per user for licences and there are no other additional costs."
"The pricing is bad so I rate it a two out of ten."
"The price of the solution depends on the number of users using it."
"The product is relatively inexpensive compared to other tools."
"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 of this solution is good compared to other solutions on the market."
"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."
"Symantec Siteminder is expensive; they could definitely do better on the price."
"The licensing is fair for this solution."
"The pricing is reasonable."
"The solution's pricing is competitive."
"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."
"CA solutions are generally expensive but for the customer the ROI is big."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Comms Service Provider
13%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Construction Company
9%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Financial Services Firm
17%
Outsourcing Company
14%
Construction Company
11%
Manufacturing Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business8
Midsize Enterprise4
Large Enterprise5
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business8
Midsize Enterprise3
Large Enterprise69
 

Questions from the Community

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, specifically the DevOps teams. As far as I know, it is based on how many users we hav...
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 services, so it does not provide customization according to what the client need...
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 and a half years, where TLG Apps is a FinTech company in the UK. We were working f...
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 ...
What is your primary use case for Symantec Siteminder?
I deploy and support Symantec Siteminder ( /products/symantec-siteminder-reviews ). I have been a partner and reseller.
 

Also Known As

No data available
SiteMinder, CA SSO, Layer7 SiteMinder
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Expedia, Intuit, Royal Dutch Shell, Brooks Brothers
British Telecom, CoreBlox, DBS, HMS, Itera ASA and Simeo
Find out what your peers are saying about Amazon Cognito vs. Symantec Siteminder and other solutions. Updated: September 2026.
920,929 professionals have used our research since 2012.