No more typing reviews! Try our Samantha, our new voice AI agent.

Amazon Cognito vs Symantec Siteminder comparison

Why PeerSpot?
 

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
10th
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 September 2026, in the Access Management category, the mindshare of Amazon Cognito is 2.4%, down from 5.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Symantec Siteminder is 3.5%, up from 2.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Access Management Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Amazon Cognito2.4%
Symantec Siteminder3.5%
Other94.1%
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

"I would recommend Cognito for users who are already AWS customers."
"They offer a permission tool to help us manage multi-factor authentication."
"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."
"The most valuable feature of the solution is its swift authentication."
"I rate Amazon Cognito nine out of ten."
"This is a scalable solution. If our app or general usage increases, this solution can support it."
"The most valuable features of Amazon Cognito are OTP validation and email validation."
"The federation is one of the most efficient features as the pricing is competitive."
"That seamless integration significantly improves user experience and efficiency."
"It allows us to get, again, both externally hosted and internally hosted web applications up and running using centralized credentials in short order."
"Authentication Authorization for our websites are important because all the sites need authentication for security purposes and that has been handled pretty well all these years with SSO."
"It's definitely a good product and you won't go wrong if you choose this product."
"They really made life simple for the user and the user experience has improved."
"The most valuable feature is that it meets the requirements of the customer. You have a lot of features in the product. Every product has them, but the question is, are these products going to meet the requirement of the customer?"
"Siteminder allows us to manage identity and portability control efficiently."
"We needed to implement secure access, CA is a leader in this area, so we went naturally with the best, and we also chose CA because of the way they interact with customers, pitch new features to us, ask us for feedback, and provide us with support."
 

Cons

"You need to evaluate the export users. The multifactor authentication, much less this room for improving the configuration setup of that."
"The setup and configuration can be complex, especially for advanced use cases."
"Amazon Cognito could improve by simplifying the configuration."
"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’s UI needs improvement while onboarding new users."
"The secure authentication of Amazon Cognito has benefited our company. We were previously using legacy signup systems."
"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 believe this product could improve by enriching user profiles."
"Not great. The first level of support is not up to the mark or able to understand the actual problem."
"We use technical support. It's not the best feature of CA. Lots of enterprise product companies have variable support offerings. CA are not the worst, but they're not the best. They're okay."
"Identity Manager and GovernanceMinder should integrate better."
"Some of the features need to be improved. For example, the Federation feature."
"It's a hit and miss thing, like all support organizations. For the most part, for simple problems they can get to a resolution fairly quickly, but if the problem is a little more complicated, they really struggle with getting us a solution."
"It’s really difficult to initially configure, but once you know where the traps are, it’s not a big deal."
"To add more value to this solution it needs to be more user-friendly."
"I'd like to see the federation piece made a little simpler."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The price of Amazon Cognito is expensive. We are on an annual subscription."
"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 pricing of this solution is good compared to other solutions on the market."
"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."
"We pay $600 monthly per user for licences and there are no other additional costs."
"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 licensing is fair for this solution."
"The price is quite comparable to the other enterprise-level solutions in that market."
"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."
"Symantec Siteminder is expensive; they could definitely do better on the price."
"The solution's pricing is competitive."
"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."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Access Management solutions are best for your needs.
913,924 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Comms Service Provider
11%
Construction Company
9%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
16%
Outsourcing Company
15%
Construction Company
12%
Marketing Services Firm
6%
 

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.
913,924 professionals have used our research since 2012.