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Aruba ClearPass vs Impulse Point SafeConnect comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

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

Aruba ClearPass
Ranking in Network Access Control (NAC)
1st
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.6
Number of Reviews
90
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Impulse Point SafeConnect
Ranking in Network Access Control (NAC)
16th
Average Rating
8.0
Number of Reviews
1
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2026, in the Network Access Control (NAC) category, the mindshare of Aruba ClearPass is 18.5%, down from 24.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Impulse Point SafeConnect is 1.6%, up from 0.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Network Access Control (NAC) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Aruba ClearPass18.5%
Impulse Point SafeConnect1.6%
Other79.9%
Network Access Control (NAC)
 

Featured Reviews

Darko Skurla - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Enterprise Customer Solutions Specialist at a comms service provider with 1,001-5,000 employees
Role-based policies have simplified secure access control for all users and smart devices
I do not know about the functionality of Aruba ClearPass integration with a third party. If you ask me if there is support for Zebra and for different IoT devices, they have it. However, I do not know how to describe integration with other products. Aruba ClearPass can act as a RADIUS server and it can connect to the domain RADIUS server, for example. The biggest problem is when a customer does not know what they want with Aruba ClearPass. I can recommend Aruba ClearPass to other users because it is very stable. My review rating for this product is ten out of ten.
CD
Director of Computer Information Services at a university with 5,001-10,000 employees
Easy to scale, enforces policies well, and has responsive technical support
A lot of campuses use SafeConnect. It gives us good visibility and enforces policies. It helps enforce network security by scanning devices, making sure they have current and valid antivirus solutions with up-to-date antivirus definitions, and steers our end users by enforcing policy groups and steering them to the right access. Technical support is responsive. The stability is pretty good. It is very easy to scale the product.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"ClearPass' best features are authentication, support for multiple devices, and monitoring."
"Aruba ClearPass has complete NAC features."
"It is a very stable solution. Stability-wise, I rate the solution a ten out of ten."
"Aruba ClearPass has a very good technical support team; whenever we need the vendor to be involved, we find a good deal of technical support."
"I like the stability and the GUI, which is always improving."
"We find that at the end of the projects we manage, all functionalities perform quite well. We've tested it a lot and find it to be overall a very good solution."
"Document authentications allows us to decide which users can connect to an office VLAN and this has been the most valuable feature."
"Scalability is fine because it's batched upon endpoint devices, and licensing."
"It gives us good visibility and enforces policies, helps enforce network security by scanning devices, making sure they have current and valid antivirus solutions with up-to-date antivirus definitions, and steers our end users by enforcing policy groups and steering them to the right access."
"It is very easy to scale the product."
 

Cons

"I would like to see is “AAS”. Not only Aruba APs with central, but NAC/ClearPass, AirWave, and everything licensed as a Service. This way, like AWS, they can spin up what they need when they need it and vice versa."
"Some functions could be improved."
"The interface could be made easier and more intuitive."
"Configuration should be more easy to understand between the link of two topics."
"Like most security products, ClearPass is difficult to deploy. You need to use the CLI to implement security products from any vendor, so configuring the authentication is complicated."
"The solution needs to upgrade its user interface. Right now, it's not so user friendly, and it's an aspect that my clients' wish was improved upon."
"Helping streamline the setup and more in-depth tutorials would be helpful. The product is very complex and therefore the more info and tools that are available the better."
"The initial setup was quite complex, it is not that easy."
"The solution would be much better if it offered self-service onboarding."
"The solution would be much better if it offered self-service onboarding."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The starting price of Aruba ClearPass is 200k Hong Kong dollars. The licensing is based on the endpoints. For example, 100 - 500 end points."
"The product is very costly."
"The price of Aruba ClearPass is expensive. However, Cisco ISE was as expensive when we were comparing."
"You can get Aruba ClearPass either where you purchase it outright or you can be subscription-based. The cost will vary according to what is selected, but it's licensed per device. For example, for a hundred users or a hundred device license, it would cost approximately $2,000."
"The licensing cost for Aruba ClearPass is a bit expensive. Its pricing could be better. The license costs around $125,000 for the perpetual license and support for one year. Aruba can give you a license with five thousand endpoint access and one thousand five hundred onboard licenses on one hundred endpoints and two controllers."
"In terms of your fixed cost, it is much less than a lot of other solutions in the market. The initial cost is very high."
"Aruba ClearPass has permanent licenses. You purchase it one time and this license is yours. You don't need to refresh it for five years, et cetera. They have a couple of licenses for enabled features with not only one license."
"Licensing and pricing are extremely straightforward."
"For our tier group, for one year, the cost is probably around $10,000 for the license. If you do multi-year, you could get two years, and you could get it for about $8,000 per year. If you do three years, you get it around $7,000 a year."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Government
8%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Computer Software Company
7%
Financial Services Firm
7%
No data available
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business44
Midsize Enterprise25
Large Enterprise34
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

Which is better - Aruba Clearpass or Cisco ISE?
Aruba ClearPass is a Network Access Control tool that gives secure network access to multiple device types. You can adapt the policies to VPN access, wired, or wireless access. You can securely ...
What is the biggest difference between Aruba ClearPass and FortiNAC?
I've done quite a lot of work with ClearPass, and not a lot with FortiNAC/Bradford. ClearPass incorporates a number of different functions including ClearPass Guest for creating complex wireless g...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Aruba ClearPass?
Compared to Cisco and others, the pricing is reasonable. Licensing costs are case-specific and have been manageable.
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Also Known As

Avenda eTIPS
SafeConnect
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Consulate Health Care, Los Angeles Unified School District, Science Applications International Corp (SAIC), San Diego State University, KFC, ACTS Retirement-Life Communities
Aerohive Solution
Find out what your peers are saying about Hewlett Packard Enterprise, Cisco, Fortinet and others in Network Access Control (NAC). Updated: May 2026.
893,244 professionals have used our research since 2012.