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AWS Secrets Manager vs BeyondTrust Password Safe comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 16, 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

AWS Secrets Manager
Ranking in Enterprise Password Managers
2nd
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
15
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
BeyondTrust Password Safe
Ranking in Enterprise Password Managers
7th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
27
Ranking in other categories
Privileged Access Management (PAM) (9th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of October 2025, in the Enterprise Password Managers category, the mindshare of AWS Secrets Manager is 16.1%, down from 21.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of BeyondTrust Password Safe is 3.6%, up from 3.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Enterprise Password Managers Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
AWS Secrets Manager16.1%
BeyondTrust Password Safe3.6%
Other80.3%
Enterprise Password Managers
 

Featured Reviews

Mahadev Metre - PeerSpot reviewer
Consistent security and efficiency improvements optimize IT infrastructure with effective management
When creating AWS Secrets Manager, it should be automated using tools such as Terraform, Puppet, or Ansible. With Terraform code, you specify the encryption key, secret name, rotation policy, and secret replication. Human error occurs when feeding secret values manually, especially with large amounts of secrets to input. Secrets should never be protected only by IAM. They should be protected by multiple layers, such as IAM and one or two KMS keys. Additional security measures could be beneficial if necessary. The rotation policy is crucial because some secrets may become obsolete, require updates, or get compromised. With a weekly rotation policy, if unauthorized access occurs, the exposure is limited to seven days. The rotation policy can be customized according to needs.
PawanShirose - PeerSpot reviewer
Has enabled bulk onboarding and password rotation while ensuring secure privilege management
I have faced stability issues when upgrading BeyondTrust Password Safe solution. The upgrade process can be lengthy compared to other modules. For example, upgrading the appliance and reconfiguring HA is easier in PRA. However, in BeyondTrust Password Safe, the upgrade activity can take longer, and I have occasionally experienced being stuck during appliance version upgrades, sometimes duplicating the upgrade. Regarding additional features, we have good features in BeyondTrust Password Safe compared to other modules, such as Secret Safe to secure secrets and the check-in, check-out functionality. We already have the main features, but I think it would be helpful if BeyondTrust implemented a heartbeat check feature on the privileged account level. This feature would allow PAM to check the credentials of privileged accounts, indicating if they are correct or not, showing if the heartbeat has failed if they are wrong.

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 easy to use and is inexpensive."
"The most valuable feature is usability, as it is quite user-friendly."
"The API is fine and works well."
"The most valuable feature of AWS Secrets Manager is the ability to keep data secret and assign access permissions to people to grant or restrict access."
"Integrating with other services was straightforward, especially within the AWS environment."
"AWS Secrets Manager is used for storing secret information that has to be a secret from your customer and your employees."
"It's highly scalable, so I'd rate it a ten out of ten."
"AWS Secrets Manager plays a significant role in optimizing IT infrastructure security and efficiency."
"Automation in BeyondTrust Password Safe uses Smart Rules, which eliminate the need for manual onboarding and effectively handle multiple bulk tasks, such as onboarding and mapping."
"The performance is good."
"The technical support and customer services are phenomenal."
"Smart Rules is a nice feature in BeyondTrust. It is a unique feature that BeyondTrust has as compared to other vendors such as CyberArk. With Smart Rules, you can do automatic onboarding of accounts. There are a lot of options and features. For example, you can do onboarding based on different AD attributes. It is a nice feature in BeyondTrust that some of the other PAM vendors don't have. With other vendors, we have to create our own scripts, whereas, with BeyondTrust, we can just use the in-built Smart Rules."
"It provides integrated password and session management in one solution, which is important for us because, from an auditing standpoint, we are accountable for the type of access being used. We need to ensure that accounts are securely stored and there is the right type of accountability around who is gaining the access. After gaining it, how they're using it, where they're using it, etc."
"Screen recording is valuable, and integration with applications is easy. We can customize whatever we want. We did a lot of application integration using scripting."
"It is very easy to deploy. It's easy to use. That's the major thing I like about it."
"Its number one feature is discovery. The discovery engine in BeyondTrust is off the charts. When they perform a discovery, you know everything there is about a server, including what software is installed. For example, if you want to group all of your database servers together, you can do that by using discovery and Smart Rules. If a server has Microsoft SQL installed, it gets put into a group based on a Smart Rule. It makes it very easy to determine what is what in your environment. As organizations grow or acquire other companies and merge, they lose track of what they have. BeyondTrust can help you throw a rope around it very rapidly."
 

Cons

"There is a potential improvement in connecting AWS Secrets Manager to Jenkins CI/CD pipeline to automatically reflect changes in production."
"AWS Secrets Manager could support hybrid infrastructure."
"There is a need for better environmental implementation, such as having a security fund as a solution."
"The price of the solution could improve."
"If you don't have enterprise support, then you will not be able to get through to them to get the help. It is not only applicable to AWS Secrets Manager. It is also applicable to any service on AWS."
"The solution's initial setup process is complicated."
"The sidecar feature has room for improvement."
"There is room for improvement in terms of integrating with certain other platforms."
"We face screensaver timeout issues and problems with the server. I would like the product to include a server visibility feature."
"If they can create a single platform to create a connector, it would be better than using the RBS server."
"The initial server implementation tasks could be easier to process."
"It has crashed on us in the past."
"Documentation is the primary area of improvement."
"The integration with Secure Remote Access must be improved."
"If they can create a single platform to create a connector, it would be better than using the RBS server."
"We weren't aware that the Password Safe virtual appliance runs on a Windows server. As part of our monthly patching process, we ran into an issue. BeyondTrust Password Safe wasn't compatible with the patching we used to put on our server."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"We purchase a monthly license for the product."
"We've observed that AWS Secrets Manager pricing is based on a per-secret-per-month model. As a result, we prefer to divide our secrets into individual pieces to increase security and grant specific access permissions to certain secrets, systems, or individuals. However, this approach results in higher costs. Therefore, we have been exploring ways to combine our secrets into groups to reduce expenses and simplify management. Nonetheless, we acknowledge that this issue may not be related to the secret manager's functionality."
"The solution is expensive."
"The cost is somewhat high."
"I don't believe there is a license cost for the solution."
"We just pay for Password Safe. Session management is included, but we don't use it. There aren't any additional costs besides the standard licensing fees. We pay for an annual license."
"The product is quite affordable."
"It has subscription-based licensing. BeyondTrust is three times less expensive than CyberArk."
"This solution is not cheap—it's a very expensive solution. Very, very expensive compared to the features and functions that they offer."
"The pricing structure is better than the competitors. It's much cheaper than CyberArk. They do the licensing on the basis of assets, not on the number of users. For CyberArk, they base the licensing on the number of users, and they have an expensive model of pricing. BeyondTrust has a cheaper model."
"When you buy Password Safe and perform your initial Discovery, you have all these servers that are added to your assets in BeyondTrust, but you're not using a license until you actually start managing the systems. BeyondTrust's licensing is based on the systems when they're managed, which means when an administrator is able to connect to the server through BeyondTrust with a managed account. There would be a privileged account on the endpoint when the licensing starts. A significant advantage to that is that there are many organizations that want to evaluate their environment prior to automatic management."
"The pricing of BeyondTrust is very good as compared to other products. That was the main reason we decided to go with BeyondTrust at first."
"At the time, BeyondTrust was significantly cheaper than CyberArk. Pricing-wise, if I remember correctly, it goes by assets. The pricing was negotiated for our instances based on the number of assets that we onboard into the system. It is a little different from CyberArk, where the pricing is by users. So, it depends. If you have a lot of assets, it can get very expensive."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
13%
Computer Software Company
12%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Government
6%
Financial Services Firm
19%
Computer Software Company
13%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Government
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business7
Large Enterprise8
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business13
Midsize Enterprise5
Large Enterprise10
 

Questions from the Community

Which is better - Azure Key Vault or AWS Secrets Manager?
Azure Key Vault is a SaaS solution. You can easily store passwords and secrets securely and encrypt them. Azure Key Vault is a great solution to ensure you are compliant with security and governanc...
Which is better - HashiCorp Vault or AWS Secrets Manager?
HashiCorp Vault was designed with your needs in mind. One of the features that makes this evident is its ability to work as both a cloud-agnostic and a multi-cloud solution. As a cloud-agnostic sol...
What do you like most about AWS Secrets Manager?
The most valuable feature of AWS Secrets Manager is its seamless integration with various AWS services.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for BeyondTrust Password Safe?
My experience with BeyondTrust Password Safe's pricing, setup cost, and licensing has been positive, primarily due to its asset-based licensing model. This is a significant advantage for us because...
What needs improvement with BeyondTrust Password Safe?
We do not utilize the dynamic privilege elevation and delegation feature yet, because the customer is not planning to use this feature. They want to control the manner of user creation processes in...
What is your primary use case for BeyondTrust Password Safe?
Currently, we have one customer using BeyondTrust Password Safe. BeyondTrust Password Safe is usually used for two things: compliance and audit.
 

Also Known As

No data available
BeyondTrust PowerBroker Password Safe
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Autodesk, Clevy, Stackery
Aera Energy LLC, Care New England, James Madison University
Find out what your peers are saying about AWS Secrets Manager vs. BeyondTrust Password Safe and other solutions. Updated: September 2025.
872,706 professionals have used our research since 2012.