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Axiad Conductor vs Portnox comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Sep 28, 2025

Review summaries and opinions

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

ROI

Sentiment score
7.4
Axiad Conductor reduces help desk interactions by 35%, saves labor hours, and cuts user costs by up to 15%.
Sentiment score
4.8
Portnox CORE improved network visibility, security, and efficiency, reducing costs and enhancing decision-making through detailed analytics and automated features.
If you were moving from a traditional on-premise NAC that was 100% managed by the IT department, there would be great savings in going to a cloud-based NAC with Portnox.
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
8.3
Axiad Conductor's customer service is praised for responsiveness, expertise, and successful feature integration, though occasional delays occur.
Sentiment score
6.7
Portnox customer service is responsive, but needs improvement in local support, ticketing, and technical training for better service.
The main area needing improvement is the technical knowledge of support staff.
I was seeing weird things, and they were able to explain things to me and help me quickly find a resolution.
They resolved issues quickly and provided clear explanations.
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
8.1
Axiad Conductor scales well up to 100,000 users but faces cost challenges beyond, maintaining robust and seamless integration.
Sentiment score
7.5
Portnox is highly scalable and flexible, efficiently supporting many endpoints with its adaptable cloud-based licensing model.
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
8.0
Axiad Conductor is praised for its flawless, stable performance in credential management, with minimal downtime and no unplanned outages.
Sentiment score
7.5
Portnox is stable but CORE faces issues; improved communication and support are needed, especially during updates and for older versions.
In the four years that I used Portnox, if it crashed or the server crashed, that would not have been more than once.
If there is a version one and another version, the communication between the organization using it and Portnox should be firm so they can coordinate effectively.
The product itself is available and its uptime is 100%.
 

Room For Improvement

Users seek Axiad Conductor enhancements, including modern design, Canadian hosting, and FIDO U2F support, amidst macOS update challenges.
Portnox should optimize licensing, integration, UI, partner training, support hours, Wi-Fi integration, and resolve cloud authentication delays.
Ideally, we should be able to search for any MAC address in the database, regardless of its authentication status, to see all its associated groups and potential conflicts.
It was a seamless integration, but we did experience some difficulties initially where mobile phones were being locked out until we figured out how to set footprints for mobile phones that would be able to connect using Portnox to access the Wi-Fi in the environment.
This authentication issue with Portnox needs to be addressed.
 

Setup Cost

Axiad Conductor offers affordable annual pricing with low-cost per-user licensing and efficient management, ensuring lower total ownership costs.
Portnox pricing is considered balanced, offering scalable licenses, with mixed reactions to subscription-only plans and varying regional costs.
You are charged according to the number of users.
The pricing is a bit high, possibly due to the cloud features and running instances across regions like the US, Asia, and Europe.
If you compare Portnox with all other well-known standard products, it is the cheapest.
 

Valuable Features

Axiad Conductor simplifies authentication management with user-friendly features, efficient onboarding, and seamless integration, crucial for security compliance.
Portnox offers scalable, intuitive network management with seamless integration and security compliance for efficient endpoint management and visibility.
It is a very robust application because three teams use that part: the network team, the security team, and the support people.
It's notable how Portnox has improved operational efficiency.
You can see a PC connected to it, and you can tell which user the PC is using and which version of the OS it's running.
 

Categories and Ranking

Axiad Conductor
Ranking in Passwordless Authentication
9th
Average Rating
9.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.7
Number of Reviews
6
Ranking in other categories
Authentication Systems (23rd), Identity Management (IM) (59th), Privileged Access Management (PAM) (40th), Identity and Access Management as a Service (IDaaS) (IAMaaS) (27th), Identity Threat Detection and Response (ITDR) (41st), Insider Risk Management (25th), Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) (8th), Non-Human Identity Management (NHIM) (15th)
Portnox
Ranking in Passwordless Authentication
1st
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
24
Ranking in other categories
Network Access Control (NAC) (6th), ZTNA (12th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of October 2025, in the Passwordless Authentication category, the mindshare of Axiad Conductor is 4.6%, down from 7.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Portnox is 16.1%, up from 1.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Passwordless Authentication Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Portnox16.1%
Axiad Conductor4.6%
Other79.3%
Passwordless Authentication
 

Featured Reviews

Eric Brown - PeerSpot reviewer
The day-to-day tasks, running the servers, and making sure that everything is patched is all handled by the platform
The most valuable feature is the overhead management of the platform. There is less for my team to worry about. The day-to-day tasks, running the servers, and making sure that everything is patched is all handled by the platform. We just consume the service and work with them to refine it, making it even more valuable. Aside from Active Directory, anything that is a multi-factor platform is handled through Axiad Cloud. It is critical for helping to enforce usage of authentication devices across our organization. One of our requirements to continue some of our contracts is to have multi-factor authentication across all devices accessing the network. It is extremely easy to enroll a user with “One Click Issuance”. I have had very few calls to the service desk regarding enrollment. It takes a couple of minutes to enroll a user with "One Click Issuance". Deploying and managing authenticators is very easy, either done by a mobile application or enrollment of an OTP token. It is very simple. This is important to my userbase, which makes it important to me. Functionality-wise, it is pretty solid.
Scott Kerr - PeerSpot reviewer
It is seamless and integrates well with our Azure setup
We use devices like PLCs and controllers, and when we receive a request to allow one on the network, we bypass typical authentication, associate it with a group account, and push it to a firewalled VLAN. However, problems arise when the same MAC address is requested for a different project. Our current system only finds authenticated MAC addresses, making it difficult to troubleshoot when the same device is used for multiple purposes. Ideally, we should be able to search for any MAC address in the database, regardless of its authentication status, to see all its associated groups and potential conflicts.
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
17%
Government
11%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Manufacturing Company
16%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Computer Software Company
9%
Healthcare Company
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business12
Midsize Enterprise5
Large Enterprise7
 

Questions from the Community

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What do you like most about Portnox CORE?
It's easy to manage and troubleshoot thanks to the lightweight components.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Portnox CORE?
It's not cheap. It's not expensive. It's in the middle, so I'll probably give it a seven out of ten, where one is cheap and ten is expensive.
What needs improvement with Portnox CORE?
We have been having some issues with it. That's why we're considering migrating to Portnox Clear due to some limitations with CORE. At the end of the day, Portnox Clear's capabilities are much more...
 

Also Known As

Axiad Cloud
Access Layers Portnox, Portnox CLEAR
 

Interactive Demo

Demo not available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Information Not Available
Data Realty, Royal London, Wales Millennium Centre, McLaren Construction Group, EL AL Israeli Airlines, 
Find out what your peers are saying about Axiad Conductor vs. Portnox and other solutions. Updated: September 2025.
869,566 professionals have used our research since 2012.