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Axiad Conductor vs Symantec Privileged Access Manager 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

Axiad Conductor
Ranking in Privileged Access Management (PAM)
40th
Average Rating
9.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.7
Number of Reviews
6
Ranking in other categories
Authentication Systems (23rd), Identity Management (IM) (59th), Identity and Access Management as a Service (IDaaS) (IAMaaS) (27th), Passwordless Authentication (9th), Identity Threat Detection and Response (ITDR) (41st), Insider Risk Management (25th), Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) (8th), Non-Human Identity Management (NHIM) (15th)
Symantec Privileged Access ...
Ranking in Privileged Access Management (PAM)
16th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
53
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of October 2025, in the Privileged Access Management (PAM) category, the mindshare of Axiad Conductor is 0.3%, up from 0.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Symantec Privileged Access Manager is 1.4%, down from 1.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Privileged Access Management (PAM) Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Symantec Privileged Access Manager1.4%
Axiad Conductor0.3%
Other98.3%
Privileged Access Management (PAM)
 

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.
Muzi Lubisi - PeerSpot reviewer
Secure management of sensitive servers and seamless applications with direct linking
The credential injection feature is highly valued, particularly for RDP sessions. A majority of customers use it for RDP, and a couple for Linux servers. The broader capabilities, including access to multiple systems, web-based applications, and clustering, have never posed an issue. The threat analytics aspect is also a robust feature that analyzes all pertinent information.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"What I have found most valuable is the overall way Axiad listened to our problems and helped us solve them. They provided guidance and expertise, with their experience, that enabled us to be successful in a very challenging space."
"And when it comes to enrolling a user, it's super easy with One Click Issuance... It's so easy now that we can offload the process to our clients who can self-enroll. Previously, we would have to do the enrollment process because it was so complicated."
"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."
"It's very user-friendly. We're issuing YubiKeys for our corporate users and they just plug it in, go to the Axiad Cloud portal, and click the issue button. It's a couple of steps."
"The solution has also saved us time by having end-users troubleshoot issues through the MyCircle feature, and has definitely reduced the efforts of our administrators. It is saving us five to 10 minutes per incident."
"The life cycle management of credentials is the aspect that we have found to be the most useful... The differentiator that Axiad provided was the ability to provide users a way to self-serve the updating of their credentials on their private keys. That was the feature we were most interested in and Axiad does an excellent job of it."
"It gives you list of servers, so you can see which users have access to which servers. This is really useful, so we can make sure nobody is getting extra access than what is needed."
"The key benefits are we improve our governance. We ensure we can build more trust in the way we run and operate our environment, and most of all is the accountability."
"Comprehensive coverage of the required features for the PAM solution."
"We can enforce complicated password policies and very important frequent password changes."
"The interface is very friendly, colorful, and bold."
"It is simple to implement and is suitable for medium to large-scale enterprises."
"The product is very scalable in terms of concurrent sessions that it can handle at a time, number of device it can support, accounts that it can manage, or number of nodes that you can deploy in a cluster."
"It's easy to use and easy to configure."
 

Cons

"I would like a more modern look to the portal."
"With their licensing model, it becomes hard to scale. For example, we couldn't roll it out enterprise-wide because if you scale it across more than 100,000 users, the cost becomes too exorbitant."
"We would prefer that the solution be hosted in Canada because we're a Canadian entity. That would be nice to have. It's not a feature, as such, but it would really make us a lot happier if it could be located in Canada."
"I'm looking forward to seeing how they move to FIDO U2F as their primary authentication method across all of their solutions."
"macOS is notoriously ever-evolving and it's difficult to keep pace with it as it pertains to certain kinds of crypto authentication. That's really not even on Axiad. That's a decision by Apple, but it makes it a moving target."
"There are just some minor tweaks that could be made on the front end. It would be cool to have nicknames for authenticator devices. If you have more than one, it's hard to discern what you have."
"I’m no fan of Java as an application front-end, as it tends to have issues depending on what browser one’s using."
"We have to do a lot of manual work to automate features."
"They should include some assignments in the test environment to explore the product's features."
"We experience stability issues after every patch upgrade. This is a place where CA needs to improve drastically."
"What I hope happens with the new product CA PAM is to keep all the useful features that exist in PA, but what I’ve noticed with many new products is the UI gets polished but systems lags stability and performance or it adds additional complexity instead of simplifying the user experience."
"Instead of just giving passwords to the user based on job function, from auditing perspective, turn that cycle around. That would really help from an auditing standpoint."
"Recent releases need improvement in webpage management. For instance, navigating through a webpage that acts like a wizard, where I proceed to the next page and enter more information, is not handled well by the system."
"I would like this solution to be simpler. It should have a one-click access that works together with AWS."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Don't just focus on the hardware or software costs of acquiring a solution, but look at it from the perspective that so much of what it takes to run a PKI environment has to do with the people who are running it.... look at the total cost of ownership and not just the cost of acquisition."
"It's very cheap on a per-year basis. The cards themselves last about three years and the license is on the order of double-digit dollars per user, and not hundreds of dollars per user, per year."
"The pricing is very competitive for what is offered at the level that we need. They are right there with what the industry standards are. They tend to be a little bit less, in terms of cost, when we are talking about security at government standards. So, I would say that they have a slight advantage on cost compared to the industry average. They are the lower cost solution and the best bargain out on the market today."
"Axiad's pricing was what we were expecting. It was at the right spot. They were competitive."
"They offer per-device, per-user, or monthly and yearly licensing models."
"The version we are using is affordable compared to BeyondTrust, which is maybe three to four times as expensive, but it depends on the features."
"I would prefer better licensing options for the 20-100 users we have at a given time."
"Cost-wise, CA was better compared to others in the market. ​"
"It is more expensive than other solutions on the market."
"Appliances are relatively cheap, don’t skimp. Make sure you have redundancy, high availability, and enough appliances to manage the concurrent workload."
"It is reasonably priced."
"Don’t go with an agent model. Don’t go with a model that has you buying a thousand different parts. Go with PAM that gives you everything, or you’ll just be paying costs of implementing another tool that PAM would have just given you up front."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
17%
Government
11%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Comms Service Provider
16%
Computer Software Company
15%
Government
11%
Financial Services Firm
9%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business14
Midsize Enterprise6
Large Enterprise30
 

Questions from the Community

Ask a question
Earn 20 points
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Symantec Privileged Access Manager?
Due to the nature of the solution, it is hard to gauge, but compared to competitors, the pricing is very good. I would rate it as an eight and a half out of ten.
What needs improvement with Symantec Privileged Access Manager?
Recent releases need improvement in webpage management. For instance, navigating through a webpage that acts like a wizard, where I proceed to the next page and enter more information, is not handl...
What is your primary use case for Symantec Privileged Access Manager?
With the customers that I have so far, I help them broker RDP sessions to sensitive servers, particularly those that manage aspects like physical access. I have also done it for backend databases, ...
 

Also Known As

Axiad Cloud
CA PAM, Xceedium Xsuite, CA Privileged Access Manager
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Information Not Available
NEOVERA, Telesis, eSoft
Find out what your peers are saying about Axiad Conductor vs. Symantec Privileged Access Manager and other solutions. Updated: September 2025.
869,202 professionals have used our research since 2012.