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Axiad Conductor vs Venafi comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Mar 16, 2025

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 Authentication Systems
12th
Average Rating
9.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.7
Number of Reviews
6
Ranking in other categories
Privileged Access Management (PAM) (17th), Identity and Access Management as a Service (IDaaS) (IAMaaS) (13th), Passwordless Authentication (3rd), Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) (5th)
Venafi
Ranking in Authentication Systems
10th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
8
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2025, in the Authentication Systems category, the mindshare of Axiad Conductor is 0.5%, up from 0.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Venafi is 1.1%, up from 0.8% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Authentication Systems
 

Featured Reviews

TonyVentura - PeerSpot reviewer
Eliminated the drudgery of having to run our own PKI environment
One of the things that we find the most valuable is not actually a feature, but it's the fact that we are not managing the environment ourselves. Because it is a managed solution in the cloud, it takes away a lot of the drudgery of having to run our own PKI environment. And the product has proven itself to be incredibly flexible and has been able to address all of our pain points. That's why we bought it. And even while we've been going through it, new pain points or challenges keep coming up, and Axiad has been able to deal with all of them. It was very impressive in terms of its utility right from the get-go, and has shown its ongoing utility when we have reached these catch points, issues it has been able to resolve. And when it comes to enrolling a user, it's super easy with One Click Issuance. It's far easier than the solution we replaced. I haven't put a stopwatch on it, but I'm sure it takes less than a minute with Axiad, whereas before it was taking three to five minutes. 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. In addition, it's super simple for deploying and managing authentication devices. Our IT department is rather small, so all the incremental wins that we can get are hugely important to us.
Adam Goldstein - PeerSpot reviewer
Automates certificate management across platforms and has enhanced integration support
Venafi's automation capabilities were significant, as they allowed us to automate certificate rotation and deployment effectively. We integrated it with GlobalSign and aimed to automate DNS verification, although challenges remained. Venafi's platform-agnostic nature was beneficial for handling certificates across different systems like IIS, AWS, and Azure. It ensures centralized certificate management, which is crucial for compliance and maintaining best practices. It significantly improved our operational efficiency by automating certificate workflows. This reduced the number of certificates requiring manual management, freeing internal resources from deploying trivial certificates. While some complex certificates still needed manual intervention, automating simpler ones eliminated internal bottlenecks associated with tasks like uploading certificates to Imperva. By automating these processes, we reduced errors, streamlined workflows, and eliminated the need to repeatedly remember and execute complex procedures, ultimately increasing our overall operational efficiency. The automation capabilities are good; when properly configured, it performs as expected.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"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."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"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 definitely worth the money to have Venafi as a tool; it's definitely miles away from the competition, in my opinion."
"The feature that I have found most valuable is their certificate discovery."
"We have reduced 80% to 90% of our outages with Venafi, which impacts the revenue substantially."
"The most valuable feature of Venafi is that it provides a seamless user interface and integrations."
"Venafi's technical support is impressively fast."
"The support is definitely great. What I like best about Venafi is that it's very easy to get somebody on a call and get any of my questions answered. That's probably the biggest thing. Besides the fact that it's a mature product and it works, the support is a big deal."
"Venafi's automation capabilities were significant, as they allowed us to automate certificate rotation and deployment effectively."
"Venafi is super stable, and we experienced no issues with its stability."
 

Cons

"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."
"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."
"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."
"I would like a more modern look to the portal."
"I'm looking forward to seeing how they move to FIDO U2F as their primary authentication method across all of their solutions."
"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."
"Venafi could enhance its offerings by providing more automation features."
"There are quite a few different technical aspects of Venafi that I feel they just missed out on; I'd have to look at my notes for the specifics."
"There's definitely lots of room for improvement with Venafi. They have a website where we can suggest new features, and they need to take that a little bit more seriously."
"Venafi excels in automating certificate rotation and deployment but could enhance its offering by improving support for hardware security modules like Fortanix and providing more advanced, out-of-the-box integrations with public certificate authorities for DNS re-verification."
"I would like to see included in the next release of Venafi integration with the cloud HSM's, Hardware Security Module. Additionally, I would say other cloud services, because it's not only cloud that's essential. If you have a customer that has a lot of their IT moved into cloud, integration with different cloud services is always an area to improve."
"Currently, specific processes require manual installations due to the lack of built-in integrations."
"We have not faced any kind of disadvantage regarding Venafi, but they could improve on the bugs, as sometimes the system gets stuck."
"The product was really good when it was a Venafi product. However, since its acquisition by CyberArk, there has been a lack of significant innovations."
 

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."
"Axiad's pricing was what we were expecting. It was at the right spot. They were competitive."
"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."
"Venafi's pricing appears to be competitive within the market."
"I feel that it's fairly priced compared to other solutions we evaluated, such as IBM, SailPoint, and KiteServer. It is fairly priced and offers good value."
"The pricing model is complex, considering factors beyond the number of certificates. This complexity can make our payments to Venafi challenging if costs continue to rise. It is good but more expensive than the competitors."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
22%
Government
12%
Manufacturing Company
9%
University
8%
Financial Services Firm
16%
Insurance Company
8%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Computer Software Company
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Axiad Cloud?
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 up...
What is your primary use case for Axiad Cloud?
Our use case is credential management for one of the business units. Axiad provides credential management for those users, including the creation of new credentials and life cycle management of the...
What advice do you have for others considering Axiad Cloud?
You have to understand the number of users and the number of devices that are going to use the solution. I'm saying that because of my experience with the licensing part. That's my one gripe. If yo...
What do you like most about Venafi?
We use Venafi for PKI certificates.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Venafi?
The pricing has increased for us, impacting our organization due to its operational expenditure (OPEX). The pricing model is complex, considering factors beyond the number of certificates. This com...
What needs improvement with Venafi?
The product was really good when it was a Venafi product. However, since its acquisition by CyberArk, there has been a lack of significant innovations. They are pushing for cloud adoption, but we p...
 

Also Known As

Axiad Cloud
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Information Not Available
Surescripts, CME Group, TD Bank Group, Aetna, MoneyGram, Zions Bancorp, Cisco
Find out what your peers are saying about Axiad Conductor vs. Venafi and other solutions. Updated: June 2025.
856,873 professionals have used our research since 2012.