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Azure Key Vault vs Certificate Lifecycle Manager comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jun 2, 2026

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
7.1
Azure Key Vault delivers ROI through cost-efficiency, enhanced security, compliance, and centralized management, improving organizational security and access control.
Sentiment score
4.8
CyberArk Certificate Manager automates processes, reducing costs and risks, improving efficiency, and offering financial and operational benefits.
Earlier, we had an operations team of seven people to manage certificates manually, but now it has reduced costs by reducing the team to two people with the help of the certificate management tool.
Cybersecurity Solution Architect at Advance Auto Parts
CyberArk Certificate Manager is doing its best with multiple layers of security.
Section Head Cybersecurity at a energy/utilities company with 5,001-10,000 employees
I have seen a return on investment in terms of money saved and time saved.
Cybersecurity Manager at a financial services firm with 11-50 employees
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
6.9
Azure Key Vault support is praised for responsiveness and knowledge, though some experience communication issues and delays reaching experts.
Sentiment score
6.5
CyberArk Certificate Manager customer service is quick and knowledgeable, but faces challenges in response time and global consistency.
Technical support from Azure responds as quickly as possible without any delay.
Security Engineer at a computer software company with 1,001-5,000 employees
I have a strong relationship with Microsoft since we are one of their best clients in Spain.
Software Architect at RedesCDM
The skill level of the support staff is also questionable.
IT Director at Infosys
Inquiries are typically addressed the same day, with most issues, even complex ones, resolved within 24 hours.
Global Security Systems Consultant at a insurance company with 10,001+ employees
Venafi's technical support is excellent, with even their first-tier support being in-house and highly competent.
Systems Engineer at a insurance company with 51-200 employees
Their technical support is knowledgeable and helpful, making Venafi stand out among other CyberArk products.
Solution Engineer at a comms service provider with 10,001+ employees
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
7.2
Azure Key Vault is scalable, cloud-based, suitable for enterprises, but requires improved integration; users rate scalability highly.
Sentiment score
5.9
CyberArk Certificate Manager efficiently scales to handle millions of certificates and users, with seamless expansion and strong cloud performance.
This role-based access control enhances scalability and efficiency by providing a focused view of necessary information.
Global Security Systems Consultant at a insurance company with 10,001+ employees
Horizontal scaling is a necessity rather than vertical scaling.
Solution Engineer at a comms service provider with 10,001+ employees
Scalability with Venafi is good; you can definitely use it if you have ten thousand certs, a thousand certs, a million, or a couple million.
Senior Security Engineer at a tech services company with 1-10 employees
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
8.1
Azure Key Vault is highly reliable, rated 8-10, with minor performance issues as usage increases, outperforming competitors in stability.
Sentiment score
6.5
CyberArk Certificate Manager is stable and reliable, with minor server-related issues, rated 8-9/10 for stability.
Venafi's stability has been consistently reliable.
Global Security Systems Consultant at a insurance company with 10,001+ employees
Venafi is a stable product. It's definitely more stable than others.
Senior Security Engineer at a tech services company with 1-10 employees
I observed that in the last year, CyberArk Certificate Manager was down two to three times without any notification.
Certified Ethical Hacker at Skillogic
 

Room For Improvement

Azure Key Vault needs an intuitive interface, improved integration, enhanced security, optimized pricing, and better support and accessibility.
CyberArk Certificate Manager needs improved automation, integrations, usability, support, interfaces, and customization for enhanced performance and flexibility.
My security area wants to rotate passwords every day, every week, or every month, depending on the services.
Software Architect at RedesCDM
One of our certificates was not getting deployed, and during that time, the support team was unsure and had to connect with the back-end team for assistance.
Senior Infrastructure Engineer at MIC Global
The skill level of the support staff is also questionable.
IT Director at Infosys
Expanding the range of out-of-the-box integrations would significantly improve the user experience.
Global Security Systems Consultant at a insurance company with 10,001+ employees
The yearly DNS verification required by certificate authorities necessitates manual intervention, hindering full automation.
Systems Engineer at a insurance company with 51-200 employees
They are pushing for cloud adoption, but we prefer on-premises solutions due to regulatory concerns.
Solution Engineer at a comms service provider with 10,001+ employees
 

Setup Cost

Azure Key Vault pricing varies by usage, seen as cost-effective versus competitors, though some find it expensive.
CyberArk Certificate Manager offers competitive pricing that users find equitable, balancing licensing costs with enterprise solution value.
I would classify it as low priced.
Enterprise Architect at a computer software company with 1,001-5,000 employees
The pricing of Azure Key Vault is nominal, not that expensive.
Associate Vice President (Data Security & Protection - Confidential AI) at Standard Chartered Bank
We are planning to buy protection for Entra.
IT Director at Infosys
Venafi offers good value for the cost.
Global Security Systems Consultant at a insurance company with 10,001+ employees
The pricing has increased for us, impacting our organization due to its operational expenditure (OPEX).
Solution Engineer at a comms service provider with 10,001+ employees
For our budget, Venafi's cost is moderate. It's not expensive as internal certificate generation is free, and we only pay for the public CA certificate signer and for storage in Venafi.
Software Development Engineer 2 at Expedia Group
 

Valuable Features

Azure Key Vault offers secure, scalable secret management with easy integration, featuring advanced protection, role-based access, and DevOps support.
CyberArk Certificate Manager automates certificate management, enhancing security, reducing errors, and supporting DevOps and Zero Trust architectures.
All secrets are in the Key Vault, and access is managed by the integrated management in ITT, which Azure provides to the services.
Software Architect at RedesCDM
It also helps me increase my security posture and assists with regulatory and compliance requirements.
Enterprise Architect at a computer software company with 1,001-5,000 employees
Since implementing Azure Key Vault, I have observed that instead of storing plain values, we can store them securely as and when required.
Software Engineer at Synoptek
The most valuable feature of Venafi is the automation that helps save time and reduce human error.
Global Security Systems Consultant at a insurance company with 10,001+ employees
It ensures centralized certificate management, which is crucial for compliance and maintaining best practices.
Systems Engineer at a insurance company with 51-200 employees
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.
Senior Security Engineer at a tech services company with 1-10 employees
 

Categories and Ranking

Azure Key Vault
Ranking in Certificate Management Software
1st
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
52
Ranking in other categories
Enterprise Password Managers (1st), Microsoft Security Suite (20th), Secrets Management Tools (2nd)
Certificate Lifecycle Manager
Ranking in Certificate Management Software
2nd
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.0
Number of Reviews
19
Ranking in other categories
Authentication Systems (5th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2026, in the Certificate Management Software category, the mindshare of Azure Key Vault is 16.8%, down from 31.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Certificate Lifecycle Manager is 8.4%, down from 8.8% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Certificate Management Software Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Azure Key Vault16.8%
CyberArk Certificate Manager8.4%
Other74.8%
Certificate Management Software
 

Featured Reviews

Rajthilak BS - PeerSpot reviewer
Associate Vice President (Data Security & Protection - Confidential AI) at Standard Chartered Bank
Have addressed compliance challenges but still struggle with seamless integration of certificate issuance between environments
In terms of Azure Key Vault improvements, we have to compare the competitor. If we consider AWS, our bank has Microsoft PKI, which is a Microsoft product, for the entire digital certificate infrastructure. Even in the cloud, when it is AWS, the internal certificates are MS PKI. When we had a problem, users had to come to on-premise to get a certificate and import it to AWS Certificate Manager and assign it. We wondered why we could not issue the certificate directly from the cloud for cloud users. There was a simple way in AWS. They have a Private Certificate Authority (PCA) and Amazon Certificate Manager. Private Certificate Authority issues certificates to Amazon services. They also provide Amazon Certificate Manager to store and deploy certificates. These are two neat components - one is an issuer and another is storage and deployment solutions for certificates. With PCA, I can directly enable it and get certificates from AWS itself. AWS can issue SSL/TLS certificates if you enable it directly. If you consider Azure, it is not very clear. Even the naming convention, Key Vault, might not suggest that this is a PKI or certificate manager. You cannot issue certificates directly. They have app certificates and did not have a clear-cut certificate management solution in the cloud when I worked at that time. I am not sure whether they have updated Azure Key Vault as a full-fledged PKI solution now. From what I saw, it was not a full-fledged PKI solution. We are not majorly using Azure Key Vault because it is only for storing secrets. If some solutions can provide guidance on how we can maximize leverage, we can immediately look forward to doing that. We already have some business problems we want to solve. While our primary focus is AWS, many of the services such as ADO are running on Azure, and the secondary services are growing bigger.
Karthik Kashyap T H - PeerSpot reviewer
Lead Engineer at a retailer with 10,001+ employees
Eliminates certificate expiration outages and offers good customization and reporting capabilities
Even though it allows for email editing, until version 23.1, you had to log on to the server, and the console itself used to take a lot of time. That has changed from the last release onwards. When you're defining the flow, there are some areas that can probably cause confusion to the users. If you want to rename the default field, you cannot rename it, which caused a lot of confusion during the initial days until everyone got settled in. Allowing the renaming or updating of the default field is something Certificate Manager can improve on. Certificate Manager has both the on-prem and the cloud versions, but the on-prem version is far more mature than the cloud version, which lacks a lot of features that the on-prem version offers, at least when we did the POC and evaluated the product. The maturity of the cloud version needs improvement. Additionally, when considering the on-prem version, there is a minor glitch in the system. When an administrator makes changes, they have flexibility regarding the approval flow. When dealing with a certificate that requires approval from several different teams, there is a minor glitch in the system where the name of the approver does not appear. This is a bug that we are currently addressing. Additionally, there is room for improvement in key management. Changing the default account name is not a straightforward process; it can be quite tedious. This is an area where improvements could be made. If there is a particular workflow that we want to tweak, right now, we can achieve it only via a PowerShell script. It would be great if they could also support a small Python script or anything to expand their scripting or adaptable workflow code base. Even though we can call another script from a PowerShell script, if someone doesn't have knowledge of PowerShell, that would be challenging.
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
12%
Computer Software Company
9%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
7%
Financial Services Firm
17%
Computer Software Company
9%
Insurance Company
7%
Government
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business15
Midsize Enterprise11
Large Enterprise27
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business8
Large Enterprise19
 

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...
What needs improvement with Microsoft Azure Key Vault?
Based on my three years of experience, I believe there have been no updates to Azure Key Vault. I think the product needs upgrades in terms of access control and certification improvements. While A...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Venafi?
In terms of pricing, they are a little costly, but they are the best in the market today, so I would say they are worth every penny, rating them again at seven or eight.
What needs improvement with Venafi?
CyberArk Certificate Manager can be improved, particularly in terms of integrations with other tools. I would like to see improvements in integrations with ID, Kerberos, or with other companies for...
What advice do you have for others considering Venafi?
Since using CyberArk Certificate Manager, I have seen specific outcomes such as a reduction in incidents because I can work with CyberArk Certificate Manager, where digital certificates are everywh...
 

Also Known As

Microsoft Azure Key Vault, MS Azure Key Vault
Venafi
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Adobe, DriveTime, Johnson Controls, HP, InterContinental Hotels Group, ASOS
Surescripts, CME Group, TD Bank Group, Aetna, MoneyGram, Zions Bancorp, Cisco
Find out what your peers are saying about Azure Key Vault vs. Certificate Lifecycle Manager and other solutions. Updated: April 2026.
896,942 professionals have used our research since 2012.