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BeyondTrust Password Safe vs StrongDM comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jun 15, 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

BeyondTrust Password Safe
Ranking in Privileged Access Management (PAM)
9th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
26
Ranking in other categories
Enterprise Password Managers (7th)
StrongDM
Ranking in Privileged Access Management (PAM)
17th
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
2
Ranking in other categories
Access Management (15th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2025, in the Privileged Access Management (PAM) category, the mindshare of BeyondTrust Password Safe is 3.4%, up from 2.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of StrongDM is 1.4%, up from 0.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Privileged Access Management (PAM)
 

Featured Reviews

Ali Hatamleh - PeerSpot reviewer
Smart tooling streamlines account organization and access through advanced grouping features
The features I find valuable in Password Safe include password retention and management, session privilege monitoring, live monitoring and recording, and the use of PS automation scripts for creating connections. The smart tooling and smart group features are also important as, after finalizing discovery, they auto-collect accounts in the environment and organize them in Smart Groups for easy access.
reviewer2589615 - PeerSpot reviewer
Seamlessly manage cloud access with enhanced security features
I was part of the team managing the infrastructure for a small startup company. We used StrongDM to provide access to cloud private networks, control user access to databases, hosts through SSH, and Kubernetes resources StrongDM was able to replace the combination of different products we…

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"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."
"The CI/CD and REST API are also satisfactory; the solution has a full PAM feature set and they all work well."
"One of the most valuable features is that this is a product designed with enterprises in mind."
"The solution protects organizations from internal and external threats."
"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."
"Overall, I rate BeyondTrust Password Safe as nine out of ten."
"The most valuable feature is the architecture capabilities, which allow designated server components for high availability and failover. It works well with identity and access management solutions, allowing users to be automatically onboarded and offboarded. The account mapping feature makes rollout seamless. The session monitoring capabilities are excellent, with keystroke and graphical monitoring. This enhanced our security posture by providing detailed accounts of user actions. It helped us pass our SOX audits."
"BeyondTrust Password Safe has good reporting and Smart Rules which makes it convenient. Though Smart Rules are convenient, those who do not have much experience with such things may find it difficult to understand how these things work. Otherwise, I find Smart Rules very convenient to work with."
"All of the logging is handled for us, including for auditing purposes. Looking through the audit logs is not a painful experience."
"StrongDM replaced the puzzle of different solutions with one single product, which made managing resources more efficient."
"We primarily used StrongDM for access to resources on private networks like EC2 machines, Kubernetes clusters, and various databases."
 

Cons

"We'd like to have incremental backups to ensure the solution's information is protected regularly."
"The only improvement I could suggest would be standardizing documentation, but that's more the responsibility of the implementing engineer rather than BeyondTrust Password Trust itself. The documentation must be specific and narrow for implementation, not just broad guidelines."
"Its documentation can be improved. Its documentation is currently complicated, and it is not good. It needs to be better. Their technical support can also be improved. It is not bad, but it can be better."
"Named accounts don't work well in this solution. If you use named accounts for your administrative access, the way Smart Rules work is that it takes your SAM account name and matches it to the account name of your privileged ID, which creates limitations on size and how big those names can be because the directory has a 20-character limit."
"The pricing is not cheap, but it could be better."
"We don't have much control over the appliance. When anything happens in the backend, we have to depend on the support team. We need to raise a case so that they can update the appliance. If we have control over it, we would be able to troubleshoot easily."
"There are multiple features that have issues, although they could be specific to our environment. What we have seen is that whenever a user gets added to the authentication store, the sync between Password Safe and the authentication store, which is generally easy, takes a lot of time. It does not occur immediately."
"It has crashed on us in the past."
"It would be beneficial to have better control and alignment between frequent updates and improved communication regarding possible negative effects on existing customer bases."
"It would be beneficial to have better control and alignment between frequent updates and improved communication regarding possible negative effects on existing customer bases."
"We've had a few issues with the stability of this product in the past."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."
"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."
"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."
"This solution is not cheap—it's a very expensive solution. Very, very expensive compared to the features and functions that they offer."
"I would rate the pricing a seven out of ten, where one is cheap and ten is expensive."
"It has subscription-based licensing. BeyondTrust is three times less expensive than CyberArk."
"The licensing is per user per month."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
16%
Computer Software Company
13%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
7%
Computer Software Company
25%
Financial Services Firm
15%
Manufacturing Company
15%
University
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

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.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for StrongDM?
The leadership chose StrongDM after comparative research, which suggests economic benefits. It was mentioned that while the product is rapidly gaining features, it might become cost-prohibitive for...
What needs improvement with StrongDM?
It would be beneficial to have better control and alignment between frequent updates and improved communication regarding possible negative effects on existing customer bases. Also, documentation s...
What is your primary use case for StrongDM?
I was part of the team managing the infrastructure for a small startup company. We used StrongDM to provide access to cloud private networks, control user access to databases, hosts through SSH, an...
 

Also Known As

BeyondTrust PowerBroker Password Safe
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Aera Energy LLC, Care New England, James Madison University
Information Not Available
Find out what your peers are saying about BeyondTrust Password Safe vs. StrongDM and other solutions. Updated: July 2025.
865,384 professionals have used our research since 2012.