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BeyondTrust Password Safe vs Symantec Privileged Access Manager comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Oct 6, 2024

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)
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 BeyondTrust Password Safe is 3.4%, up from 2.7% 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 (%)
BeyondTrust Password Safe3.4%
Symantec Privileged Access Manager1.4%
Other95.2%
Privileged Access Management (PAM)
 

Featured Reviews

IshtiaqKhalil - PeerSpot reviewer
Extensive experience with session management and quick technical support boost confidence
While generally a strong product, BeyondTrust Password Safe has a few areas that could use some polish. From an administrator's viewpoint, we sometimes see keystroke capturing fail. More significantly, RDP sessions occasionally disconnect without any error messages on the client side. This leaves us administrators in the dark, unable to identify the cause of the problem
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

"The best aspect of the product is the ability to onboard devices. You can scan the IP subnets and onboard all the devices. You can then segregate them if it's a network device or a firewall. If it's a Windows server or a UNIX, you can basically scan your IT infrastructure and onboard the efforts, which should be managed. Once they have been onboarded, then the session management and password management are easy and nicely configurable."
"BeyondTrust Password Safe is a good PAM tool."
"Session recording, password rotation, and password vaulting are the most valuable features."
"I like the session recording feature. I also like the analytics and reports. You can pull up a report, and the UI is fantastic. The system is recording when nobody's there, so we have a record of what's happening."
"The actual innovations offered by the vendor stand out to me. They are quick to respond to market demands and the changing environment of privileged access management."
"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."
"The time-saving benefits come from no longer having to remember multiple device passwords."
"Screen recording is valuable, and integration with applications is easy. We can customize whatever we want. We did a lot of application integration using scripting."
"Password Management and Session Recording. The simplicity and ease that it is to be up and running out-of-the-box is very much appreciated."
"The system is very stable."
"It is simple to implement and is suitable for medium to large-scale enterprises."
"We can enforce complicated password policies and very important frequent password changes."
"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 interface is very friendly, colorful, and bold."
"It's easy to use and easy to configure."
"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."
 

Cons

"Documentation is the primary area of improvement."
"We weren't aware that the Password Safe virtual appliance runs on a Windows server. As part of our monthly patching process, we ran into an issue. BeyondTrust Password Safe wasn't compatible with the patching we used to put on our server."
"The only feature they could improve is the banners because they aren't informative. For example, if something is not correct and I open the error notification, the dialogue box simply says, "This is an error." It would be great if they could provide some valuable comments about how to fix the errors."
"The effectiveness of BeyondTrust Password Safe's session management capabilities for SSH and RDP is pretty much robust, but it needs more improvement for other applications and web-based applications."
"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."
"The pricing is not cheap, but it could 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."
"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."
"I’m no fan of Java as an application front-end, as it tends to have issues depending on what browser one’s using."
"The response time for support could be faster. Some features should be added: cloud-based, VPN-less, more secure, and it should be adjusted in a hybrid environment."
"The support for other remote assistance tools would be excellent. Free included tools in Windows (Remote Assist) and Microsoft SCCM Configuration Manager (ConMgr Remote Control) allow companies to reduce the amount of RDP connections and expand the usage of the tools are frequently used by companies to provide technical support for remote assistance."
"The setup is complex."
"We experience stability issues after every patch upgrade. This is a place where CA needs to improve drastically."
"Technical support was good when CA handled it. After Broadcom took over, it's not as good."
"They need to have zero tier and active-active setup ​with zero minimum downtime, which they are working on it. ​"
"Broadcom has neglected product development since acquiring Symantec, and nothing major has been added to PAM."
 

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."
"At the time, BeyondTrust was significantly cheaper than CyberArk. Pricing-wise, if I remember correctly, it goes by assets. The pricing was negotiated for our instances based on the number of assets that we onboard into the system. It is a little different from CyberArk, where the pricing is by users. So, it depends. If you have a lot of assets, it can get very expensive."
"It has subscription-based licensing. BeyondTrust is three times less expensive than CyberArk."
"This solution is not cheap—it's a very expensive solution. Very, very expensive compared to the features and functions that they offer."
"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 pricing of BeyondTrust is very good as compared to other products. That was the main reason we decided to go with BeyondTrust at first."
"I would rate the pricing a seven out of ten, where one is cheap and ten is expensive."
"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."
"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."
"Cost-wise, CA was better compared to others in the market. ​"
"I would prefer better licensing options for the 20-100 users we have at a given time."
"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."
"Pricing is fair compared to other top vendors."
"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."
"They offer per-device, per-user, or monthly and yearly licensing models."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
18%
Computer Software Company
13%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Healthcare Company
6%
Comms Service Provider
16%
Computer Software Company
15%
Government
11%
Financial Services Firm
9%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business12
Midsize Enterprise5
Large Enterprise10
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business14
Midsize Enterprise6
Large Enterprise30
 

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 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

BeyondTrust PowerBroker Password Safe
CA PAM, Xceedium Xsuite, CA Privileged Access Manager
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Aera Energy LLC, Care New England, James Madison University
NEOVERA, Telesis, eSoft
Find out what your peers are saying about BeyondTrust Password Safe vs. Symantec Privileged Access Manager and other solutions. Updated: September 2025.
869,202 professionals have used our research since 2012.