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BeyondTrust Privileged Remote Access 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 Privileged Remo...
Ranking in Privileged Access Management (PAM)
10th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
22
Ranking in other categories
Remote Access (8th)
Symantec Privileged Access ...
Ranking in Privileged Access Management (PAM)
21st
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 May 2025, in the Privileged Access Management (PAM) category, the mindshare of BeyondTrust Privileged Remote Access is 4.6%, down from 4.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Symantec Privileged Access Manager is 1.5%, up from 1.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Privileged Access Management (PAM)
 

Featured Reviews

Hahn Rolf - PeerSpot reviewer
Securely manage high-privilege remote access with granular configurations
I recommend that we improve integration with other products like PasswordSafe, aiming for smoother integration. Better alignment between products would enhance manageability from a single point. Additionally, BeyondTrust should focus on automating the update process to reduce unnecessary ticket creation. Improved quality control for non-English language versions is needed to avoid translation and layout errors.
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

"I like all of it. You can access computers that are on a DMZ. You can access computers that are off the network and on the network. You pretty much have access to computers wherever they are. As long as they have the client on them, you can get to them. So, it is convenient, but its main feature is that you can use your smart card to elevate your privileges remotely. That's a great feature."
"Based on the feedback from my colleagues who have never complained about the technical support, I would say that the product's support team is good."
"The visibility of the solution's Vault works as it is supposed to: out-of-the-box for domain accounts, endpoints, and local accounts associated with discovery jobs."
"I'd rate the solution ten out of ten."
"The secure access must be audited live, ensuring patient data protection."
"PRA stands on its own as a full solution. This is important because it reduces the need to maintain a lot of different services. Also, the integration between those services are sometimes not easy to maintain. So, having a solution like BeyondTrust Privileged Remote Access reducing our workload gives us enough time to work on our other issues. The system just runs and does what it is supposed to do."
"When it comes to the Privileged Remote Access (PRA) solution, instead of depending on a VPN client, from Cisco or any other vendor, we can directly use this product from the internet. It is very easy to do the implementation, and it is easy for every user to access the server from outside of their organization. They can open the URL and put their name and password, and it'll do the multi-factor authentication. They can easily access the server. Prior to this solution, the users had to log into the VPN, which is not required with BeyondTrust. Now, they can use their computer over the internet."
"Its security, simplicity, and ease of deployment and maintenance are the most valuable. It is FIPS compliant, so it goes through severe penetration testing every one year or two years. They have to maintain this compliance. It is very safe. Customers have been using it in the last eight years because of the simplicity of getting it deployed quickly. Most of the people using the solution had been hacked already, so they needed it quickly. As compared to the other solutions in the market, it can be turned on in production very quickly. You don't really need to have a server. It can be deployed very rapidly on VMware or Hyper-V, and you don't need to do an installation. It is a kind of an all-included package that you just deploy in a VM environment. It is basically a VM that is specifically built for a customer. The way the PRA data solutions work is that you need to build them for each customer because of being hard-coded with their SSL certificate, their web page name, and all that."
"The system is very stable."
"It reduces the viral attacks on my website. It also allows certain users access to see what happens daily."
"It is simple to implement and is suitable for medium to large-scale enterprises."
"For me, it is the robust API which is the most valuable feature. This allows for low maintenance costs and allows applications to automatically connect. This is great to automate security of the DevOps pipeline for shared secrets across environments. Also, being on Linux and a virtual appliance is great."
"It's easy to use and easy to configure."
"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."
"The agent-based credential management solution allows clients to programmatically use the agent to collect passwords during runtime from Symantec Privileged Access Manager."
"It will provide us with more security."
 

Cons

"The solution's Vault is a nice feature. It helps to securely share a security password in teams, but it is not at the level of a password management solution. So, it is just really a vault. We were expecting to have more features to better manage passwords, but that is something that you can work around if you also have a password safe solution. I would like them to have features like password rotation or password auditing, e.g., old passwords."
"In terms of the ability to automate the creation of new accounts within it, it's still a bit laborious."
"When doing protocol panel jumps, the tool does not restrict what is recorded on the user's computer."
"They could probably integrate a wizard or something like that to add a new use case. It could be something that makes it easier to add a new use case."
"One of our gaps or pain points is having multi-factor authentication at the endpoint and using the PRA password injection from BeyondTrust, which does not work in our environment. We can only have MFA at the login of BeyondTrust to check out the password. Therefore, we can't meet our security requirements of having it on the endpoint."
"Multiple areas can be improved. We've seen lots of updates in the past year. They have a portal where we can submit our ideas. BeyondTrust is immediately implementing user suggestions. The UI could be more informative. Initially, there were two or three connectors, and now we have five or six. It would be nice if they added a few more connectors for third-party integration. There are multiple tools, but the clients may require more for their convenience."
"Changing your password should be simplified, and there should not be a charge for it."
"Customer support used to be faster with chat options available. However, support now requires opening a ServiceNow ticket, which can be time-consuming."
"The setup is complex."
"They need to do a little bit more on the mainframe side.​"
"We have to do a lot of manual work to automate features."
"Bring more technology into the portfolio and being able to collapse those products into a much more integrated way."
"They should include some assignments in the test environment to explore the product's features."
"It'd be great if you just stuck in your PIV card and Windows popped up, asked you for your password. You typed it in, then it remembered your credentials."
"The management console could be improved."
"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."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"I rate the product's pricing a four on a scale of one to ten, where one is high, and ten is low. It is an expensive product."
"PRA was one of the cheapest solutions that we evaluated."
"I wish it was a little bit cheaper, but when a product is as solid as this, I understand what the cost does. It helps them to make sure it stays that way. If you want a reliable, solid product, you're going to pay more."
"The price is pretty expensive, but you get what you pay for and this is a great product."
"Don't get into a situation where you are licensing per desktop or per person until you fully understand the licensing."
"I wasn't directly involved in the licensing and pricing, but I can say that PRA is licensed per endpoint added to the Vault. I would advise users to take frequent exports of their license usage package; it's a simple feature that provides a spreadsheet of every machine in the Vault. This helps to cut down on duplicate licenses, which can happen by adding the same endpoint using an IP address and a fully qualified domain name, for instance. The implementation is an additional cost, and they offer several tiers, so the price varies. There are also some optional add-ons, so I would advise people to research the product well and find out precisely what they need regarding features. The Advanced Web Access add-on provides some required functionality when interfacing with websites; that's one to consider."
"My client found the solution a bit expensive but considering their use case and requirements, they didn't have any other choice. As far as I know, implementation and licensing are the only costs."
"Its price is pretty good for the features and services that it provides. It is not outrageous. I'm not aware of any additional charges or anything like that."
"They offer per-device, per-user, or monthly and yearly licensing models."
"It is reasonably priced."
"Pricing is fair compared to other top vendors."
"I would prefer better licensing options for the 20-100 users we have at a given time."
"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."
"The licensing is simple and scalable."
"It is more expensive than other solutions on the market."
"The prices are not low, but one can ask for a discount. It’s not the cheapest PAM solution."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
18%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Government
7%
Computer Software Company
17%
Manufacturing Company
16%
Comms Service Provider
14%
Financial Services Firm
13%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about BeyondTrust Privileged Remote Access?
The product has improved remote support capabilities since it works fine.
What needs improvement with BeyondTrust Privileged Remote Access?
I recommend that we improve integration with other products like PasswordSafe, aiming for smoother integration. Better alignment between products would enhance manageability from a single point. Ad...
What is your primary use case for BeyondTrust Privileged Remote Access?
We use the tool for vendor access, providing secure vendor access to manage systems. Most of our use cases involve selling the product for vendor access with high privileges. We also use it when us...
What do you like most about Symantec Privileged Access Manager?
We can check the activities in the server for fragile files and documents in case of any issues.
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...
 

Also Known As

Bomgar Privileged Access
CA PAM, Xceedium Xsuite, CA Privileged Access Manager
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Horizon Beverage, Air Liquide, Gateway Bank of Florida
NEOVERA, Telesis, eSoft
Find out what your peers are saying about BeyondTrust Privileged Remote Access vs. Symantec Privileged Access Manager and other solutions. Updated: April 2025.
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