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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)
11th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.4
Number of Reviews
24
Ranking in other categories
Remote Access (15th)
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 December 2025, in the Privileged Access Management (PAM) category, the mindshare of BeyondTrust Privileged Remote Access is 3.3%, down from 4.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Symantec Privileged Access Manager is 1.8%, up from 1.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Privileged Access Management (PAM) Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
BeyondTrust Privileged Remote Access3.3%
Symantec Privileged Access Manager1.8%
Other94.9%
Privileged Access Management (PAM)
 

Featured Reviews

AK
Lead Engg. Information Assurance at ACPL Systems Pvt Ltd
Strong security with room for enhancements in AI analytics
We integrate with our Active Directory regarding the role-based access controls in BeyondTrust Privileged Remote Access.I have not yet utilized the endpoint least privilege management feature in BeyondTrust Privileged Remote Access. There is a ready integration guide available for BeyondTrust Privileged Remote Access, so there are no major issues. All API integration is available to integrate with. More organizations are moving towards cloud infrastructure with BeyondTrust Privileged Remote Access. They are choosing this because they do not want to manage their on-premises and other hardware infrastructure. As we are not working with other vendors, I would rate BeyondTrust Privileged Remote Access a 10 out of 10.
Muzi Lubisi - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior technical Consultant at CA Africa
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

"It's a stable product. Based on the demos and interaction with it, it was stable."
"The most valuable feature is that this solution can be implemented regardless of the operating system."
"The scalability is excellent."
"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."
"It is a real fortress. Its security is very strong. Multi-factor came as a feature out-of-the-box, which was big for us. That helps us meet another compliance requirement. It enforces encryption. Nobody can see what we are doing in our remote system if they happen to be listening for unencrypted traffic. That is its biggest strength."
"The secure access must be audited live, ensuring patient data protection."
"The privileged remote access platform is able to track and record everything that happens within a session."
"We like the integration with Active Directory. It allows us to discover the endpoints and user accounts that need protection. It's a good way of securing our privileged access."
"The RDP-gateway: For limiting which server an operator can access."
"The agent-based credential management solution allows clients to programmatically use the agent to collect passwords during runtime from Symantec Privileged Access Manager."
"We found that the architecture is scalable and very resilient."
"The credential injection feature is highly valued, particularly for RDP sessions."
"CA PAM is working well for us."
"We can check the activities in the server for fragile files and documents in case of any issues."
"Whoever built it from the ground up, they understand how an organization is laid out."
"Symantec PAM is easier to deploy compared to its competitors, such as BeyondTrust."
 

Cons

"The solution is very flexible, which is a plus, but I would say the implementation requires someone with knowledge and experience, as it can be easy to get lost in all the details. The implementation process could be streamlined and simplified. Though the complexity of the solution provides greater flexibility, it requires a lot of time to understand it fully."
"At the moment, I don't see any major problems with it. If anything, they can just change the look and feel of the login screen because it looks too simple to me. It does not have so much information. When you get to the login screen of the solution, you should have more information. We also have BeyondTrust Remote Support, and the login page looks similar to BeyondTrust Privilege Remote Access. I would love to see more rich information on the login screen or landing page so that rather than having a regular sign-in screen or page where you just provide a username and password and get into the solution, you should have more insight into what the solution does. I've mentioned this to them every time I have had an opportunity."
"In terms of the ability to automate the creation of new accounts within it, it's still a bit laborious."
"Its access process for third-party vendors needs to be simplified."
"Its management is through two different portals, and you can't get from one portal to the other. I have to literally open up another website and go into it a different way. There are no inner links between the two. They should interlink the actual virtual server and the appliance. In general, there should be one interface for management for admins."
"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."
"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."
"The integration of the solution with many platforms is a difficult area to manage and needs to be made easy."
"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."
"Broadcom has neglected product development since acquiring Symantec, and nothing major has been added to PAM."
"Technical support was good when CA handled it. After Broadcom took over, it's not as good."
"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."
"An improvement for this solution is that it should not be constantly based on user name and password. There should be a condition to edit and update your username."
"They need to have zero tier and active-active setup ​with zero minimum downtime, which they are working on it. ​"
"The management console could be improved."
"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."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The price is pretty expensive, but you get what you pay for and this is a great product."
"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's pricing is competitive."
"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."
"PRA was one of the cheapest solutions that we evaluated."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"It is reasonably priced."
"They offer per-device, per-user, or monthly and yearly licensing models."
"Appliances are relatively cheap, don’t skimp. Make sure you have redundancy, high availability, and enough appliances to manage the concurrent workload."
"The licensing is simple and scalable."
"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."
"I would prefer better licensing options for the 20-100 users we have at a given time."
"Pricing is fair compared to other top vendors."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Manufacturing Company
15%
Computer Software Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Government
8%
Comms Service Provider
15%
Computer Software Company
13%
Government
9%
Financial Services Firm
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business12
Midsize Enterprise4
Large Enterprise7
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business14
Midsize Enterprise6
Large Enterprise30
 

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?
Improving technical support for BeyondTrust Privileged Remote Access is essential. When I communicate with technical support for BeyondTrust Privileged Remote Access, the response time is very slow.
What is your primary use case for BeyondTrust Privileged Remote Access?
When we are using BeyondTrust Privileged Remote Access with FortiGate or some Cisco third-party products, we collaborate with both vendors, take the requirement, and follow up with the technical te...
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

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: December 2025.
879,310 professionals have used our research since 2012.