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Cisco Duo vs Symantec Siteminder comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Mar 29, 2026

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

Cisco Duo
Ranking in Single Sign-On (SSO)
5th
Ranking in Access Management
5th
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
163
Ranking in other categories
Authentication Systems (2nd), ZTNA as a Service (2nd), Cisco Security Portfolio (1st), Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) (1st), AI Data Analysis (7th)
Symantec Siteminder
Ranking in Single Sign-On (SSO)
13th
Ranking in Access Management
15th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
75
Ranking in other categories
Web Access Management (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of November 2026, in the Single Sign-On (SSO) category, the mindshare of Cisco Duo is 3.2%, down from 4.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Symantec Siteminder is 3.7%, up from 2.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Single Sign-On (SSO) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Cisco Duo3.2%
Symantec Siteminder3.7%
Other93.1%
Single Sign-On (SSO)
 

Featured Reviews

Charles Slaustas - PeerSpot reviewer
Information Technology Contractor at Insight global
Supports seamless authentication for users across multiple organizations and personal portals
The features I use in Cisco Duo include Duo Pushes to confirm my identity to the device, and eventually as MFA security was increased, I actually had to use exchange passcodes. Sometimes, I have to go into the site and get into Cisco Duo to retrieve the passcode, and many of them have been two-factor, where the sites send a passcode that I have to enter into Cisco Duo. It has been more of the latter. I have not seen issues with lagging or crashing on Cisco Duo's end; it was usually on the client end, often because someone set up a bad upgrade or there were connection issues with the Cisco Duo cloud through the administrative site.
Muzi Lubisi - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior technical Consultant at CA Africa
Improved user experience with seamless integration and easy installation
The feature that I mostly valued is the ease of installation on different systems, especially on Windows. Additionally, it is very beneficial for deploying single sign-on sessions between different windows on a web browser, provided I am connected to the right identity provider. That seamless integration significantly improves user experience and efficiency.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The benefit of the features of Cisco Duo is that it secures our environment; nobody can access or join the network without it, and Cisco Duo will recognize and ensure that only people who are allowed in our environment can access our devices."
"It's simple. It's reliable. I haven't had any issues with it."
"The single pane of glass management works very well. That feature is very important because we have a lot of admins who have to manage Duo, and it's much easier when it's a single pane of glass. That single pane is also great because it's easy to enroll new devices."
"The anti-phishing feature is the most valuable."
"Overall, it meets all my needs, including price point, and I've been very happy with it."
"My overall rating for the solution is ten out of ten."
"I can recommend Cisco Duo because it is very easy to accept and understand."
"For me, the biggest return on investment when using Cisco Duo is my time."
"For us, it’s the best-of-breed pick on the market today."
"It is pretty easy to learn."
"CA SSO is helping us a lot in providing the access solution to the customers."
"We have three single sign-on products in our office and I believe that the CA product offers the best product of the three."
"Its flexibility and ease-of-use are the most valuable features."
"That seamless integration significantly improves user experience and efficiency."
"It provides us with authentications, authorizations, and basically providing the client with better secure services."
"For the most part, SSO is very stable."
 

Cons

"I think Cisco Duo could be improved by including email authentication, as there is currently only SMS, SMS push, and code generation, but having email authentication could be beneficial when you don't have a phone."
"I think Cisco Duo can be improved by integrating it more with developer tools; there is not a lot in terms of developer tooling with respect to authenticating to command line toolsets."
"Smart Licensing needs improvement. It's terrible. We have problems with it every year and we need to involve support to fix it."
"The experience with customer support and tech support when I first started with Cisco Duo was lacking on some parts where we were having issues."
"We have had instances where Duo Security stops working on a user's device, which we have fixed by uninstalling and then reinstalling it."
"Certain customers can not use this product because it is cloud-based."
"Regarding the stability and reliability of the Cisco Duo solution, we have experienced some outages over the last few years that are significant because people can't log in."
"Duo Security should have more customized use cases. For example, if a client needs to have more customization, it would be better to connect directly with Duo's R&D to try to discuss the issues together in order to add customizations."
"The tech support has not been very good for us so we don't use them anymore. We have had some issues. Nobody is perfect."
"I think that one drawback to this product is that it's too big."
"As we are moving in to the mobility space, this is where we really see SiteMinder and their other product really come together to provide a solution base to a different area where the IoT is coming, the different business communications are happening. All of those things require authentication and we really want to see this product grow into that role."
"Siteminder needs to improve its user experience."
"There is a considerable improvement in the product from previous versions, but a few items we feel need a little attention are the web agent installation process and steps – as it behaves differently on the same OS."
"We have challenges, performance issues for which we’re unable to find the root cause as we scale."
"I'd like to see a rework of the user directory configuration."
"The maintenance cost has increased significantly, and we are concerned about this."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Duo Security is free."
"Their pricing model is a little bit weird. Currently, there is no price advantage in signing up for yearly contracts. There are no additional costs to the standard licensing costs."
"From a business perspective, it is a little bit costly. The licensing is on a per-user basis."
"During testing we are allowed a certain number of licenses for free."
"The pricing is pretty competitive. It's pretty cheap. Anybody can adopt it."
"It was very reasonable."
"It's a bit confusing because we're on a three-year plan with a certain number of licenses, and we've gone over that number. They told us that when we renew, they will add all these licenses. We've expanded quickly, so everyone's kind of scared because no one knows what the bill is with the long pricing cycle."
"Its price is reasonable. It is not highly expensive."
"Symantec Siteminder is expensive; they could definitely do better on the price."
"CA solutions are generally expensive but for the customer the ROI is big."
"I recommend conducting a PoC on every available product before choose one."
"The price is quite comparable to the other enterprise-level solutions in that market."
"The pricing is reasonable."
"The licensing is fair for this solution."
"The solution's pricing is competitive."
"Siteminder is a little costly. You pay for licensing, and they offer packages, so if you have less users, then you have to buy different products at different prices. If you have more of a user base, then the package is different. They also include other features—for example, if you have a database and you're using Siteminder, then it's good to use a Semantic-specific database, but if you are using less, then you have to purchase the database separately. Whereas if you are going for a bigger license, then it comes within the package. It depends on which plan you are using."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Outsourcing Company
12%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Comms Service Provider
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
17%
Outsourcing Company
14%
Construction Company
11%
Manufacturing Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business64
Midsize Enterprise28
Large Enterprise82
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business8
Midsize Enterprise3
Large Enterprise69
 

Questions from the Community

How does Duo Security compare with Microsoft Authenticator?
We switched to Duo Security for identity verification. We’d been using a competitor but got the chance to evaluate Duo for 30 days, and we could not be happier. Duo Security is easy to configure a...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Duo Security?
Regarding the pricing, what actually happened was that we got the product purchased through our HQ, so the costing aspect and all those things sit with our HQ. I do not have much information in ter...
What needs improvement with Duo Security?
I do not have a straight answer for how Cisco Duo can be improved at this time. With the implementation that we are going through right now, I was asking a question about how we can use Cisco Duo o...
What needs improvement with Symantec Siteminder?
Symantec Siteminder needs to have adaptive authentication and multi-factor authentication as integrated features. Currently, multi-factor authentication is available as a separate solution, and it ...
What is your primary use case for Symantec Siteminder?
I deploy and support Symantec Siteminder ( /products/symantec-siteminder-reviews ). I have been a partner and reseller.
 

Also Known As

Duo Security
SiteMinder, CA SSO, Layer7 SiteMinder
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Information Not Available
British Telecom, CoreBlox, DBS, HMS, Itera ASA and Simeo
Find out what your peers are saying about Cisco Duo vs. Symantec Siteminder and other solutions. Updated: October 2026.
920,929 professionals have used our research since 2012.