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CyberArk Identity vs Okta Platform vs Symantec Siteminder comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

Review summaries and opinions

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

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2026, in the Access Management category, the mindshare of CyberArk Identity is 3.5%, up from 2.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Okta Platform is 10.8%, down from 11.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Symantec Siteminder is 2.8%, down from 3.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Access Management Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Okta Platform10.8%
CyberArk Identity3.5%
Symantec Siteminder2.8%
Other82.9%
Access Management
 

Featured Reviews

Hariharan Thangasamy - PeerSpot reviewer
Cybersecurity Delivery Analyst at Accenture
Has strengthened privileged access control and improved audit visibility through session monitoring and password rotation
On the identity product side, it is awesome. However, they can improve in the documentation parts. For example, if there is a migration process, I can see the maximum customers are moving from self-hosted to on-premises or from on-premises to the cloud. It would be helpful if they released a generalized document for processes such as migration. A clear overview document would assist us in understanding more about the tool, configurations, and automations to enhance our security. Regarding the initial setup of CyberArk Identity, I faced some challenges. At some points, I could not find proper documentation for deploying, enhancing, or integrating with other components. I could not find the proper documentation in the community portal.
SN
Identity and Access Management Specialist at a university with 10,001+ employees
Automated lifecycle management has cut onboarding times and now drives secure, clean access
Although I am a fan of Okta Platform overall, there are areas where it could improve security outcomes and reduce admin friction. My top improvement areas include the system log and analytics upgrade, which are great for point troubleshooting, but trending and root cause analysis across large tenants still require exporting to SIEM. Verbose queries and long-range retention costs can add up. Additionally, while certificate rotations are better than most, the process is still manual for busy portfolios, especially concerning multi-SP SAML certificate rotations and app metadata drift. Two more buckets of potential improvements for Okta Platform involve user experience and security. There is the issue of push fatigue and prompt sprawl, where users receive multiple prompts across different apps and sessions. I arrived at the rating of eight because the core controls are strong and reliable, but a few operational UX and UI gaps prevent it from being rated higher. The reasons for not giving it a nine or ten include ongoing issues concerning safety and change safety, the complexity of group rules and mappings, and the lack of robustness in policy management. Additionally, there remains a need for more manual involvement than necessary, especially for large portfolios and dual certificate rotation, along with proactive SP data metadata validation.
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

"Being able to integrate CyberArk Identity with Microsoft Defender is valuable."
"If anyone makes an error, or if an incident occurs by accident, the business will not be harmed as a result of this activity."
"The features are really powerful, providing really good SSO and MFA features and implementation capability, plus an MDM solution, and the cloud-based setup is simple and scalable."
"The solution has good technical support."
"The user identification is simplified, and managing user privileges, whether adding or revoking them, is also quite straightforward when utilizing CyberArk SaaS."
"The user self-service program and the Office 365 provisioning service feature are the most valuable. It is a very easy and feature-rich solution that gives priority to the users and security."
"CyberArk Identity is a mature product."
"The most valuable features of CyberArk Identity are its ability to control access to administrative staff."
"It is a very stable solution."
"I find the provisioning features and the integration with other applications useful."
"The most valuable features depend on a customer's needs. Our customers generally find multi-factor authentication very useful."
"The feature that is most valuable to me is the automated user provisioning that we set up using Okta as a major part of that process."
"The key feature of the solution is the multifactor authentication itself."
"It is flexible and easy to install."
"The most valuable features of Okta Workforce Identity are MFA, and SSO, which have high security."
"Valuable features include UD, SSO functionality, MFA and Adaptive MFA functionality, ability to link multiple Directory databases with UD."
"They really made life simple for the user and the user experience has improved."
"Companies using Siteminder saw a return on investment, in terms of improved security."
"For us, it’s the best-of-breed pick on the market today."
"Using this product makes it easier for enterprises to integrate a majority or even all their apps into one single solution for access."
"It restricts cookie replacement and provides enhanced ones, so the applications are safer, helping keep our data secure in a much better way without affecting user experience."
"The most valuable feature is the integration with the Active Directory."
"I liked the debugging part. There are only two files (trace file and log file) that you need to look into while performing debugging, and the logs give you the exact info on where and what needs to be fixed."
"Authentication Authorization for our websites are important because all the sites need authentication for security purposes and that has been handled pretty well all these years with SSO."
 

Cons

"The solution's difficulty in gaining skill sets should be improved because it's a vertical product."
"It was pretty complex to implement CyberArk Identity. We had some help from a partner, and that helped a lot. But even for the partner, it was really difficult to streamline the process of implementing."
"Integration or deployment is extremely difficult for CyberArk Identity."
"They could improve their UI and make everything more user-friendly."
"One area for improvement is the complexity of the learning curve for new users."
"The reporting functionality is somewhat complicated."
"The product is not cheap, especially if you opt for an on-premise deployment requiring a complex server infrastructure. On the other hand, choosing the software as a service version simplifies infrastructure requirements but necessitates being online all the time."
"I'm not sure what needs improvement. It is a good platform."
"The product does not offer enough integration capabilities."
"Okta doesn't have a partial push. It pushes down the full profile schema for lifecycle management or provisioning."
"The solution's user interface needs to be improved and made easy."
"The integration process takes a bit longer than we would want it to."
"On the admin side, we can create our own passwords instead of generating one, which is usually difficult to explain to a user."
"Better multi-factor authentication integration and support, it's around v2.0 and will need a 3.0 release for maturity."
"I would like to see the provisioning simplified."
"We still had to write several internal programs/scripts to complete the user-provisioning process. Okta does not have the ability to provision mailbox accounts for on-premise Exchange or in a hybrid O365 environment. The Group Push function from Okta to AD did not work reliably in our environment."
"The support team could work on their response time and overall competence."
"I would like to see a move towards the newer technologies, which is what we are doing right now."
"I would give the technical support a rating of 2-3/10."
"One of the features that needs improvement is the capability of implementing single sign-on in cloud."
"It's not user friendly, but it's very customizable."
"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."
"Symantec SiteMinder is not easy to set up and maintain at an infrastructure level."
"The main thing is we do not have the traceability and good monitoring that CA can provide us to capture problems when they occur."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The pricing is acceptable. It is worth considering what we are protecting with the amount charged."
"The solution is cheap and I rate its pricing an eight out of ten."
"There could be some additional costs apart from the licensing costs of the solution when you want to develop connectors in CyberArk Identity."
"There is an initial license and then there is a subscription needed."
"CyberArk Identity is an expensive solution."
"The pricing of CyberArk Identity is competitive."
"I would rate the tool’s pricing a seven out of ten. The product’s pricing is expensive and is on a yearly basis. You will need to pay around 10,000 GBP for 500 users."
"Their pricing is obviously a lot higher than many vendors in the marketplace but their service is also unmatched."
"The price of the solution is good."
"This solution is costly. Pricing is decent if you have less users, but it significantly goes up the more users you have, with its cost not justified."
"Price-wise, Okta Workforce Identity is a cheap solution. The overall cost depends on the license since you can negotiate with Okta or any of Okta's partners only if you opt for many licenses."
"The licensing model is fine for general service usage. However, the charges for API features and API tokens can be quite high."
"The price of this product could be lower."
"The product is expensive compared to other vendors."
"It has a yearly subscription. As compared to its competitors, it is quite expensive. It also has a complex licensing model."
"It is costly for large companies."
"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."
"CA solutions are generally expensive but for the customer the ROI is big."
"Symantec Siteminder is expensive; they could definitely do better on the price."
"The pricing is reasonable."
"The price is quite comparable to the other enterprise-level solutions in that market."
"I recommend conducting a PoC on every available product before choose one."
"The licensing is fair for this solution."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
13%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Computer Software Company
9%
Construction Company
7%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Computer Software Company
7%
Government
6%
Financial Services Firm
23%
Insurance Company
8%
Marketing Services Firm
8%
Performing Arts
5%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business20
Midsize Enterprise4
Large Enterprise10
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business44
Midsize Enterprise23
Large Enterprise50
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business8
Midsize Enterprise3
Large Enterprise69
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for CyberArk Identity?
I am not certain about CyberArk Identity's exact pricing model. For comparison, Okta was around five dollars per user...
What needs improvement with CyberArk Identity?
We do not specifically use the password vaulting feature of CyberArk Identity. The centralized user dashboard of Cybe...
What is your primary use case for CyberArk Identity?
It's not being purchased through AWS, but we're using CyberArk Identity as a SaaS solution. I think it's running on A...
What do you like most about Okta Workforce Identity?
Okta has introduced the Universal Directory. It has custom attribute capability and user permissions to read/write on...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Okta Workforce Identity?
Pricing for Okta is reasonably not that much, however, I don't have access to the commercial aspect.
What needs improvement with Okta Workforce Identity?
Currently, in Okta Workforce Identity we get the two-digit authentication code. Instead of getting the two-digit auth...
What do you like most about Symantec Siteminder?
It's agent-based. It's convenient to deploy and integrate.
What needs improvement with Symantec Siteminder?
Symantec Siteminder needs to have adaptive authentication and multi-factor authentication as integrated features. Cur...
 

Also Known As

Idaptive
Okta Customer Identity, Workforce Identity
SiteMinder, CA SSO, Layer7 SiteMinder
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

MLB, Citi, Pfizer, SulAmerica, GE Capital, Shiseido
FedEx, Zoom, Takeda, Lululemon Athletica, GrunHub, jetBlue, McKensson, Bain & Company, Engie, Peloton, Sonos, T-Mobile, Hewlett Packard, MGM Resorts, Ally Financial, Priceline, Albertsons, Itercom, Classy, FICO, Kensho, Live Nation, Drata, Rotary, and others.
British Telecom, CoreBlox, DBS, HMS, Itera ASA and Simeo
Find out what your peers are saying about Microsoft, Okta, Cisco and others in Access Management. Updated: March 2026.
885,789 professionals have used our research since 2012.