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Red Hat Single Sign On vs Symantec Siteminder comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Sep 18, 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

Red Hat Single Sign On
Ranking in Single Sign-On (SSO)
10th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.8
Number of Reviews
5
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Symantec Siteminder
Ranking in Single Sign-On (SSO)
13th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
75
Ranking in other categories
Web Access Management (1st), Access Management (12th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of September 2025, in the Single Sign-On (SSO) category, the mindshare of Red Hat Single Sign On is 2.2%, down from 2.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Symantec Siteminder is 2.3%, down from 3.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Single Sign-On (SSO) Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Red Hat Single Sign On2.2%
Symantec Siteminder2.3%
Other95.5%
Single Sign-On (SSO)
 

Featured Reviews

Giovanni Baruzzi - PeerSpot reviewer
A stable and flexible solution with some basic capabilities
I set up Red Hat Single Sign-On in half an hour. I had to install a single sign-on solution for a customer. I reviewed a list of all available products, which were no more than fifty, and analyzed them. I chose it because it was convincing, modern, and based on technology from 2015. I put my trust in this product, and after nine years, I feel confident in my decision. Deploying this solution usually takes half an hour. You need an operating system running, then deploy the packages and prepare the interfaces. I rate the initial setup a ten out of ten, where one is difficult and ten is easy.
Muzi Lubisi - PeerSpot reviewer
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

"It is very easy to scale and use as you want."
"Red Hat SSO integrates well with our other solutions. Using OIDC protocols and ITL integration, employees can authenticate with Red Hat SSO and access our microservices."
"Good support for single sign-on protocols."
"The solution is flexible and has the same basic capabilities right out of the box. The most important feature of this product is that it is a Red double-sided product. One side is a well-known open-source project; the other is a Red Hat commercial product. The commercial product benefits from all the experience and contributions of the community, making it a very well-developed product."
"Red Hat SSO has a lot of very concise, well laid out documentation, which is available in the free edition as well."
"The product’s most valuable feature is its ability to assign only one password for the user at a false value."
"If you look at our organization, and really all financial institutions, we have a lot of legacy apps. So it really helps to get Single Sign-On."
"Right now, federation that comes out-of-the-box with single sign-on is the most valuable feature that we have, and also scalability."
"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."
"The single sign-on is the solution's most valuable feature"
"The authentication and single sign-on features of Symantec Siteminder are valuable."
"It provides the breadth and the width to provide solutions for the different kinds of technologies which we have."
"It is reliable."
"Authentication & Authorization are important because all the sites need authentication for security purposes. That has been handled pretty well all these years with SSO."
 

Cons

"They could provide more checks and balances to find out if there have been any security lapses, e.g., if somebody is trying to break into the system. Some other products have these detection mechanisms in case someone is trying to hack into the system or find out a user's passwords."
"The product’s technical support services could be better."
"Red Hat SSO's architecture could be updated."
"Red Hat publishes much more and communicates its actions and plans. They could provide words, maps, and other resources."
"Security could be improved."
"Better documentation. I went through some sessions on single sign-on for version 12.7."
"An area Siteminder could improve on is that there are a few limitations, in terms of new protocols for OpenID. If I want to have different scopes, the features are limited. They also do not have APIs exposed, which is a major drawback. API is a feature I would like to see included in the next release."
"All the problems that we reported actually have never been resolved. We could not capture enough information for CA to be able to debug the problem."
"The support team could work on their response time and overall competence."
"I'd like to see a rework of the user directory configuration."
"They need to make configurations easier, and not have the engineer having to guess what will happen when he changes a particular setting."
"If the reporting feature can be integrated into SSO itself that will be an icing on the cake."
"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."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"If you want support, that is when you use the paid version. There are different support categories that you can pay for, which provide different support levels. E.g., there is a quick response if you pay a higher amount, where the response time is within a few hours."
"Red Hat Single Sign On is expensive."
"It is a low cost product. This product can be used by non-profit organizations or universities, when they don't want to invest a lot of money."
"The license is around $8000 USD."
"The solution's pricing is competitive."
"CA solutions are generally expensive but for the customer the ROI is big."
"The pricing is reasonable."
"I recommend conducting a PoC on every available product before choose one."
"Symantec Siteminder is expensive; they could definitely do better on the price."
"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."
"The price is quite comparable to the other enterprise-level solutions in that market."
"The licensing is fair for this solution."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Government
18%
Financial Services Firm
18%
Computer Software Company
14%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Financial Services Firm
30%
Insurance Company
12%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Transportation Company
5%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business8
Midsize Enterprise3
Large Enterprise69
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Red Hat Single Sign On?
I rate the product’s pricing a five out of ten, where one is cheap, and ten is expensive.
What needs improvement with Red Hat Single Sign On?
Red Hat publishes much more and communicates its actions and plans. They could provide words, maps, and other resources. Scalability could be improved, too. It could provide more documentation.
What is your primary use case for Red Hat Single Sign On?
Earlier, customers used to authenticate the user before they used the application. With the help of Single Sign On, the customer logs in and uses all of the customer's applications without authenti...
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. Currently, multi-factor authentication is available as a separate solution, and it ...
 

Also Known As

Red Hat Single Sign-On, Red Hat SSO, RH SSO, RH-SSO
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 Red Hat Single Sign On vs. Symantec Siteminder and other solutions. Updated: September 2025.
867,349 professionals have used our research since 2012.