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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)
12th
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 (11th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2026, in the Single Sign-On (SSO) category, the mindshare of Red Hat Single Sign On is 2.0%, down from 2.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Symantec Siteminder is 2.7%, down from 3.1% 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 On2.0%
Symantec Siteminder2.7%
Other95.3%
Single Sign-On (SSO)
 

Featured Reviews

Giovanni Baruzzi - PeerSpot reviewer
Owner at Syntlogo GmbH
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
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 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."
"Good support for single sign-on protocols."
"The product’s most valuable feature is its ability to assign only one password for the user at a false value."
"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."
"It is very easy to scale and use as you want."
"Red Hat SSO has a lot of very concise, well laid out documentation, which is available in the free edition as well."
"The solution has features that allow you to easily distinguish between protected and unprotected resources."
"SAML is the best thing we're using right now because there is no need for creating an external account."
"All of our applications get a point, click, and you are in, while we increase security at the same time."
"It's quite scalable."
"The solution is easy to use for our managers."
"The authentication and single sign-on features of Symantec Siteminder are valuable."
"IWA is an out-of-the-box feature. The SAML-based federation is standard for all tools. However, CA Single Sign-On has made the federation configuration way too simple and handy to set up and use."
"The most valuable feature is the Federation part of Single Sign On, which is customizable and is easily integrated with any customer application or any third party application."
 

Cons

"Security could be improved."
"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."
"Red Hat publishes much more and communicates its actions and plans. They could provide words, maps, and other resources."
"Red Hat SSO's architecture could be updated."
"The product’s technical support services could be better."
"I would like to see a move towards the newer technologies, which is what we are doing right now. I think that's in the roadmap that's coming, in the 12.8 and 14 releases, but we would like to have it sooner than later."
"The main thing is we do not have the traceability and good monitoring that CA can provide us to capture problems when they occur."
"The technical support could be better."
"Siteminder needs to improve its user experience."
"I would prefer to see their SAML integration be a more streamlined and easier interface."
"I think they need to integrate some of the newer types of authentication into the product. I'm not seeing the innovation when it comes to biometrics in the product."
"They need to make configurations easier, and not have the engineer having to guess what will happen when he changes a particular setting."
"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."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The license is around $8000 USD."
"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."
"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."
"Red Hat Single Sign On is expensive."
"The licensing is fair for this solution."
"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."
"The price is quite comparable to the other enterprise-level solutions in that market."
"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."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Government
21%
Financial Services Firm
17%
Computer Software Company
11%
University
5%
Financial Services Firm
26%
Insurance Company
10%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Government
6%
 

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: December 2025.
880,954 professionals have used our research since 2012.