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Symantec Siteminder vs Symantec VIP Access Manager comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Aug 11, 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

Symantec Siteminder
Ranking in Access Management
12th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
75
Ranking in other categories
Single Sign-On (SSO) (13th), Web Access Management (1st)
Symantec VIP Access Manager
Ranking in Access Management
18th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
15
Ranking in other categories
Authentication Systems (12th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2026, in the Access Management category, the mindshare of Symantec Siteminder is 3.1%, down from 3.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Symantec VIP Access Manager is 1.6%, up from 0.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Access Management Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Symantec Siteminder3.1%
Symantec VIP Access Manager1.6%
Other95.3%
Access Management
 

Featured Reviews

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.
Berk Onur - PeerSpot reviewer
Presales Consultant at Cyberwise
With its mobile application, this tool offers a convenient and user-friendly experience to its users
To improve the tool, I think that the solution should consider integrations with other cybersecurity and IT technologies, such as Privileged Access Management and Site Integration. Additionally, the implementation of second-factor authentication via Symantec VIP Access Manager, CyberArk, and Delinea, among other technologies, could be best for the product. While the existing technology is okay, improving the integration capabilities for Symantec VIP Access Manager would benefit the product. I would like to see the solution meet the integration needs at our company. While many cybersecurity solutions can function independently, they often lack integration with our systems due to missed integration points. Improving the solution's integration feature would be beneficial.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The Directory is secure. It's our user store, and it's important to keep our members safe. The product does well with that."
"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."
"It's agent-based. It's convenient to deploy and integrate."
"It allows us to get, again, both externally hosted and internally hosted web applications up and running using centralized credentials in short order."
"It’s definitely an industry leader in the web access realm."
"This is one of the robust and stable product I have seen in my sixteen years of IT experience."
"SiteMinder is an industry leading solution as everyone is using it."
"We're able to have one single centralized way of logging in when you have shared sessions across all applications."
"Pricing was about 25% of the old solution, saving us about $500,000 over three years for 10,000 users."
"Cloud-based service and management."
"It offers more platform support, like Apple, Android, and Microsoft."
"If you're looking for a fairly lightweight client that works very well for remote access purposes, I think Symantec is definitely a good product."
"The two-factor authentication is most definitely valuable and moves us closer to being able to check off those important boxes for compliance."
"The VPN we are using is good and working quite well."
"Other than it provides us with remote access, so it's fairly easy to install, fairly easy to set up, and provides us the ability to get into our corporate environment."
"VIP is a strong, cloud-based authentication service that enables organizations to secure access to networks and applications to prevent unauthorized logins to company resources, even when passwords have been compromised or shared."
 

Cons

"We would like to the OAuth be more stable, more issues being fixed rather than not."
"All of the feedback within our team for CA Support is not good. It really is on a very low level, but then it is very specific for CA SSO."
"It's a hit and miss thing, like all support organizations. For the most part, for simple problems they can get to a resolution fairly quickly, but if the problem is a little more complicated, they really struggle with getting us a solution."
"It's not user friendly, but it's very customizable."
"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."
"The OpenID Connect piece, we would like to see the new technologies baked into the product, as opposed to going out and using a different product to accomplish the same thing."
"Some of the new protocols, like OAuth 2.0, could be improved."
"We are finding some compatibility issues. We're still working with CA on them."
"In the next release, I would like the ability to work offline with remote access."
"At times, the relay server could not contact Symantec; it would fail open and allow access without a passcode."
"The reporting on the VIP Manager is not correct."
"Geofencing needs improvement."
"If they had dashboards or a report for managers or executives, then it would allow them to see the status and have it make sense to them."
"In my opinion, for this solution, the technical support is not so expert when we talk about integration using the API."
"It gets out of sync with Active Directory or whatever it might be, whatever the authentication piece is on Active Directory, and they just reset it on the backend."
"It is challenging to use when installing a new version."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The solution's pricing is competitive."
"Symantec Siteminder is expensive; they could definitely do better on the price."
"The price is quite comparable to the other enterprise-level solutions in that market."
"The pricing is reasonable."
"CA solutions are generally expensive but for the customer the ROI is big."
"The licensing is fair for this solution."
"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."
"I recommend conducting a PoC on every available product before choose one."
"There is a one-time setup fee plus the licenses are provided as per the number of users. For SMS and voice calls, the costs are separate."
"I can say that the solution is worth the money."
"There are additional costs for maintenance."
"Licensing and pricing seems very fair."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
24%
Marketing Services Firm
8%
Insurance Company
8%
Manufacturing Company
5%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Comms Service Provider
11%
Construction Company
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business8
Midsize Enterprise3
Large Enterprise69
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business4
Midsize Enterprise2
Large Enterprise10
 

Questions from the Community

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 ...
Ask a question
Earn 20 points
 

Also Known As

SiteMinder, CA SSO, Layer7 SiteMinder
Symantec VIP
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

British Telecom, CoreBlox, DBS, HMS, Itera ASA and Simeo
Maine Medical Center, Aria S.p.A
Find out what your peers are saying about Symantec Siteminder vs. Symantec VIP Access Manager and other solutions. Updated: April 2026.
890,124 professionals have used our research since 2012.