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Amazon Cognito vs Symantec Siteminder comparison

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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

Amazon Cognito
Ranking in Access Management
10th
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.5
Number of Reviews
17
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Symantec Siteminder
Ranking in Access Management
15th
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)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of September 2026, in the Access Management category, the mindshare of Amazon Cognito is 2.4%, down from 5.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Symantec Siteminder is 3.5%, up from 2.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Access Management Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Amazon Cognito2.4%
Symantec Siteminder3.5%
Other94.1%
Access Management
 

Featured Reviews

BM
Staff Software Engineer at Visa
Custom authentication has enabled secure multi-factor logins and unified access across apps
The features or capabilities of Amazon Cognito that I have found the most valuable so far include its seamless operation and the requirement of fewer integrations from the client side. All the features are there, enabling us to create the users, manage the groups, and manage access. Mostly, the access management is very good in Amazon Cognito, I would say. The benefits and positive impacts that Amazon Cognito has had in my experience include the fact that earlier we needed to implement so many things on behalf of the product itself. Now, the go-to-market strategy requires less than a week to complete integrations of the user flow, specifically mentioning that a basic authentication flow could be completed in a week itself. We don't have to care about how we manage the passwords, how we manage groups, and how we manage access management because all those things are there. It's handy, the documentation is very good, and it is easy to integrate. That's the reason I would say that the impact AWS is building on the product is great.
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

"Cognito speeds up our development and saves us time."
"What I find most valuable about Amazon Cognito is the single sign-on feature that provides a token for accessing protected APIs."
"I would recommend Cognito for users who are already AWS customers."
"This is a scalable solution. If our app or general usage increases, this solution can support it."
"Amazon Cognito was particularly helpful and clear to use."
"The multi-factor authentication setup has room for improvement."
"The features or capabilities of Amazon Cognito that I have found the most valuable so far include its seamless operation and the requirement of fewer integrations from the client side."
"The features most valuable to us are the ability to integrate with various IDPs and the capability to sync with multiple applications."
"We almost never have outages nor see slowdowns."
"I really like the robust functionality that this solution offers, such as federation, OAuth, security, and multi-tenancy, just to name a few."
"It helps protect our applications and provides identity management."
"The most valuable feature is the flexibility of this product to integrate with any third-party components and platforms."
"It provides end users with SSO to our applications – they log in once and they can access all of our applications."
"Once it works, it works really well."
"This is one of the robust and stable product I have seen in my sixteen years of IT experience."
"As our identity model continues to mature, probably the Federation is most valueable."
 

Cons

"I would rate its scalability as five out of ten. Moving users between different pools or accounts creates new identities, which means IDs stored in our database must also be changed."
"The ease and simplicity of integration could be improved when using this solution. When using Okta, scope is a single endpoint with a parameter as a scope, but in Cognito, for each scope, there is a separate endpoint."
"I think Amazon Cognito provides less flexibility to customize at the moment."
"There is room for improvement in Amazon Cognito."
"Amazon Cognito could be improved by making it easier for us to add more data to the token, allowing customization of JWT. It requires a complex program to customize the token currently, however, the UI could support this configuration better."
"Amazon Cognito could improve by simplifying the configuration."
"The MFA related to the solution's side is nonexistent."
"I believe this product could improve by enriching user profiles."
"The performance could be better. The support could be faster."
"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."
"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 problem is we need the support, but they don't know anything about the product."
"We installed one version and there is a bug in it; from a customer perspective I would want that particular issue to be fixed rather than getting an answer that the bug will be fixed in the next version."
"Identity Manager and GovernanceMinder should integrate better."
"I would say it is a relatively complex setup. We have a relatively complex environment so with all of the availability requirements we have, it is quite complex but having said that, it is no more complex than any other enterprise systems that has to be highly available."
"We're currently unable to find information about if the solution can do a full implementation with SQL. Some better and more accessible documentation for new users or those curious about the product would be helpful."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The price of Amazon Cognito is expensive. We are on an annual subscription."
"The pricing of this solution is good compared to other solutions on the market."
"The price of Amazon Cognito is low. The pricing model is based on the users."
"The product is relatively inexpensive compared to other tools."
"The pricing is bad so I rate it a two out of ten."
"The price of the solution depends on the number of users using it."
"We pay $600 monthly per user for licences and there are no other additional costs."
"On a scale from one to ten, where one is cheap and ten is expensive, I rate the solution's pricing a five out of ten."
"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."
"The price is quite comparable to the other enterprise-level solutions in that market."
"The pricing is reasonable."
"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."
"The solution's pricing is competitive."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Comms Service Provider
11%
Construction Company
9%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
16%
Outsourcing Company
15%
Construction Company
12%
Marketing Services Firm
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business8
Midsize Enterprise4
Large Enterprise5
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business8
Midsize Enterprise3
Large Enterprise69
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Amazon Cognito?
I am aware that the pricing of Amazon Cognito is not managed by me directly but is managed by some other teams, specifically the DevOps teams. As far as I know, it is based on how many users we hav...
What needs improvement with Amazon Cognito?
I think Amazon Cognito provides less flexibility to customize at the moment. It is very tightly coupled with its own services, so it does not provide customization according to what the client need...
What is your primary use case for Amazon Cognito?
The usual use cases for Amazon Cognito that I have been working with mostly involve working for TLG Apps for three and a half years, where TLG Apps is a FinTech company in the UK. We were working f...
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

No data available
SiteMinder, CA SSO, Layer7 SiteMinder
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Expedia, Intuit, Royal Dutch Shell, Brooks Brothers
British Telecom, CoreBlox, DBS, HMS, Itera ASA and Simeo
Find out what your peers are saying about Amazon Cognito vs. Symantec Siteminder and other solutions. Updated: September 2026.
913,806 professionals have used our research since 2012.