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Amazon Cognito vs Symantec Siteminder 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

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
13th
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 March 2026, in the Access Management category, the mindshare of Amazon Cognito is 4.1%, down from 5.6% 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 (%)
Amazon Cognito4.1%
Symantec Siteminder2.8%
Other93.1%
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

"The most valuable features of Amazon Cognito are OTP validation and email validation."
"The features most valuable to us are the ability to integrate with various IDPs and the capability to sync with multiple applications."
"One of the key benefits of this software is its ease of integration with a wide range of applications, including mobile apps and web applications. This simplifies the process of integration, and it can be seamlessly incorporated with Azure, Kubernetes, and other software systems."
"The most valuable feature of the solution is its swift authentication."
"What I find most valuable about Amazon Cognito is the single sign-on feature that provides a token for accessing protected APIs."
"I appreciate Amazon Cognito's ability to scale with demand and its seamless user verification features."
"Cognito speeds up our development and saves us time."
"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 Directory is secure. It's our user store, and it's important to keep our members safe. The product does well with that."
"Right now, federation that comes out-of-the-box with single sign-on is the most valuable feature that we have, and also scalability."
"A valuable feature of Siteminder is the way it handles bulk traffic. The features it has, in terms of routing the traffic and load balancing, are good."
"It has the ability to authenticate and authorize users. It is the main feature for our security."
"The security and single sign-on (SSO) features are the most valuable."
"Siteminder allows us to manage identity and portability control efficiently."
"It helps protect our applications and provides identity management."
"Segregation duties is another great benefit. It has allowed us to automate the process of creating user accounts really well."
 

Cons

"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’s UI needs improvement while onboarding new users."
"The MFA related to the solution's side is nonexistent."
"Cognito has the possibility to render the login screen and all the customer flows related to managing the account. Still, it's useless in an international setup. They are unable to localize these screens, so we had to write our own screens and just use the Cognito API."
"Cognito triggers can improve by providing more direct use cases rather than giving a white paper. A white paper is not at all interesting, it has too many details. It would be a benefit to provide a smaller document that is summarized. The smaller version would bring microdata, macro data is not helpful."
"What I found generally lacking in AWS is privileged access management (PAM)."
"Amazon Cognito could improve by simplifying the configuration."
"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 tech support has not been very good for us so we don't use them anymore."
"The technical support team is not very proactive."
"It seems that when there's a new version, patch, or service pack, we find bugs."
"As we are moving in to the mobility space, this is where we really see SiteMinder and their other product really come together to provide a solution base to a different area where the IoT is coming, the different business communications are happening. All of those things require authentication and we really want to see this product grow into that role."
"I'd like to see a rework of the user directory configuration."
"Although the policy server has sometimes spontaneously restarted, it’s mostly good."
"Better documentation. I went through some sessions on single sign-on for version 12.7."
"We use technical support. It's not the best feature of CA. Lots of enterprise product companies have variable support offerings. CA are not the worst, but they're not the best. They're okay."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"We pay $600 monthly per user for licences and there are no other additional costs."
"The pricing is bad so I rate it a two out of ten."
"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 price of the solution depends on the number of users using it."
"The product is relatively inexpensive compared to other tools."
"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."
"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 pricing is reasonable."
"CA solutions are generally expensive but for the customer the ROI is big."
"I recommend conducting a PoC on every available product before choose one."
"Symantec Siteminder is expensive; they could definitely do better on the price."
"The solution's pricing is competitive."
"The licensing is fair for this solution."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Comms Service Provider
10%
Computer Software Company
8%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Healthcare Company
7%
Financial Services Firm
23%
Insurance Company
9%
Marketing Services Firm
8%
Manufacturing Company
5%
 

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 do you like most about Amazon Cognito?
The most valuable feature of the solution is its swift authentication.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Amazon Cognito?
The basic functionality is reasonably priced, but the extended functionalities, especially the extended security, are quite expensive. There is a significant jump from the basic to the extended fun...
What needs improvement with Amazon Cognito?
Branding could be improved. When you use the Amazon Cognito domain and have a panel to login the user, I would add more customization options, such as icons or customization to the modal window whi...
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

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: March 2026.
884,873 professionals have used our research since 2012.