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AWS IAM Identity Center vs Symantec Siteminder comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

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

AWS IAM Identity Center
Ranking in Single Sign-On (SSO)
9th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
12
Ranking in other categories
Identity and Access Management as a Service (IDaaS) (IAMaaS) (8th)
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 (15th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of September 2026, in the Single Sign-On (SSO) category, the mindshare of AWS IAM Identity Center is 1.9%, down from 2.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Symantec Siteminder is 3.0%, up from 2.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Single Sign-On (SSO) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
AWS IAM Identity Center1.9%
Symantec Siteminder3.0%
Other95.1%
Single Sign-On (SSO)
 

Featured Reviews

MO
Web developer at King of CMS Consulting
Centralized access control has improved team collaboration but still needs a simpler onboarding
One of the best features AWS IAM Identity Center offers is the permission set, which is one of the best. Then there are the temporary credentials via SSO, the multi-account governance, and the centralized identity management. Those are good features that I believe assist developers, and another feature I can say is one of the best is the improved security with temporary credentials. The feature I find myself relying on the most day-to-day would be the centralized identity management and multi-account governance. It allows me to check what other developers are doing and since I am the admin, I can also revoke the access they have to the AWS accounts.
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

"AWS IAM Identity Center offers a secure and centralized way to manage access and permissions."
"The most valuable feature of AWS IAM Identity Center is the ability to provide a structured approach to access management through a single dashboard."
"The solution enhances security through features like multifactor authentication."
"The most valuable feature of AWS Identity Center is its ability to centrally create permission templates, known as permission sets, which define AWS IAM roles."
"The product is easy for beginners to learn and use."
"IAM Identity Center provides micro-level control over resources, services, and users, allowing organizations to grant specific access and privileges safely."
"IAM provides significant benefits when properly deployed."
"The most valuable feature is the security configuration ease, which is great for me, especially as a beginner."
"It provides the breadth and the width to provide solutions for the different kinds of technologies which we have."
"It really improved the speed to market from account creation through provisioning and onboarding, and as users move from system to system, their account access follows them so you don't need to create new credentials every time."
"They really made life simple for the user and the user experience has improved."
"The authentication and single sign-on features of Symantec Siteminder are valuable."
"It will definitely help any company achieve their single sign on goal."
"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."
"For the most part, SSO is very stable."
"It's our single solution for managing user authentication."
 

Cons

"I think AWS IAM Identity Center can be improved by making it beginner-friendly. It was very hard for me to navigate initially because the UI was very complicated."
"For AWS services in general, I had trouble creating an S3 bucket due to a repetitive error message regarding existing names."
"Sometimes it experiences lag, but there's always room for improvement, which is why I deducted one point."
"There is a desire to see integration or adoption of time-based user creation features within AWS IAM Identity Center."
"IAM is challenging to manage in complex environments."
"The initial setup isn't very easy, around four on a scale of one to ten. It permits setting up policies that might not be entirely secure if improperly configured, which can lead to issues later."
"Focusing on further allowing customization and flexibility in developing solutions as a solution architect or developer would enhance user experience."
"In the product, two groups cannot have the same name...In general, the tool does not allow for the duplication of names."
"The maintenance cost has increased significantly, and we are concerned about this."
"I'd like to see the federation piece made a little simpler."
"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."
"There are certain integration points that can be leveraged and made more easy to deploy, like the REST APIs and things like that."
"The admin UI needs to be more stable."
"It's not user friendly, but it's very customizable."
"The documentation is not good enough, particularly the installation documentation could be improved."
"The support team could work on their response time and overall competence."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The product is cheap since it is available on the cloud."
"The pricing is reasonable."
"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."
"I recommend conducting a PoC on every available product before choose one."
"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 licensing is fair for this solution."
"CA solutions are generally expensive but for the customer the ROI is big."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
13%
Construction Company
10%
Comms Service Provider
9%
Outsourcing 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 Business3
Midsize Enterprise4
Large Enterprise4
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business8
Midsize Enterprise3
Large Enterprise69
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for AWS IAM Identity Center?
AWS provides the lowest pricing among other service providers like Azure, Google, Oracle. It is cost-effective, and they use a pay-as-you-go model.
What needs improvement with AWS IAM Identity Center?
I think AWS IAM Identity Center can be improved by making it beginner-friendly. It was very hard for me to navigate initially because the UI was very complicated. I had to do a lot of research and ...
What is your primary use case for AWS IAM Identity Center?
My main use case for AWS IAM Identity Center is hosting and redirecting web services that I want to use as localhost, but then I have to reroute it. What I did was create a permission set and use i...
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

AWS Single Sign On, AWS SSO
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 AWS IAM Identity Center vs. Symantec Siteminder and other solutions. Updated: September 2026.
913,683 professionals have used our research since 2012.