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AWS IAM Identity Center vs Symantec Siteminder comparison

 

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) (7th)
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 (12th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2026, in the Single Sign-On (SSO) category, the mindshare of AWS IAM Identity Center is 2.1%, up from 1.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Symantec Siteminder is 3.0%, up from 2.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Single Sign-On (SSO) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
AWS IAM Identity Center2.1%
Symantec Siteminder3.0%
Other94.9%
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

"The solution enhances security through features like multifactor authentication."
"IAM Identity Center provides micro-level control over resources, services, and users, allowing organizations to grant specific access and privileges safely."
"Its valuable features include granular access control, allowing precise control over who can access specific AWS resources and under what conditions using JSON-based policies."
"The most valuable features of AWS IAM Identity Center are role-based permissions and existing permissions templates."
"The solution helps us manage access in a time-efficient manner and offers reliable integration for our services, avoiding security breaches and maintaining operational efficiency."
"Overall, IAM Identity Center is a great service, currently rated at nine out of ten."
"The most valuable feature of AWS IAM Identity Center is the ability to provide a structured approach to access management through a single dashboard."
"It has increased the workflow percentage by over 20 to 30%, making it very effective for us to actually achieve the work we're trying to do in a short amount of time."
"The solution has saved our company from a lot of problems."
"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."
"SAML is the best thing we're using right now because there is no need for creating an external account."
"You definitely need to consider CA SSO; it is quite solid, it's never really gone down, and it's a well-understood and reliable piece of our enterprise."
"As our identity model continues to mature, probably the Federation is most valueable."
"The single sign-on is the solution's most valuable feature"
"Authentication & Authorization are important because all the sites need authentication for security purposes. That has been handled pretty well all these years with SSO."
"They really made life simple for the user and the user experience has improved."
 

Cons

"Greater visualization for security policies would be beneficial."
"I would like to see more flexibility in the features as sometimes it doesn't meet my expectations."
"I have opened support tickets and received responses, although not always resolving my queries fully. I would appreciate a live chat option with technical support for quicker resolutions."
"Integrating AWS IAM Identity Center with other applications sometimes presents challenges."
"The AWS Identity Center's user interface could be improved to provide a clearer understanding of how the system operates."
"The configuration with other tools can be hard."
"There is a desire to see integration or adoption of time-based user creation features within AWS IAM Identity Center."
"In the product, two groups cannot have the same name...In general, the tool does not allow for the duplication of names."
"Although the policy server has sometimes spontaneously restarted, it’s mostly good."
"If the reporting feature can be integrated into SSO itself that will be an icing on the cake."
"It may be a good product, but I'd advise staying away from customizing it."
"I would prefer to see their SAML integration be a more streamlined and easier interface, more like PingFederate's interface."
"The initial setup of Symantec SiteMinder was a bit tricky. I would rate it a seven on a scale of one to ten, where ten indicates an easy setup."
"I'd like to see a rework of the user directory configuration."
"Sometimes technical support is slow to respond, and that’s typical."
"I'd like to see a rework of the user directory configuration."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The product is cheap since it is available on the cloud."
"The price is quite comparable to the other enterprise-level solutions in that market."
"CA solutions are generally expensive but for the customer the ROI is big."
"The licensing is fair for this solution."
"The solution's pricing is competitive."
"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 pricing is reasonable."
"Symantec Siteminder is expensive; they could definitely do better on the price."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
13%
Construction Company
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Comms Service Provider
8%
Financial Services Firm
24%
Marketing Services Firm
8%
Insurance Company
8%
Manufacturing Company
5%
 

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: April 2026.
893,164 professionals have used our research since 2012.