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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) (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 (12th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2026, in the Single Sign-On (SSO) category, the mindshare of AWS IAM Identity Center is 2.0%, up from 2.0% 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 Center2.0%
Symantec Siteminder3.0%
Other95.0%
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

"IAM provides significant benefits when properly deployed."
"AWS IAM Identity Center has helped our organization by providing a unified dashboard to manage permissions and access controls."
"The most valuable features of AWS IAM Identity Center are role-based permissions and existing permissions templates."
"Overall, IAM Identity Center is a great service, currently rated at nine out of ten."
"I highly recommend AWS IAM Identity Center to new users, especially for storage and deployment services like EC2, which are cost-efficient and scalable."
"The product is easy for beginners to learn and use."
"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."
"If they want to have a secure, stable solution for a single sign-on that supports Java, ASP .Net, and most of the web-based applications, I encourage them to go with this product."
"Using this product makes it easier for enterprises to integrate a majority or even all their apps into one single solution for access."
"Technical support has gotten a lot better."
"They really made life simple for the user and the user experience has improved."
"It helps protect our applications and provides identity management."
"IWA is an out-of-the-box feature. The SAML-based federation is standard for all tools. However, CA Single Sign-On has made the federation configuration way too simple and handy to set up and use."
"If you need the ability for just logging without buying an application and want good security, it’s an awesome solution."
"This is one of the robust and stable product I have seen in my sixteen years of IT experience."
 

Cons

"The AWS Identity Center's user interface could be improved to provide a clearer understanding of how the system operates."
"In the product, two groups cannot have the same name...In general, the tool does not allow for the duplication of names."
"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."
"The configuration with other tools can be hard."
"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."
"Greater visualization for security policies would be beneficial."
"IAM is challenging to manage in complex environments."
"The performance could be better. The support could be faster."
"I will say the user interface for login is kind of plain. They could make it a little prettier."
"It's not user friendly, but it's very customizable."
"Once you get past the first level, it’s good support. Typically once you’ve supported the CA product for a couple of years, you probably know more than first-level support, so it’s frustrating to explain to them the issue."
"The support team could work on their response time and overall competence."
"Some of the new protocols, like OAuth 2.0, could be improved."
"I used to get the runaround initially. They would ask us the same four questions all the time."
"CA SSO does have stability issues."
 

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."
"I recommend conducting a PoC on every available product before choose one."
"Symantec Siteminder is expensive; they could definitely do better on the price."
"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."
"The solution's pricing is competitive."
"The pricing is reasonable."
"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
11%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Comms Service Provider
7%
Financial Services Firm
21%
Construction Company
12%
Marketing Services Firm
7%
Outsourcing Company
7%
 

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: June 2026.
900,644 professionals have used our research since 2012.