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AWS Secrets Manager vs BeyondTrust Password Safe comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 16, 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

AWS Secrets Manager
Ranking in Enterprise Password Managers
3rd
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
15
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
BeyondTrust Password Safe
Ranking in Enterprise Password Managers
7th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
26
Ranking in other categories
Privileged Access Management (PAM) (9th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2025, in the Enterprise Password Managers category, the mindshare of AWS Secrets Manager is 17.2%, down from 21.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of BeyondTrust Password Safe is 3.5%, up from 3.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Enterprise Password Managers
 

Featured Reviews

Mahadev Metre - PeerSpot reviewer
Consistent security and efficiency improvements optimize IT infrastructure with effective management
When creating AWS Secrets Manager, it should be automated using tools such as Terraform, Puppet, or Ansible. With Terraform code, you specify the encryption key, secret name, rotation policy, and secret replication. Human error occurs when feeding secret values manually, especially with large amounts of secrets to input. Secrets should never be protected only by IAM. They should be protected by multiple layers, such as IAM and one or two KMS keys. Additional security measures could be beneficial if necessary. The rotation policy is crucial because some secrets may become obsolete, require updates, or get compromised. With a weekly rotation policy, if unauthorized access occurs, the exposure is limited to seven days. The rotation policy can be customized according to needs.
Ali Hatamleh - PeerSpot reviewer
Smart tooling streamlines account organization and access through advanced grouping features
The features I find valuable in Password Safe include password retention and management, session privilege monitoring, live monitoring and recording, and the use of PS automation scripts for creating connections. The smart tooling and smart group features are also important as, after finalizing discovery, they auto-collect accounts in the environment and organize them in Smart Groups for easy access.

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 feature is usability, as it is quite user-friendly."
"AWS Secrets Manager is used for storing secret information that has to be a secret from your customer and your employees."
"It's highly scalable, so I'd rate it a ten out of ten."
"The most valuable feature is security."
"AWS Secrets Manager plays a significant role in optimizing IT infrastructure security and efficiency."
"The solution is very scalable."
"The most valuable feature of AWS Secrets Manager is the ability to keep data secret and assign access permissions to people to grant or restrict access."
"The most valuable feature is the management of credentials."
"Session recording, password rotation, and password vaulting are the most valuable features."
"The performance is good."
"BeyondTrust Password Safe is a good PAM tool."
"The best aspect of the product is the ability to onboard devices. You can scan the IP subnets and onboard all the devices. You can then segregate them if it's a network device or a firewall. If it's a Windows server or a UNIX, you can basically scan your IT infrastructure and onboard the efforts, which should be managed. Once they have been onboarded, then the session management and password management are easy and nicely configurable."
"BeyondTrust Password Safe has good reporting and Smart Rules which makes it convenient. Though Smart Rules are convenient, those who do not have much experience with such things may find it difficult to understand how these things work. Otherwise, I find Smart Rules very convenient to work with."
"The solution protects organizations from internal and external threats."
"Overall, I rate BeyondTrust Password Safe as nine out of ten."
"The product has improved security and login due to the system recordings. In case, there is a doubt that someone has done something which they shouldn't have been doing, we can just go back and check what the user actually did."
 

Cons

"The solution's initial setup process is complicated."
"There is room for improvement in the pricing model."
"There is room for improvement in terms of integrating with certain other platforms."
"There is a need for better environmental implementation, such as having a security fund as a solution."
"It would be good if the AWS Secrets Manager were more customizable."
"The sidecar feature has room for improvement."
"The price of the solution could improve."
"If you add one more layer of security to AWS Secrets Manager, even the programmer will not be able to see the secrets."
"There are multiple features that have issues, although they could be specific to our environment. What we have seen is that whenever a user gets added to the authentication store, the sync between Password Safe and the authentication store, which is generally easy, takes a lot of time. It does not occur immediately."
"We'd like to have incremental backups to ensure the solution's information is protected regularly."
"If there was one thing, it would be having the documentation standardized. They should keep the documentation consistent. For example, when BeyondTrust updated one of their admin guides, they left out the information on the discovery account requirements, and then over a period of time, we ended up having to search multiple different documents to put together a string of information for a specific topic, which was problematic. It was minor, but it was problematic. Standardized documentation would be the one thing I would suggest."
"The effectiveness of BeyondTrust Password Safe's session management capabilities for SSH and RDP is pretty much robust, but it needs more improvement for other applications and web-based applications."
"The only improvement I could suggest would be standardizing documentation, but that's more the responsibility of the implementing engineer rather than BeyondTrust Password Trust itself. The documentation must be specific and narrow for implementation, not just broad guidelines."
"The product needs to have better integration with SAP products."
"From the client perspective, they usually complain that the RDP session disconnects without error notifications."
"When we deploy BeyondTrust, we have to deploy our own database on a SQL server. It doesn't deploy the database. I wish BeyondTrust packages the whole solution in one and includes the MySQL database so that when you deploy it, it deploys everything for you. BeyondTrust gives you the software, but you are in charge of setting up your own database. It is a single appliance just for the BeyondTrust portion but not the database. Unless that has changed in later releases, you have to set up your own database for BeyondTrust Password Safe. I find that part complex because we then need the expertise and help of the database team to set it up, which also increases the deployment time. If they can deploy the database, it will reduce the deployment time."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"We've observed that AWS Secrets Manager pricing is based on a per-secret-per-month model. As a result, we prefer to divide our secrets into individual pieces to increase security and grant specific access permissions to certain secrets, systems, or individuals. However, this approach results in higher costs. Therefore, we have been exploring ways to combine our secrets into groups to reduce expenses and simplify management. Nonetheless, we acknowledge that this issue may not be related to the secret manager's functionality."
"We purchase a monthly license for the product."
"I don't believe there is a license cost for the solution."
"The cost is somewhat high."
"The solution is expensive."
"When you buy Password Safe and perform your initial Discovery, you have all these servers that are added to your assets in BeyondTrust, but you're not using a license until you actually start managing the systems. BeyondTrust's licensing is based on the systems when they're managed, which means when an administrator is able to connect to the server through BeyondTrust with a managed account. There would be a privileged account on the endpoint when the licensing starts. A significant advantage to that is that there are many organizations that want to evaluate their environment prior to automatic management."
"The pricing structure is better than the competitors. It's much cheaper than CyberArk. They do the licensing on the basis of assets, not on the number of users. For CyberArk, they base the licensing on the number of users, and they have an expensive model of pricing. BeyondTrust has a cheaper model."
"At the time, BeyondTrust was significantly cheaper than CyberArk. Pricing-wise, if I remember correctly, it goes by assets. The pricing was negotiated for our instances based on the number of assets that we onboard into the system. It is a little different from CyberArk, where the pricing is by users. So, it depends. If you have a lot of assets, it can get very expensive."
"I would rate the pricing a seven out of ten, where one is cheap and ten is expensive."
"We just pay for Password Safe. Session management is included, but we don't use it. There aren't any additional costs besides the standard licensing fees. We pay for an annual license."
"This solution is not cheap—it's a very expensive solution. Very, very expensive compared to the features and functions that they offer."
"The pricing of BeyondTrust is very good as compared to other products. That was the main reason we decided to go with BeyondTrust at first."
"It has subscription-based licensing. BeyondTrust is three times less expensive than CyberArk."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
14%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
6%
Financial Services Firm
16%
Computer Software Company
13%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

Which is better - Azure Key Vault or AWS Secrets Manager?
Azure Key Vault is a SaaS solution. You can easily store passwords and secrets securely and encrypt them. Azure Key Vault is a great solution to ensure you are compliant with security and governanc...
Which is better - HashiCorp Vault or AWS Secrets Manager?
HashiCorp Vault was designed with your needs in mind. One of the features that makes this evident is its ability to work as both a cloud-agnostic and a multi-cloud solution. As a cloud-agnostic sol...
What do you like most about AWS Secrets Manager?
The most valuable feature of AWS Secrets Manager is its seamless integration with various AWS services.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for BeyondTrust Password Safe?
My experience with BeyondTrust Password Safe's pricing, setup cost, and licensing has been positive, primarily due to its asset-based licensing model. This is a significant advantage for us because...
What needs improvement with BeyondTrust Password Safe?
We do not utilize the dynamic privilege elevation and delegation feature yet, because the customer is not planning to use this feature. They want to control the manner of user creation processes in...
What is your primary use case for BeyondTrust Password Safe?
Currently, we have one customer using BeyondTrust Password Safe. BeyondTrust Password Safe is usually used for two things: compliance and audit.
 

Also Known As

No data available
BeyondTrust PowerBroker Password Safe
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Autodesk, Clevy, Stackery
Aera Energy LLC, Care New England, James Madison University
Find out what your peers are saying about AWS Secrets Manager vs. BeyondTrust Password Safe and other solutions. Updated: July 2025.
865,295 professionals have used our research since 2012.