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AWS Secrets Manager vs BeyondTrust Password Safe comparison

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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
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
17
Ranking in other categories
Secrets Management Tools (3rd)
BeyondTrust Password Safe
Ranking in Enterprise Password Managers
9th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
27
Ranking in other categories
Privileged Access Management (PAM) (8th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of September 2026, in the Enterprise Password Managers category, the mindshare of AWS Secrets Manager is 12.9%, down from 16.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of BeyondTrust Password Safe is 2.7%, down from 3.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Enterprise Password Managers Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
AWS Secrets Manager12.9%
BeyondTrust Password Safe2.7%
Other84.4%
Enterprise Password Managers
 

Featured Reviews

Mahadev Metre - PeerSpot reviewer
Dev Ops Engineer at Paydoh
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.
PawanShirose - PeerSpot reviewer
Associate Security Consultant at CyberSec Consulting
Has enabled bulk onboarding and password rotation while ensuring secure privilege management
I have faced stability issues when upgrading BeyondTrust Password Safe solution. The upgrade process can be lengthy compared to other modules. For example, upgrading the appliance and reconfiguring HA is easier in PRA. However, in BeyondTrust Password Safe, the upgrade activity can take longer, and I have occasionally experienced being stuck during appliance version upgrades, sometimes duplicating the upgrade. Regarding additional features, we have good features in BeyondTrust Password Safe compared to other modules, such as Secret Safe to secure secrets and the check-in, check-out functionality. We already have the main features, but I think it would be helpful if BeyondTrust implemented a heartbeat check feature on the privileged account level. This feature would allow PAM to check the credentials of privileged accounts, indicating if they are correct or not, showing if the heartbeat has failed if they are wrong.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"The product is easy to use and is inexpensive."
"I would recommend everyone to use AWS Secrets Manager for their security and for storing their passwords, because I see that passwords nowadays are easily compromised."
"AWS Secrets Manager has impacted my organization positively through security improvements because on that basis, I can rotate my keys and passwords at a certain time."
"I would highly recommend AWS Secrets Manager for secret management in AWS."
"AWS Secrets Manager plays a significant role in optimizing IT infrastructure security and efficiency."
"The most valuable feature of AWS Secrets Manager is its seamless integration with various AWS services."
"The most valuable feature is the management of credentials."
"AWS Secrets Manager is used for storing secret information that has to be a secret from your customer and your employees."
"Password Safe provides integrated password and session management in one solution."
"Overall, I rate BeyondTrust Password Safe as nine out of ten."
"It simplifies your compliance and tracking to benchmark other credentials and analytics."
"The solution protects organizations from internal and external threats."
"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."
"I rate BeyondTrust Password Safe as an overall 10 out of 10."
"Smart Rules is a nice feature in BeyondTrust. It is a unique feature that BeyondTrust has as compared to other vendors such as CyberArk. With Smart Rules, you can do automatic onboarding of accounts. There are a lot of options and features. For example, you can do onboarding based on different AD attributes. It is a nice feature in BeyondTrust that some of the other PAM vendors don't have. With other vendors, we have to create our own scripts, whereas, with BeyondTrust, we can just use the in-built Smart Rules."
"One of the most valuable features is that this is a product designed with enterprises in mind."
 

Cons

"There is room for improvement in the pricing model."
"We contacted AWS support and waited approximately an hour for assistance."
"The only concern with AWS Secrets Manager is its cost, which can be prohibitive for small organizations."
"The solution's initial setup process is complicated."
"If you add one more layer of security to AWS Secrets Manager, even the programmer will not be able to see the secrets."
"It would be good if the AWS Secrets Manager were more customizable."
"An area for improvement in AWS Secrets Manager could be expanding integration options beyond AWS services."
"There is room for improvement in terms of integrating with certain other platforms."
"There is a limited capacity on the appliance, which I wasn't informed about when I purchased the product. I can have a maximum of 150 rules per appliance; any more than that and rule processing becomes very complex, especially regarding password revision. Hitting a capacity limit you don't know about can be problematic. Ideally, we would not have a limited capacity, allowing us to be in a completely managed state with password rotation for every service account, not just the highly privileged ones."
"If there was one thing, it would be having the documentation standardized."
"Adding user behavior analysis to the server or messaging would be beneficial."
"It is a complex product that has a lot of capabilities and does take some learning."
"The only feature they could improve is the banners because they aren't informative."
"We face screensaver timeout issues and problems with the server. I would like the product to include a server visibility feature."
"The only feature they could improve is the banners because they aren't informative. For example, if something is not correct and I open the error notification, the dialogue box simply says, "This is an error." It would be great if they could provide some valuable comments about how to fix the errors."
"The early version of this solution was not stable. It was terrible, but I think they eventually got their act together and it's better now so that they can compete."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The cost is somewhat high."
"We purchase a monthly license for the product."
"I don't believe there is a license cost for the solution."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"It has subscription-based licensing. BeyondTrust is three times less expensive than CyberArk."
"This solution is not cheap—it's a very expensive solution. Very, very expensive compared to the features and functions that they offer."
"The product is quite affordable."
"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."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
12%
Comms Service Provider
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Computer Software Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
28%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Construction Company
5%
Comms Service Provider
5%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business8
Large Enterprise10
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business13
Midsize Enterprise5
Large Enterprise10
 

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 needs improvement with AWS Secrets Manager?
AWS Secrets Manager could not be better because there has been no frustration with the product.
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?
I have faced stability issues when upgrading BeyondTrust Password Safe solution. The upgrade process can be lengthy compared to other modules. For example, upgrading the appliance and reconfiguring...
What is your primary use case for BeyondTrust Password Safe?
I am working on both BeyondTrust Password Safe and the PRA (Privileged Remote Access). I have three years plus experience working with BeyondTrust Password Safe solution, and I have hands-on, good ...
 

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: September 2026.
913,806 professionals have used our research since 2012.