Axiad Conductor vs Venafi comparison

Axiad and CyberArk are both solutions in the Authentication Systems category. Axiad is ranked #13 with an average rating of 10.0, while CyberArk is ranked #10 with an average rating of 8.5. Axiad holds a 0.5% mindshare in AS, compared to CyberArk’s 1.0% mindshare. Additionally, 100% of Axiad users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 100% of CyberArk users who would recommend it.

Axiad Conductor

Read 6 Axiad Conductor reviews

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144 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

Venafi

Read 8 Venafi reviews

780 Views
353 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

Axiad Conductor

Venafi

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Mar 16, 2025

Venafi and Axiad Conductor are competing cybersecurity products focusing on securing machine identities. Axiad Conductor seems to have the upper hand due to its comprehensive feature set, user-friendly nature, and faster ROI.

Features: Venafi provides robust automation for managing machine identities, simplifying key lifecycle operations and integrating across diverse platforms. Axiad Conductor offers end-to-end identity management with passwordless access, strong authentication, and a single platform for managing all authentication requirements, including smart cards and YubiKeys. Axiad also excels in device lifecycle management, proving simple and intuitive for issuing and managing credentials.

Room for Improvement: Venafi could enhance its setup process to be less time-consuming and improve user guidance for complex integrations. Additionally, deeper integration with third-party services could be beneficial. Axiad Conductor can refine its card issuance process to reduce validation steps and streamline certificate deployment further. Increased flexibility in credential management features may also offer improvements.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Venafi's deployment is characterized by a customizable integration framework suited for complex environments. However, the setup can be intricate. Axiad Conductor provides a streamlined deployment experience, noted for simplicity and effective customer service that guides users throughout integration. This makes Axiad Conductor generally easier to deploy with superior support systems.

Pricing and ROI: Venafi may incur higher initial setup costs due to its extensive customization capabilities, offering significant ROI for organizations needing specialized identity management solutions. Axiad Conductor offers competitive pricing, emphasizing quick adoption and feature-rich offerings, leading to a potentially faster ROI. This makes Axiad Conductor a cost-effective choice for those prioritizing integration speed and broad functionality.

To learn more, read our detailed Axiad Conductor vs. Venafi Report (Updated: April 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Axiad Conductor vs. Venafi

April 2025

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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

Axiad Conductor

Ranking in Authentication Systems

13th

Average Rating

9.6

Reviews Sentiment

7.7

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Privileged Access Management (PAM) (17th), Identity and Access Management as a Service (IDaaS) (IAMaaS) (14th), Passwordless Authentication (4th), Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) (5th)

Venafi

Ranking in Authentication Systems

10th

Average Rating

8.4

Reviews Sentiment

7.1

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2025, in the Authentication Systems category, the mindshare of Axiad Conductor is 0.5%, up from 0.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Venafi is 1.0%, up from 0.8% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Authentication Systems

Featured Reviews

Eric Brown

Cybersecurity Director - Enterprise Identity & Access Management at SAIC

The day-to-day tasks, running the servers, and making sure that everything is patched is all handled by the platform

The most valuable feature is the overhead management of the platform. There is less for my team to worry about. The day-to-day tasks, running the servers, and making sure that everything is patched is all handled by the platform. We just consume the service and work with them to refine it, making it even more valuable. Aside from Active Directory, anything that is a multi-factor platform is handled through Axiad Cloud. It is critical for helping to enforce usage of authentication devices across our organization. One of our requirements to continue some of our contracts is to have multi-factor authentication across all devices accessing the network. It is extremely easy to enroll a user with “One Click Issuance”. I have had very few calls to the service desk regarding enrollment. It takes a couple of minutes to enroll a user with "One Click Issuance". Deploying and managing authenticators is very easy, either done by a mobile application or enrollment of an OTP token. It is very simple. This is important to my userbase, which makes it important to me. Functionality-wise, it is pretty solid.

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Adam Goldstein

Systems Engineer at a insurance company with 51-200 employees

Automates certificate management across platforms and has enhanced integration support

Venafi's automation capabilities were significant, as they allowed us to automate certificate rotation and deployment effectively. We integrated it with GlobalSign and aimed to automate DNS verification, although challenges remained. Venafi's platform-agnostic nature was beneficial for handling certificates across different systems like IIS, AWS, and Azure. It ensures centralized certificate management, which is crucial for compliance and maintaining best practices. It significantly improved our operational efficiency by automating certificate workflows. This reduced the number of certificates requiring manual management, freeing internal resources from deploying trivial certificates. While some complex certificates still needed manual intervention, automating simpler ones eliminated internal bottlenecks associated with tasks like uploading certificates to Imperva. By automating these processes, we reduced errors, streamlined workflows, and eliminated the need to repeatedly remember and execute complex procedures, ultimately increasing our overall operational efficiency. The automation capabilities are good; when properly configured, it performs as expected.

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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"It's very user-friendly. We're issuing YubiKeys for our corporate users and they just plug it in, go to the Axiad Cloud portal, and click the issue button. It's a couple of steps."

"The life cycle management of credentials is the aspect that we have found to be the most useful... The differentiator that Axiad provided was the ability to provide users a way to self-serve the updating of their credentials on their private keys. That was the feature we were most interested in and Axiad does an excellent job of it."

"The solution has also saved us time by having end-users troubleshoot issues through the MyCircle feature, and has definitely reduced the efforts of our administrators. It is saving us five to 10 minutes per incident."

"And when it comes to enrolling a user, it's super easy with One Click Issuance... It's so easy now that we can offload the process to our clients who can self-enroll. Previously, we would have to do the enrollment process because it was so complicated."

"What I have found most valuable is the overall way Axiad listened to our problems and helped us solve them. They provided guidance and expertise, with their experience, that enabled us to be successful in a very challenging space."

"Aside from Active Directory, anything that is a multi-factor platform is handled through Axiad Cloud. It is critical for helping to enforce usage of authentication devices across our organization."

"The support is definitely great. What I like best about Venafi is that it's very easy to get somebody on a call and get any of my questions answered. That's probably the biggest thing. Besides the fact that it's a mature product and it works, the support is a big deal."

"Venafi is super stable, and we experienced no issues with its stability."

"Automating anything, whether on-prem or cloud, is possible."

"The most important feature for us is the ease of use. If something is not available, we can develop our own scripts for it. We can create change management around this tool."

"The most valuable feature of Venafi is the automation that helps save time and reduce human error."

"What I appreciate most about Venafi is that it is very easy to use, easy to implement, and easy to navigate, which simplifies the certification-creation process."

"We have reduced 80% to 90% of our outages with Venafi, which impacts the revenue substantially."

"It's definitely worth the money to have Venafi as a tool; it's definitely miles away from the competition, in my opinion."

More Venafi pros

Cons

"I would like a more modern look to the portal."

"There are just some minor tweaks that could be made on the front end. It would be cool to have nicknames for authenticator devices. If you have more than one, it's hard to discern what you have."

"With their licensing model, it becomes hard to scale. For example, we couldn't roll it out enterprise-wide because if you scale it across more than 100,000 users, the cost becomes too exorbitant."

"macOS is notoriously ever-evolving and it's difficult to keep pace with it as it pertains to certain kinds of crypto authentication. That's really not even on Axiad. That's a decision by Apple, but it makes it a moving target."

"We would prefer that the solution be hosted in Canada because we're a Canadian entity. That would be nice to have. It's not a feature, as such, but it would really make us a lot happier if it could be located in Canada."

"I'm looking forward to seeing how they move to FIDO U2F as their primary authentication method across all of their solutions."

"The product was really good when it was a Venafi product. However, since its acquisition by CyberArk, there has been a lack of significant innovations. They are pushing for cloud adoption, but we prefer on-premises solutions due to regulatory concerns."

"Venafi's overall installation could be made easier."

"Currently lacks the capability to automatically download certificates in JKS."

"There are quite a few different technical aspects of Venafi that I feel they just missed out on; I'd have to look at my notes for the specifics."

"Venafi excels in automating certificate rotation and deployment but could enhance its offering by improving support for hardware security modules like Fortanix and providing more advanced, out-of-the-box integrations with public certificate authorities for DNS re-verification."

"I would like to see included in the next release of Venafi integration with the cloud HSM's, Hardware Security Module. Additionally, I would say other cloud services, because it's not only cloud that's essential. If you have a customer that has a lot of their IT moved into cloud, integration with different cloud services is always an area to improve."

"Venafi can improve on API automated code signing; the process should be more straightforward."

More Venafi cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It's very cheap on a per-year basis. The cards themselves last about three years and the license is on the order of double-digit dollars per user, and not hundreds of dollars per user, per year."

"Don't just focus on the hardware or software costs of acquiring a solution, but look at it from the perspective that so much of what it takes to run a PKI environment has to do with the people who are running it.... look at the total cost of ownership and not just the cost of acquisition."

"The pricing is very competitive for what is offered at the level that we need. They are right there with what the industry standards are. They tend to be a little bit less, in terms of cost, when we are talking about security at government standards. So, I would say that they have a slight advantage on cost compared to the industry average. They are the lower cost solution and the best bargain out on the market today."

"Axiad's pricing was what we were expecting. It was at the right spot. They were competitive."

"The pricing model is complex, considering factors beyond the number of certificates. This complexity can make our payments to Venafi challenging if costs continue to rise. It is good but more expensive than the competitors."

"The pricing of Venafi is really good, and that was a key reason we chose it. The pricing is very competitive compared to other solutions."

"Venafi's pricing appears to be competitive within the market."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

21%

Government

11%

Manufacturing Company

University

Financial Services Firm

17%

Government

Manufacturing Company

Insurance Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

No data available

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Axiad Cloud?

The life cycle management of credentials is the aspect that we have found to be the most useful... The differentiator that Axiad provided was the ability to provide users a way to self-serve the up...

See all answers

What is your primary use case for Axiad Cloud?

Our use case is credential management for one of the business units. Axiad provides credential management for those users, including the creation of new credentials and life cycle management of the...

See all answers

What advice do you have for others considering Axiad Cloud?

You have to understand the number of users and the number of devices that are going to use the solution. I'm saying that because of my experience with the licensing part. That's my one gripe. If yo...

See all answers

What do you like most about Venafi?

We use Venafi for PKI certificates.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Venafi?

The pricing has increased for us, impacting our organization due to its operational expenditure (OPEX). The pricing model is complex, considering factors beyond the number of certificates. This com...

See all answers

What needs improvement with Venafi?

The product was really good when it was a Venafi product. However, since its acquisition by CyberArk, there has been a lack of significant innovations. They are pushing for cloud adoption, but we p...

See all answers

Comparisons

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Compared 30% of the time

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Compared 28% of the time

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Compared 32% of the time

Entrust Identity Enterprise vs Venafi

Compared 13% of the time

Microsoft Entra ID vs Venafi

Compared 6% of the time

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Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Axiad Conductor

May 2025

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Buyer's Guide

Venafi

April 2025

Download Venafi product report

Also Known As

Axiad Cloud

No data available

Overview

Axiad Conductor offers a user-friendly platform for managing multifactor authentication and credential lifecycle, supporting seamless transitions to cloud environments for enhanced security compliance and access control.

Axiad Conductor stands out with intuitive management of multifactor authentication systems, assertive device lifecycle management, and a managed cloud solution that streamlines operations. It promotes user self-service for credential updates, minimizing the need for extensive training. With the capability to handle large networks, it enhances efficiency while meeting contract demands. Addressing user suggestions, plans include interface design updates and Canadian hosting, although macOS's frequent updates pose integration challenges.

What are the principal features of Axiad Conductor?

"One Click Issuance": Simplifies user enrollment through easy interface actions.
Multifactor Authentication: Manages critical authentication processes securely.
PKI Support: Facilitates seamless management in PKI environments.
Credential Self-Service: Empowers users to handle updates independently.
Cloud Management: Reduces operational burdens due to its managed environment.

What should users look for in terms of ROI and benefits?

Efficiency: Streamlined operations boost productivity across large networks.
Flexibility: Adaptability to meet evolving challenges and contract requirements.
User Empowerment: Enables users to manage their credentials autonomously.
Compliance: Supports regulation adherence effortlessly.

In diverse industries, Axiad Conductor is implemented to manage multifactor authentication and PKI elements like smart cards and YubiKeys. Organizations leverage it to ensure compliance, facilitate secure workforce access, and transition PKI systems to the cloud, handling substantial volumes of smart card and machine certificates with ease.

Axiad

Venafi automates protection for machine identities, which all organizations rely on to keep communications between machines secure and private. Venafi generates the machine identity intelligence necessary to automatically safeguard the flow of information to trusted machines and prevent communication with untrusted ones - all at machine speed and scale.

CyberArk

Sample Customers

Information Not Available

Surescripts, CME Group, TD Bank Group, Aetna, MoneyGram, Zions Bancorp, Cisco

Buyer's Guide

Axiad Conductor vs. Venafi

April 2025

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