Microsoft Entra ID vs Symantec Siteminder comparison

Microsoft and Broadcom are both solutions in the Single Sign-On (SSO) category. Microsoft is ranked #1 with an average rating of 8.7, while Broadcom is ranked #13 with an average rating of 6.6. Microsoft holds a 24.5% mindshare in SSO, compared to Broadcom’s 2.4% mindshare. Additionally, 95% of Microsoft users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 91% of Broadcom users who would recommend it.

Microsoft Entra ID

Read 235 Microsoft Entra ID reviews

23,813 Views
6,668 Comparison Views

95% willing to recommend

Symantec Siteminder

Read 75 Symantec Siteminder reviews

1,481 Views
992 Comparison Views

91% willing to recommend

Microsoft Entra ID

Symantec Siteminder

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Aug 11, 2024

Symantec Siteminder and Microsoft Entra ID provide distinct solutions for identity and access management. Microsoft Entra ID seems to have the upper hand due to advanced capabilities and perceived value.

Features: Symantec Siteminder is known for its comprehensive security policies, integration flexibility, and robust support features. Microsoft Entra ID is recognized for seamless cloud integration, multifactor authentication, and advanced user management features.

Room for Improvement: Symantec Siteminder faces challenges in user experience, complexity in configuration, and could simplify configurations. Microsoft Entra ID has occasional difficulty in initial setup, desires more detailed documentation, and could enhance user onboarding experiences.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Symantec Siteminder has a complex deployment process but a comprehensive support team. Microsoft Entra ID's deployment is relatively straightforward, although customer service experiences vary, with some users wishing for faster response times.

Pricing and ROI: Symantec Siteminder is perceived as more expensive but delivers high ROI with secure and reliable services. Microsoft Entra ID is considered more cost-effective and is valued for extensive features and integration capabilities.

To learn more, read our detailed Microsoft Entra ID vs. Symantec Siteminder Report (Updated: August 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Microsoft Entra ID vs. Symantec Siteminder

August 2025

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Helped 865,295 peers since 2012

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

Microsoft Entra ID

Ranking in Single Sign-On (SSO)

1st

Ranking in Access Management

1st

Average Rating

8.6

Reviews Sentiment

7.1

Number of Reviews

235

Ranking in other categories

Authentication Systems (1st), Identity Management (IM) (2nd), Identity and Access Management as a Service (IDaaS) (IAMaaS) (1st), Microsoft Security Suite (2nd)

Symantec Siteminder

Ranking in Single Sign-On (SSO)

13th

Ranking in Access Management

12th

Average Rating

8.0

Reviews Sentiment

7.1

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Web Access Management (1st)

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2025, in the Single Sign-On (SSO) category, the mindshare of Microsoft Entra ID is 24.5%, down from 25.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Symantec Siteminder is 2.4%, down from 3.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Single Sign-On (SSO)

Featured Reviews

Bahram Piri

Chief Executive Officer & Founder at IDmelon Technologies

Security focus and seamless implementation increase platform productivity

Microsoft Entra ID can be improved in many ways, and there's a big wish list.If we're focusing on security, something that I definitely expect is improvement in the UI and UX for frontline workers. This is important, especially for non-tech savvy individuals. It is something Microsoft Entra ID could do to improve for a wider audience. It's important to focus on the frontline workers since they are non-tech savvy individuals. They are not like those back-office engineering C-level employees who are constantly dealing with computers, and we need to build a specific user experience and user interface for them to handle this stuff. That's something I expect Microsoft to focus on more for Microsoft Entra ID.

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Muzi Lubisi

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.

Read full review

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"I rate Microsoft Entra ID ten out of ten."

"Microsoft Entra ID is regarded as the best ID management suite for integrating applications using SAML 2.0 for single sign-on."

"My two preferred features are conditional access and privileged identity management."

"We haven't implemented permission identity management, but we plan to use it. Entitlement management and dynamic grouping of Microsoft 365 groups are features I enjoy. From an administrative perspective, we can now manage users from a single pane of glass, which enhances efficiency. MFA will improve the user experience and increase organizational efficiency."

"It helps with privacy control of identity data. It makes security very easy."

"It is cloud based so it is always updated,"

"We do not have to deploy lots of machines all over the place to run things as a service, which is how we like to deploy things, just as a service."

"Azure Active Directory provides us with identity-based authentication, which secures access at the user level and also integrates with conditional access policies and multi-factor authentication helping to increase the identity security for that person. So, the hacking and leaking of passwords is a secondary problem because you will not authenticate a person with one factor. There is a second factor of authentication available to increase the security premise for your company."

More Microsoft Entra ID pros

"It is very scalable. We have a very large customer base: 75 million customers."

"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."

"Ease of use is very good, for administrating it. It's very well known."

"It has considerably reduced the amount of time that new users would take to join into the organization. Previously, it was a lengthy, manual process because it's a very secure environment, where they need to verify the user before they can actually grant him a user-ID and password. Integrating with the built-in custom application, and exposing CA Single Sign On to the internet, we were able to get the employees onboard. The time that we gained was: previously it would generally take from four to eight weeks for each employee, we brought it to one to two days."

"It is reliable."

"Authentication & Authorization are important because all the sites need authentication for security purposes. That has been handled pretty well all these years with SSO."

"It provides the breadth and the width to provide solutions for the different kinds of technologies which we have."

"You can quickly deploy the entire product with a basic config within couple of hours."

More Symantec Siteminder pros

Cons

"It would be ideal if the solution moved to a passwordless type of environment. It's the future of authentification. It's also more secure and convenient."

"Compared to what we can do on-prem, Azure AD lacks a feature for multiple hierarchical groups. For example, Group A is part of group B. Group B is part of group C. Then, if I put someone into group A, which is part of already B, they get access to any system that group B has access to, and that provisioning is automatically there."

"Private access and internet access should be available in a less expensive licensing model."

"The ability to manage and authenticate against on-premises solutions would be beneficial."

"Our organization's approach to defending against token theft and nation-state attacks has not changed significantly since implementing Microsoft Entra ID, as we have a big concern about token theft yet know we cannot do anything."

"The technical support has its downsides and upsides. While they are fast, it can take time to get the right person because there are many steps to reach the appropriate team member at Microsoft support, which can be somewhat annoying."

"ESAE management, especially the admin tools, could be improved. It should be built in by the vendor, and I shouldn't have to add patches or updates to connect to my domain directly. It should be added by default. The price could be better."

"Some of the features that they offer, e.g., customized emails, are not available with B2C. You are stuck with whatever email template they give you, and it is not the best user experience. For B2C, that is a bit of a negative thing."

More Microsoft Entra ID cons

"While I have some integration with a few major providers, support for more would be advantageous."

"All the problems that we reported actually have never been resolved. We could not capture enough information for CA to be able to debug the problem."

"The GUIs are not very clear, especially when integrating with other products from CA."

"Better documentation. I went through some sessions on single sign-on for version 12.7."

"In future releases, I would like to see maybe more capabilities with some more modern authentication."

"We would like to the OAuth be more stable, more issues being fixed rather than not."

"The support could be faster."

"The main thing is we do not have the traceability and good monitoring that CA can provide us to capture problems when they occur."

More Symantec Siteminder cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"We are a non-profit organization, so we get good prices from Microsoft for their products. It is working well, but it could be cheaper. For the type of organization we are, it would be good if they could give a little bit more and be more generous like Google, which has completely free services. Microsoft has free versions or web services called Office 365 E1, which is free for use, but we want to have it with more qualified clients."

"The price of Azure Active Directory and Amazon AWS, are almost the same, but most people prefer Amazon AWS because they find it's a little cheaper to some extent and an easier platform to use."

"Licensing fees are paid monthly."

"If you are dealing with one supplier with an out-of-the-box solution, which provides you end-to-end capabilities, then it is naturally cheaper and less of a headache to manage and operate."

"Microsoft has a free version of Azure AD. So, if you don't do a lot of advanced features, then you can use the free version, which is no cost at all because it is underpinning Office 365. Because Microsoft gives it to you as a SaaS, so there are no infrastructure costs whatsoever that you need to incur. If you use the free version, then it is free. If you use the advanced features (that we use), it is a license fee per user."

"Azure has an educational package available for students with a variety of licenses and different software available."

"Make sure that you get the most out of your Office 365 licenses for Azure AD. If you have additional concerns for users who don't have an Office 365 license, consider Azure AD Premium P1 and P2. Be aware that you have to evaluate your license usage beforehand."

"The solution has three types of tiers: E1 has very basic features. You get limited stuff in E2 and cannot have Office 360 associated with it. E3 is on the costly side and has all the features."

More Microsoft Entra ID pricing and cost advice

"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 solution's pricing is competitive."

"The price is quite comparable to the other enterprise-level solutions in that market."

"The pricing is reasonable."

"The licensing is fair for this solution."

"CA solutions are generally expensive but for the customer the ROI is big."

"I recommend conducting a PoC on every available product before choose one."

"Symantec Siteminder is expensive; they could definitely do better on the price."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

14%

Financial Services Firm

11%

Manufacturing Company

Government

Financial Services Firm

30%

Insurance Company

12%

Manufacturing Company

Transportation Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

Questions from the Community

How does Duo Security compare with Microsoft Authenticator?

We switched to Duo Security for identity verification. We’d been using a competitor but got the chance to evaluate Duo for 30 days, and we could not be happier. Duo Security is easy to configure a...

See all answers

What do you like most about Azure Active Directory?

It is very simple. The Active Directory functions are very easy for us. Its integration with anything is very easy. We can easily do third-party multifactor authentication.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Azure Active Directory?

Our experience with the pricing, setup costs, and licensing of Microsoft Entra ID involves leveraging Microsoft 365 E5 licensing, so it's included. Being included in Microsoft licensing makes it mu...

See all answers

What do you like most about Symantec Siteminder?

It's agent-based. It's convenient to deploy and integrate.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Symantec Siteminder?

My experience with pricing is that it is all good.

See all answers

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 ...

See all answers

Comparisons

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Compared 11% of the time

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Compared 8% of the time

Amazon Cognito vs Microsoft Entra ID

Compared 5% of the time

Okta Workforce Identity vs Microsoft Entra ID

Compared 5% of the time

Auth0 vs Microsoft Entra ID

Compared 5% of the time

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Ping Identity Platform vs Symantec Siteminder

Compared 39% of the time

ForgeRock vs Symantec Siteminder

Compared 30% of the time

Okta Workforce Identity vs Symantec Siteminder

Compared 10% of the time

OpenText Access Manager with Managed Services vs Symantec Siteminder

Compared 6% of the time

More Symantec Siteminder Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Microsoft Entra ID

August 2025

Download Microsoft Entra ID product report

Buyer's Guide

Symantec Siteminder

July 2025

Download Symantec Siteminder product report

Also Known As

Azure AD, Azure Active Directory, Azure Active Directory, Microsoft Authenticator

SiteMinder, CA SSO, Layer7 SiteMinder

Interactive Demo

Microsoft

Demo not available

Broadcom

Overview

Microsoft Entra ID is used for extending on-premises Active Directory to the cloud, managing application access, enabling multi-factor authentication, and single sign-on. It facilitates policy enforcement and secure access, ensuring centralized identity management across cloud and on-premises resources.

Organizations utilize Microsoft Entra ID for robust user and group management, identity synchronization, and conditional access. Its seamless integration with third-party apps, scalability, and support for remote work make it a preferred choice. The admin center streamlines identity and access tasks, enhancing efficiency and security with features like privileged identity management and audit logs.

What are the key features of Microsoft Entra ID?

Single Sign-On: Simplifies user access to multiple applications with one login.
Multifactor Authentication: Enhances security by requiring additional verification.
Conditional Access: Establishes policies that determine how users' access cloud apps.
Integration: Easily integrates with various third-party applications.
User Identity Protection: Safeguards user identities from threats.
Privileged Identity Management: Manages elevated access to sensitive resources.
Audit Logs: Provides thorough activity logs for oversight and compliance.

What benefits should users look for in Microsoft Entra ID reviews?

Enhanced Security: Offers strong multifactor authentication and identity protection.
Administrative Efficiency: Simplifies identity and access management tasks.
Scalability: Supports growing user bases and remote work environments.
Integration Capabilities: Compatible with numerous third-party applications.
User-Friendly Interface: Makes managing user identities straightforward.

Microsoft Entra ID implementation varies across industries. Tech firms leverage it for secure, scalable access management, while healthcare organizations utilize its identity protection features to safeguard patient data. Educational institutions adopt Entra ID for streamlined user management and policy enforcement, ensuring secure access for students and staff across on-premises and cloud resources.

Microsoft

Symantec® SiteMinder is designed to secure the modern enterprise through a unified access management platform that applies the appropriate authentication mechanism to positively identify users; provides single sign-on and identity federation for seamless access to any application; enforces granular security policies to stop unauthorized access to sensitive resources; and monitors and manages the entire user session to prevent session hijacking. Finally, Symantec SiteMinder is battle-tested and has been deployed in the largest IT environments in the world.

Broadcom

Sample Customers

Microsoft Entre ID is trusted by companies of all sizes and industries including Walmart, Zscaler, Uniper, Amtrak, monday.com, and more.

British Telecom, CoreBlox, DBS, HMS, Itera ASA and Simeo

Buyer's Guide

Microsoft Entra ID vs. Symantec Siteminder

August 2025

Free Report: Microsoft Entra ID vs. Symantec Siteminder

Find out what your peers are saying about Microsoft Entra ID vs. Symantec Siteminder and other solutions. Updated: August 2025.

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