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Okta Platform vs Symantec Siteminder comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Mar 22, 2026

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

Okta Platform
Ranking in Single Sign-On (SSO)
1st
Ranking in Access Management
2nd
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.6
Number of Reviews
126
Ranking in other categories
Authentication Systems (3rd), Privileged Access Management (PAM) (3rd), Identity and Access Management as a Service (IDaaS) (IAMaaS) (2nd), ZTNA as a Service (3rd), Customer Identity and Access Management (CIAM) (1st), AI IT Support (1st)
Symantec Siteminder
Ranking in Single Sign-On (SSO)
13th
Ranking in Access Management
15th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
75
Ranking in other categories
Web Access Management (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of September 2026, in the Single Sign-On (SSO) category, the mindshare of Okta Platform is 10.3%, up from 8.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Symantec Siteminder is 3.0%, up from 2.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Single Sign-On (SSO) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Okta Platform10.3%
Symantec Siteminder3.0%
Other86.7%
Single Sign-On (SSO)
 

Featured Reviews

SN
Identity and Access Management Specialist at a university with 10,001+ employees
Automated lifecycle management has cut onboarding times and now drives secure, clean access
Although I am a fan of Okta Platform overall, there are areas where it could improve security outcomes and reduce admin friction. My top improvement areas include the system log and analytics upgrade, which are great for point troubleshooting, but trending and root cause analysis across large tenants still require exporting to SIEM. Verbose queries and long-range retention costs can add up. Additionally, while certificate rotations are better than most, the process is still manual for busy portfolios, especially concerning multi-SP SAML certificate rotations and app metadata drift. Two more buckets of potential improvements for Okta Platform involve user experience and security. There is the issue of push fatigue and prompt sprawl, where users receive multiple prompts across different apps and sessions. I arrived at the rating of eight because the core controls are strong and reliable, but a few operational UX and UI gaps prevent it from being rated higher. The reasons for not giving it a nine or ten include ongoing issues concerning safety and change safety, the complexity of group rules and mappings, and the lack of robustness in policy management. Additionally, there remains a need for more manual involvement than necessary, especially for large portfolios and dual certificate rotation, along with proactive SP data metadata validation.
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

"The most valuable features of Okta Customer Identity are there is no infrastructure cost, integrated, has plenty of documentation, and is user-friendly."
"Okta Platform is the gold standard when it comes to identity providers and the single sign-on experience."
"What it's done for our clients is it's reduced the number of staff they need in order to manage their campus and their partner community services."
"Okta has more when it comes to the policy level. It has distinctive features where you can do a mix and combination to have users access applications for various business cases."
"Overall, I would rate Okta Customer Identity a ten."
"The onboarding is the solution's most valuable aspect, as it helps us save time in terms of creating a password for each of the SaaS applications versus Okta, where you have this one single pane of glass to see who has what application or who needs which application."
"We find the solution to be stable."
"The technical support for Okta is really supportive."
"The solution has features that allow you to easily distinguish between protected and unprotected resources."
"Once it works, it works really well."
"That seamless integration significantly improves user experience and efficiency."
"The most valuable feature is the integration with the Active Directory."
"Its flexibility and ease-of-use are the most valuable features."
"For us, it’s the best-of-breed pick on the market today."
"It is very scalable; we have a very large customer base: 75 million customers, and about 40 million log in a day, so the scalability is very good."
"As our identity model continues to mature, probably the Federation is most valueable."
 

Cons

"The solution's user interface needs to be improved and made easy."
"The only aspect in which it can be improved is that the interface could be cleaner."
"We had an issue with the Okta Workforce Identity dashboard once in 2023 when we had an outage, but it recovered in a few minutes."
"I would expect Okta Platform to include more features over time in their less expensive subscriptions."
"This user integration with the Okta integration network could be simplified."
"The pricing could be improved."
"The only improvement point I would suggest for Okta Platform is that it needs to redesign the feature request system because there are many important features that are not taken into consideration."
"The integration process takes a bit longer than we would want it to."
"There is a considerable improvement in the product from previous versions, but a few items we feel need a little attention are the web agent installation process and steps – as it behaves differently on the same OS."
"For us, getting to that person or to the second level of support is time consuming."
"I would prefer to see their SAML integration be a more streamlined and easier interface, more like PingFederate's interface."
"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 initial setup was complex, painful. But that is to be expected of any new setup. When you're a big bank like us, any kind of migration to a new product is hard. I expect it to be painful, and it was painful. But it's not something that you can avoid."
"It’s really difficult to initially configure, but once you know where the traps are, it’s not a big deal."
"The GUIs are not very clear, especially when integrating with other products from CA."
"It's not user friendly, but it's very customizable."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Okta has fairly competitive pricing."
"Pricing might be high, but it comes down when the number of people using the product goes up."
"This is an expensive solution but the security makes it worthwhile."
"We pay 23 pence (approximately $0.30 USD) per user, annually, for 150,000 users."
"The pricing for Okta Workforce Identity could still be improved or made cheaper. It costs from 50 to 100 euros a year per user. Okta Workforce Identity has different packages you can choose from, and my previous company had all of them, particularly the full Okta suite."
"Price-wise, Okta Workforce Identity is a cheap solution. The overall cost depends on the license since you can negotiate with Okta or any of Okta's partners only if you opt for many licenses."
"It could be a bit too pricey for small companies. Okta Workforce Identity can add a lot of benefits, but smaller companies may not have a lot of applications that need to be managed by Okta Workforce Identity. In larger organizations, there are more departments, applications, and users to manage. Okta Workforce Identity adds a bit more value to those bigger organizations. In addition to standard licensing fees, there are also additional costs for things"
"It is costly for large companies."
"CA solutions are generally expensive but for the customer the ROI is big."
"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 pricing is reasonable."
"The solution's pricing is competitive."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
10%
Outsourcing Company
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Construction Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
16%
Outsourcing Company
15%
Construction Company
12%
Marketing Services Firm
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business53
Midsize Enterprise27
Large Enterprise64
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business8
Midsize Enterprise3
Large Enterprise69
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Okta Workforce Identity?
Pricing for Okta is reasonably not that much, however, I don't have access to the commercial aspect.
What needs improvement with Okta Workforce Identity?
Currently, in Okta Workforce Identity we get the two-digit authentication code. Instead of getting the two-digit authentication code, if we had an option to do fingerprint verification, that would ...
What is your primary use case for Okta Workforce Identity?
I don't have many details about Okta Workforce Identity. I use the tool just to sign in to different applications that we have. We basically set up Okta Workforce Identity in our mobile phone. We d...
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

Okta Customer Identity, Workforce Identity
SiteMinder, CA SSO, Layer7 SiteMinder
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

FedEx, Zoom, Takeda, Lululemon Athletica, GrunHub, jetBlue, McKensson, Bain & Company, Engie, Peloton, Sonos, T-Mobile, Hewlett Packard, MGM Resorts, Ally Financial, Priceline, Albertsons, Itercom, Classy, FICO, Kensho, Live Nation, Drata, Rotary, and others.
British Telecom, CoreBlox, DBS, HMS, Itera ASA and Simeo
Find out what your peers are saying about Okta Platform vs. Symantec Siteminder and other solutions. Updated: September 2026.
913,806 professionals have used our research since 2012.