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Okta Workforce Identity vs Symantec Siteminder comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Aug 11, 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

Okta Workforce Identity
Ranking in Single Sign-On (SSO)
2nd
Ranking in Access Management
4th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
67
Ranking in other categories
Authentication Systems (6th), Privileged Access Management (PAM) (7th), Identity and Access Management as a Service (IDaaS) (IAMaaS) (3rd), ZTNA as a Service (11th)
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
75
Ranking in other categories
Web Access Management (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of July 2025, in the Single Sign-On (SSO) category, the mindshare of Okta Workforce Identity is 10.9%, up from 10.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Symantec Siteminder is 2.6%, down from 3.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Single Sign-On (SSO)
 

Featured Reviews

Tor Nordhagen - PeerSpot reviewer
Extremely easy to work with, simple to set up, and reasonably priced
The drawback of this solution is that in our shops, many staff members sometimes have to be borrowed from one shop to another and the solution does not really support having multiple roles. The user experience we would like to have when a person works in shop A which pays their salary is that they should have access to pretty much everything. Maybe you have somebody who is a manager in that shop A, he should be able to order new wear, he should be able to change the pricing, he should be able to empty the cash registry, and ship it to the bank. But when for instance, in COVID, people had to fill in for people in shops where a lot of people were sick, then they had to actually use user accounts of people that work in shop B. If you were employed in shop A, you could not work in shop B without borrowing somebody else's user ID and password. Which is really bad. We haven't been able to work around that and Okta Workforce Identity does not have a solution for it. We are now piloting their identity governance solution. Obviously, it's easy to give somebody access, give them an account, and give them roles, but it's hard to maintain that. For example, if you moved from, say working in a shop to working in a warehouse. But why do you still have all this shop access? The solution has until now not had anything to really support the process of taking away access. But now we are in a better release program of Okta's identity governance solution. Although it's very basic, the solution has started on a journey, but identity governance is something that Okta Workforce Identity really needs to improve. The ability or the options in the solution for changing the look and feel are not good enough because in our partner portal, essentially what they have is an ugly admin interface. The admin interface is good enough for us technical people because that's all we need. We work with the product and we're able to see the data but when it comes to presenting the service portal, Okta Workforce Identity does not have any capabilities really for making it look pretty. To add branding and different graphical user interface elements than Okta basic for essentially delegated admin for the business-to-business portal is horrifying because you're essentially using the tech admin. The only option we had and used, was to take the tech admin console and strip it. so that a vendor that has some goods that are sold in the shops, when they want to add a user on their side, say a driver or a packer on their side who should know how much they've packed in a truck to come to our warehouse, then the user interface that this vendor is using, these functional people will then have to use an extremely basic user interface.
Muzi Lubisi - PeerSpot reviewer
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

"We face no challenges in integrating the product with our legacy systems."
"My total rating for Okta is ten out of ten."
"The product requires very little maintenance."
"It is a very stable solution."
"The most valuable feature in Okta Workforce Identity is the single sign-on, universal directory, and lifecycle management."
"The provisioning functionality has been the most valuable. This solution has good performance, fast integration and is very responsive."
"I am able to authenticate my users on cloud and SaaS applications such as Workday through Okta workflows."
"The solution can scale very well."
"A valuable feature of Siteminder is the way it handles bulk traffic. The features it has, in terms of routing the traffic and load balancing, are good."
"SAML is the best thing we're using right now because there is no need for creating an external account."
"If you look at our organization, and really all financial institutions, we have a lot of legacy apps. So it really helps to get Single Sign-On."
"Siteminder allows us to manage identity and portability control efficiently."
"All of our applications get a point, click, and you are in, while we increase security at the same time."
"It provides the breadth and the width to provide solutions for the different kinds of technologies which we have."
"The single sign-on is the solution's most valuable feature"
"The solution has features that allow you to easily distinguish between protected and unprotected resources."
 

Cons

"It would be pricing, which is a tough one because it goes against Microsoft. A lot of companies say they're a Microsoft partner, and they get all their software for free. Okta is like a luxury product, and it's not the most affordable one. I would say if they could work on pricing, it would help. Other than that, they've done great strides in developing a product that is really good. The companies that do see the value tend to invest in it."
"We've not had any problems with Okta."
"Therefore, if you have 10 million users, that's almost 100 million, so it is costly."
"We experienced some technical glitches that need to be resolved."
"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."
"Areas for improvement with Okta Workforce Identity would be in the governance place; for me, it is light."
"Whenever I write Cypress test cases, we encounter problems with logging in through Okta."
"It's not compatible with on-premises installations, unless you host it as a SaaS. We were not able to do that. For example, imagine a scenario where the cloud is not available. Then, Okta will not work for you. That use case will readily fail because it doesn't have an on-premises installation that you can use to authenticate or provide identity and access management. If you have a purely on-premises solution that is not connected to the internet, then this will not work. This is one area that can be improved."
"I'd like to see a rework of the user directory configuration."
"We are finding some compatibility issues. We're still working with CA on them."
"I would like to see a move towards the newer technologies, which is what we are doing right now. I think that's in the roadmap that's coming, in the 12.8 and 14 releases, but we would like to have it sooner than later."
"In future releases, I would like to see maybe more capabilities with some more modern authentication."
"Siteminder needs to improve its user experience."
"Some of the new protocols, like OAuth 2.0, could be improved."
"The technical support could be better."
"The main thing is we do not have the traceability and good monitoring that CA can provide us to capture problems when they occur."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The price of this product could be lower."
"Workforce Identity is well-priced."
"The pricing is reasonable."
"This solution is costly. Pricing is decent if you have less users, but it significantly goes up the more users you have, with its cost not justified."
"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 has a yearly subscription. As compared to its competitors, it is quite expensive. It also has a complex licensing model."
"The solution's pricing model could be better for SMBs."
"I believe it competes well. The pricing is pretty competitive. I know that Microsoft also provides something similar with its MFA and identity services."
"The solution's pricing is competitive."
"The licensing is fair for this solution."
"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 price is quite comparable to the other enterprise-level solutions in that market."
"The pricing is reasonable."
"CA solutions are generally expensive but for the customer the ROI is big."
"Symantec Siteminder is expensive; they could definitely do better on the price."
"I recommend conducting a PoC on every available product before choose one."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
15%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
7%
Financial Services Firm
32%
Insurance Company
12%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Computer Software Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Okta Workforce Identity?
Okta has introduced the Universal Directory. It has custom attribute capability and user permissions to read/write on their profiles or hide them. Profile sources and identity profile sourcing are ...
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?
I believe that if we integrate the workflows section into the main Okta Workforce Identity dashboard, it can be very useful.
What do you like most about Symantec Siteminder?
It's agent-based. It's convenient to deploy and integrate.
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 ...
 

Also Known As

No data available
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 Workforce Identity vs. Symantec Siteminder and other solutions. Updated: May 2025.
860,592 professionals have used our research since 2012.