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OpenText Access Manager with Managed Services vs Symantec Siteminder comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 28, 2025

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

OpenText Access Manager wit...
Ranking in Web Access Management
3rd
Ranking in Access Management
22nd
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
5
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Symantec Siteminder
Ranking in Web Access Management
1st
Ranking in Access Management
11th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
75
Ranking in other categories
Single Sign-On (SSO) (13th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2026, in the Web Access Management category, the mindshare of OpenText Access Manager with Managed Services is 12.3%, down from 16.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Symantec Siteminder is 16.8%, down from 21.8% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Web Access Management Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Symantec Siteminder16.8%
OpenText Access Manager with Managed Services12.3%
Other70.9%
Web Access Management
 

Featured Reviews

MS
Senior Specialist: Solution Architecture at a tech services company with 501-1,000 employees
A mature, powerful product with good integration capabilities
Since we use it to access a number of mission-critical applications, it means that we have multiple sites. We have independent instances of Access Manager deployed. What's very important for us is to ensure that the configurations across the various sites are 100% aligned. If they had a mechanism to ensure that's the case, that would be great. For example, the worst thing to do is if you run into an issue, and then you fail over to your disaster recovery environment, and then you find out that you've got a missing configuration there, it'll be great if one could easily compare configurations across instances of NetIQ Access Manager to ensure consistency. It's just about ensuring consistent configuration across various instances. Having the ability to easily extract and view and compare and version control configurations would be ideal. If you consider our scenario whereby, let's say, we've got an instance for our retail environment, and for that instance, we've got a disaster recovery environment. We need to ensure the amount of service at each of those sites. Now yes, they serve different purposes, however, for us, it's very important that site A and site B are 100% aligned. And so if there was a way to easily extract the configuration and to compare it across sites, to me, that would just make everything from an operational perspective significantly easier.
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

"There are lots of options to customize the solution to your needs."
"The most valuable features of NetIQ Access Manager are SSO and Multi-Factor Authentication."
"It's very easy to integrate with applications."
"The single sign-on feature is excellent."
"The features that we have found most valuable with NetIQ Access Manager are its single sign-on and two factor two second factor database."
"All of our applications get a point, click, and you are in, while we increase security at the same time."
"Symantec Siteminder has simplified user access for our customers from user login to their web applications."
"The most valuable feature is that it meets the requirements of the customer. You have a lot of features in the product. Every product has them, but the question is, are these products going to meet the requirement of the customer?"
"You can quickly deploy the entire product with a basic config within couple of hours."
"It is very scalable. We have a very large customer base: 75 million customers."
"The most valuable feature is the integration with the Active Directory."
"Authentication & Authorization are important because all the sites need authentication for security purposes. That has been handled pretty well all these years with SSO."
"I liked the debugging part. There are only two files (trace file and log file) that you need to look into while performing debugging, and the logs give you the exact info on where and what needs to be fixed."
 

Cons

"Having the ability to easily extract and view and compare and version control configurations would be ideal."
"I would love to see the upgrade procedure handled more effectively. I would prefer to have OVS installation possibilities, although the upgrade procedures should include the OS as well. You should be able to use the whole application as an appliance."
"In terms of what could be improved, I would say the security of the infrastructure and the server and the working networking device."
"The application portal could be improved with more options and easier customization."
"Classification of junctions and new versions of applications, such as APIs, can be added to enable the use of more devices that utilize biometrics for Multi-Factor Authentication to improve the solution."
"Symantec Siteminder needs to have adaptive authentication and multi-factor authentication as integrated features."
"The Federation part of CA Single Sign On, it's a bit complex to implement because it involves the SSL certificates, exchange of certificates, and lot of technical details. The documentation misses some important parts of this, so that's the reason it took some time for us to go live."
"I'd like to see a rework of the user directory configuration."
"An area Siteminder could improve on is that there are a few limitations, in terms of new protocols for OpenID. If I want to have different scopes, the features are limited. They also do not have APIs exposed, which is a major drawback. API is a feature I would like to see included in the next release."
"We would like to the OAuth be more stable, more issues being fixed rather than not."
"The technical support could be better."
"Better documentation. I went through some sessions on single sign-on for version 12.7."
"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 the solution is average."
"CA solutions are generally expensive but for the customer the ROI is big."
"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."
"I recommend conducting a PoC on every available product before choose one."
"The solution's pricing is competitive."
"Symantec Siteminder is expensive; they could definitely do better on the price."
"The price is quite comparable to the other enterprise-level solutions in that market."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Manufacturing Company
14%
Transportation Company
11%
Financial Services Firm
6%
Real Estate/Law Firm
6%
Financial Services Firm
26%
Insurance Company
10%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Government
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business8
Midsize Enterprise3
Large Enterprise69
 

Questions from the Community

Ask a question
Earn 20 points
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

Bancomext, Bouwend Nederland, Camera dei Deputati, CGT, Coopservice Group, Court of Appeals of Georgia, Etnic, European Automotive Manufacturer, FDM Document Dynamics, Hainan Province Information Center, Highland Community College, Huntington Bank, Johnsonville Sausage, London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, Mazars, Mexico's Tax Administration Service, Owens Community College, Pasco Risk, RDC, School District of Hartford, Senckenberg Nature Research Society, Sheetz, Spanish Public Employment Service, SUNY Orange County Community College, Swisscard, The Municipality of Siena, The University of Westminster, UMB Financial Corporation Invests in Identity Management, University of Dayton, University of Groningen, Vodacom, World Wide Technology
British Telecom, CoreBlox, DBS, HMS, Itera ASA and Simeo
Find out what your peers are saying about OpenText Access Manager with Managed Services vs. Symantec Siteminder and other solutions. Updated: January 2026.
881,082 professionals have used our research since 2012.