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Portnox vs Safe-T Secure Application Access comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jun 3, 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

Portnox
Ranking in ZTNA
7th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
40
Ranking in other categories
Network Access Control (NAC) (5th), Passwordless Authentication (1st)
Safe-T Secure Application A...
Ranking in ZTNA
19th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.7
Number of Reviews
8
Ranking in other categories
Enterprise Infrastructure VPN (32nd), Access Management (34th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2026, in the ZTNA category, the mindshare of Portnox is 3.3%, up from 0.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Safe-T Secure Application Access is 1.9%, up from 0.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
ZTNA Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Portnox3.3%
Safe-T Secure Application Access1.9%
Other94.8%
ZTNA
 

Featured Reviews

Maurice Mwaura - PeerSpot reviewer
Product Manager at Applied Principles Limited
Unified access control has improved compliance visibility and simplified passwordless access
There is work to be done when it comes to making the solution more seamless. For example, when a user is denied access, they would need a way to maybe self-resolve themselves, perhaps a way to generate a ticket on their own, something around resolutions. When it comes to users using the product, that is where good products are differentiated from products that are a bit of a challenge. Portnox has much to do in terms of their reporting. The generated reports need improvement. Things that other tools would say are normal are usually not present. For example, there is a page called NAS devices or NAS network that is able to show the switches that have been managed. Currently, there is no way of generating an easy report or an easy way of just generating something to tell the customer what they have been able to achieve so far. This is not done yet and is still very manual. I think there is work to be done there. More integrations around the various products being used would be beneficial. So far I have not encountered any major challenge. Where there was a challenge, I think support came in and helped us resolve. In fact, most of the challenges are not with the product; they are with the customer environment. I think that is just to update their documentation where they have come across a new vendor for easier integrations in the future.
it_user787671 - PeerSpot reviewer
Network and Security Engineer
Needs to be easier to configure and to display logs more simply
We use only it for scanning files for viruses. That's the only feature we use in this product It needs to be easier to configure, it should be something that's working well with other sources. It should be something that allows me to see the logs simply. One to three years. Sometimes it doesn't…

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Portnox helped to free up staff time and resources for other IT security priorities and IT work."
"The ability of the product to search the entire network and know what you have hidden on your network."
"The minute people have issues on their network, we can see what is happening right away."
"If your team is burnt out on managing legacy on-prem network access control or wants to move to a pure cloud model, Portnox should definitely be on your shortlist."
"Portnox integrates seamlessly with existing identity providers such as Azure AD, Okta, and Google Workspace, and its integration capabilities and security features such as zero-trust and passwordless authentication contribute significantly to an organization's security posture."
"Portnox ensures system compliance through policy enforcement, including antivirus updates, Windows operating system updates, and system patches, helping network administrators maintain system health and security across the network."
"Portnox has positively impacted my organization by ensuring that only authorized devices connect to the local network, serving as the first point of defense for our network devices."
"Technical support was very helpful when we needed them."
"Safe-T is very good for users because it has a plug-in for Outlook."
"From a technical point of view, products are stable and scalable, and we do appreciate the personal touch the sales engineers (SE) support and development bring, as well as the personal touch of the sales support, the free online, and web-based training."
"We use only it for scanning files for viruses."
"At the end of the day it's really good and really improved."
"If you want a very flexible system that you can easily integrate, and develop interfaces for it or plug-ins to other application environments, it's probably the most flexible"
"It's easy to use over the web. A user who is not in the office can use it and securely insert files."
"Safe-T SDA has allowed my organization to secure my office applications and makes it harder for hackers to be able to hack into my internal office web applications."
"You can easily integrate it and fit the system to your organization's needs, and that's a very huge advantage."
 

Cons

"In Portnox, the area that has room for improvement is that older data is not fetching correctly."
"As there are no agents in Portnox Clear, the customers of the product cannot download any agents on their devices, making them unsure if the product offers proper security."
"The licensing is based on a per-port price, even when you are not using all of the ports, and this is something that could be improved."
"In many situations, the authentication steps cause slightly slow access and introduce some delay in the authentication process."
"One of the things for the on-premise is that sometimes you click on it and it takes a while for it to respond."
"However, problems arise when the same MAC address is requested for a different project. Our current system only finds authenticated MAC addresses, making it difficult to troubleshoot when the same device is used for multiple purposes."
"The integration between Portnox CORE and Portnox CLEAR can be better. These are two different systems, and there is no unique console for both devices. Portnox CORE is agentless, whereas Portnox CLEAR is not agentless."
"Portnox has design considerations that limit its applicability."
"When we have something that we want improved, it takes a little bit of time until it can be fixed."
"The cloud solution is not that great especially with Swiss customers."
"Better UI. A better UI for the people that manage all the processes of Safe-T. Some of the UI is not as intuitive as you would like it to be."
"One important thing that we haven't found in this product is the ability to provide a read-only view for documents. Also, the ability for the customer to add annotations to these documents."
"Setting up Safe-T SDE is very complex. It is not straightforward, and it requires much understanding on the concepts of the product."
"I'm not sure what advice I would give others about this product because I don't like Safe-T."
"In terms of improvement, they need to be much more strict regarding the roadmap, about timelines and when new features will be up in production."
"The Outlook agent is not working well for installing it in the entire office."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The tool is more expensive than Fortinet."
"The licensing module should be reviewed to count the number of devices instead of port numbers of total switches. There is a case for this where not all ports for a switch are used by devices. Unused ports are calculated in the license, then the customer pays for license for those unused ports."
"It's not cheap. It's not expensive. It's in the middle."
"The pricing is a bit high, possibly due to the cloud features and running instances across regions like the US, Asia, and Europe."
"We pay for port licensing and support on a yearly basis, and it's not cheap."
"The cost of Portnox Clear is reasonable."
"Pricing is not cheap. It is based on licenses per port. After licensing is purchased, you only pay for support."
"The vendor price is fair."
Information not available
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Manufacturing Company
15%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Construction Company
8%
Healthcare Company
7%
Construction Company
13%
Performing Arts
8%
Comms Service Provider
7%
Healthcare Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business19
Midsize Enterprise9
Large Enterprise15
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Portnox Clear?
We did not purchase it directly. We gained access through our higher authorities, so I do not have substantial knowledge about where they obtained it. As I understand it, they acquired it from Port...
What needs improvement with Portnox Clear?
One area for improvement in Portnox is the initial setup complexity and documentation for custom policy creation. Navigating the cloud console can feel clunky when configuring specific posture rule...
What is your primary use case for Portnox Clear?
I mainly use Portnox to instantly isolate a compromised or non-compliant endpoint from the rest of the network the moment a threat or vulnerability is detected. Portnox's main use case is for authe...
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Also Known As

Access Layers Portnox, Portnox CLEAR
Safe-T SDA, Safe-T, Safe-T Software-Defined Access
 

Interactive Demo

Demo not available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Sallie Mae, Roku, Vuori, Legal Zoom, Anaplan, Aecon, H.I.G. Capital, McLaren Construction Group, PFCU, UK Mortgage Lending Limited, CCC Intelligent Solutions
Government of Israel, eviCore Healthcore, Glen Imaging, Sarin, LBG, Rollomatic, Boegli-Gravures SA, Banque Heritage, Groupe Minoteries, Temenos, ZEK, RLM Finsbury, Harel Insurance, Meitav Dash
Find out what your peers are saying about Portnox vs. Safe-T Secure Application Access and other solutions. Updated: June 2026.
908,800 professionals have used our research since 2012.