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Portnox vs Secret Double Octopus comparison

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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 Passwordless Authentication
1st
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
41
Ranking in other categories
Network Access Control (NAC) (3rd), ZTNA (7th)
Secret Double Octopus
Ranking in Passwordless Authentication
9th
Average Rating
7.0
Number of Reviews
1
Ranking in other categories
Authentication Systems (36th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of November 2026, in the Passwordless Authentication category, the mindshare of Portnox is 12.8%, down from 15.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Secret Double Octopus is 4.7%, up from 4.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Passwordless Authentication Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Portnox12.8%
Secret Double Octopus4.7%
Other82.5%
Passwordless Authentication
 

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.
Gaurav Gaurav - PeerSpot reviewer
Architect at a tech services company with 10,001+ employees
A solution with good capabilities across a wide range of platforms that comes with a useful mobile application, but upgrades cause issues
We have noticed that patches and upgrades cause issues with how the application functions, due to the lack of stability of the product. However, we would recommend the solution because it has good capabilities, across a wide range of platforms, and the mobile application allows for use via Bluetooth, so users don't have to be connected to the internet. I would rate this solution a seven out of ten.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The visibility of the product is excellent."
"This product has helped us tremendously during the years in locating all kind of issues that we had on the network, very quickly, and I recommend it."
"Portnox is better than other solutions that I tried before, at least with Cisco, because it has lots of features that are not included in Cisco, so it is the best for me."
"Most customers feel value immediately upon deployment; they are able to see what is connected and apply the policies."
"There is an add-on feature for application control to kill unwanted applications when launched on a user's device."
"The most important of all is that we are aware of situations the minute anyone on the network has issues, with a very good graphical interface that shows us exactly where the issue is and what ports it is occurring at, making it a lot easier for us to troubleshoot network issues and helping with uptime and productivity."
"The ability of the product to search the entire network and know what you have hidden on your network."
"Overall, the platform helps strengthen security while remaining easy to deploy, manage, and scale as organizational requirements evolve."
"This solution has a mobile application, which comes with multi-factor authentication; allowing for more flexible usage, without having to sacrifice system security."
 

Cons

"One area for improvement in Portnox is the initial setup complexity and documentation for custom policy creation."
"Portnox has some difficulties with stability; sometimes there are glitches, and settings are not clear."
"There is work to be done when it comes to making the solution more seamless."
"One area for improvement would be deeper reporting and analytics capabilities for Portnox, particularly for long-term trend analysis and compliance reporting."
"While Portnox is solid, there is definitely room for improvement, particularly with the user interface."
"Allowing for a search of MAC addresses in the interface, whether they are authenticated on the network or not, would be beneficial. Currently, it only finds authenticated MAC addresses, which complicates troubleshooting when the same MAC address is used for different requests."
"In terms of operational efficiency, things are more complicated now. It takes more time to get devices on the network, but we increased security quite a bit."
"Now, the way security is viewed, maybe including something like AI, to automate some of the things that are required to be done would be great."
"The product suffers from frequent disturbances in service, that have impacted our end users when we deploy software updates."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."
"The vendor price is fair."
"The cost of Portnox Clear is reasonable."
"It's not cheap. It's not expensive. It's in the middle."
"The solution is very expensive and I would rate it 10 out of 10."
"We pay for port licensing and support on a yearly basis, and it's not cheap."
"Pricing is quite reasonable."
"It is not bad. It is a bit on the high side, but considering the cloud features and how much it costs to run the instance in the cloud, it is not unreasonable. We do have RADIUS servers for the US, Asia, and Europe."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Manufacturing Company
15%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Healthcare Company
8%
Construction Company
7%
Manufacturing Company
17%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Comms Service Provider
12%
Educational Organization
10%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business20
Midsize Enterprise10
Large Enterprise15
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Portnox Clear?
The pricing and setup cost as well as licensing is a bit high compared to the competition. If it were better, we could also have some pricing specific or special discounts to cater for SMBs.
What needs improvement with Portnox Clear?
If the MSSP offering could be the primary push or primary concern, it would be the best thing that could happen. Based on the Tanzanian market, AI governance is something that is coming through. Fo...
What is your primary use case for Portnox Clear?
Portnox is for the network access control use case. The use case focuses on wired network access, specifically how users are connecting to the network and how we are checking their security posture...
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Also Known As

Access Layers Portnox, Portnox CLEAR
Octopus Authenticator
 

Interactive Demo

 

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
United Technologies (UTC), American Family Association, ASL Airlines France, BNP Paribas, A Fortune 50 Bank, Bingham County Idaho, Britannia Financial Services, Carolina Behavioral Health Alliance LLC, European Commission, County of Midland Michigan, JRM Construction Management, Greer Commission of Public Works, Poste Italiane, Kennedy Wilson Europe, Key Mechanical, Marker Therapeutics Inc, Mediawan, Ministero Dell'interno, FairPrice, NTUC Health, Mercatus, TBC, Techni-Photo, Tinsa Group, Yates Law, Weil, Gotshal & Manges LLP, Z-Medica Corporation, A Member of the 5 largest US law firms.
Find out what your peers are saying about Portnox Security, Yubico, HYPR and others in Passwordless Authentication. Updated: October 2026.
920,336 professionals have used our research since 2012.