A HashiCorp Vault Alternative: How Akeyless Simplifies Your Security and Cuts Costs

Introduction: The Growing Need for Vault Alternatives

If you’re managing secrets—think API keys, encryption keys, database credentials—you’ve probably run into HashiCorp Vault. It’s a powerful tool, but let’s be honest: it can be a nightmare to set up and maintain. Between its steep learning curve, high operational costs, and scaling challenges, many teams are actively searching for HashiCorp Vault alternatives that are simpler, more cost-effective, and excel in secret management.

One standout alternative? Akeyless. This Vaultless® SaaS platform offers a radically different approach to secrets management, cutting through the complexity while delivering robust security features. In this post, we’ll break down Vault’s limitations, why teams are switching, and why Akeyless is emerging as a top pick.

A Demo Video

What is HashiCorp Vault and Its Limitations?

HashiCorp Vault at a Glance

HashiCorp Vault is a well-known secrets management solution that helps organizations secure sensitive data such as passwords, API keys, encryption keys, and more.

Vault has three main components:

1. Secrets Engines

It provides essential secrets management features, including:

• Static Secrets: You can store any arbitrary secret using the Key/Value secrets engine.
• Dynamic Secrets: Generates temporary credentials for databases and cloud platforms in addition to managing public key infrastructure (PKI).
• Encryption-as-a-Service: Secures sensitive data with built-in encryption capabilities using the transit secrets engine. You can send vault any plaintext and get back cipher text. Vault also maintains the life cycle of the encryption keys which enhances data protection and compliance.

2. Authentication Methods

To retrieve secrets from Vault, you first need to authenticate into it. Vault offers many authentication methods, which can easily be categorized into human or machine authentication methods.

3. Policies

Policies are the authorization mechanism that allows certain operations in Vault. When a human or machine authenticates into Vault, they get a token back with specific policies attached. These policies allow access to certain paths in Vault with particular capabilities.

While Vault is undoubtedly powerful, it’s not without significant pain points.

Key Limitations of HashiCorp Vault

1. Complex Setup & High Maintenance

Vault Enterprise (the self-hosted version) is notoriously difficult to set up and maintain. I know because I’ve set up a few for my clients over the years. Some clients have opted to use HCP Vault (the SaaS version). However, that comes with security risks that you would need to evaluate for your own organization. Here is what I mean:

With HCP Vault, HashiCorp manages the infrastructure and encryption processes, meaning you are relying on them to keep your secrets secure. Since it operates on HashiCorp’s AWS environment, your secrets are ultimately stored in a third-party cloud, which raises concerns about:

• Data Sovereignty: Your organization does not have full control over where and how secrets are stored.
• Regulatory Compliance: Industries with strict compliance requirements (finance, healthcare, government) may face challenges ensuring full ownership of encryption keys.
• Potential Third-Party Access: Since HashiCorp controls the infrastructure, there is a theoretical risk that they (or a government entity via subpoena) could gain access to sensitive data.

If these risks are a concern, Akeyless offers a true zero-trust model with Distributed Fragments Cryptography (DFC), ensuring that no third party—including Akeyless—can ever access your secrets.

Moreover, managing policies, authentication tokens, and access controls requires deep expertise and a well-thought-out plan.

2. High Cost & Scalability Challenges

Scaling HashiCorp Vault comes at a steep price. This includes the hardware cost for additional clusters and a hefty licensing cost.

3. Limited Automated Secret Rotation

When you create dynamic secrets in Vault, you need to create a root account on the system you are connecting Vault to. This allows Vault to create secrets on that system. This system can be a database or a cloud account like AWS. Vault allows you to rotate that secret so that no human can see it after the initial setup. This is good. However, this is done manually, and you can’t schedule or automate the rotation.

These challenges drive teams to search for more streamlined HashiCorp Vault alternatives.

Why Look for a HashiCorp Vault Alternative?

If you’re considering a Vault alternative, chances are you’ve encountered one (or more) of these frustrations:

1. Steep Learning Curve & Operational Overhead

Vault demands a deep technical understanding to configure policies, manage identities, and ensure secure deployments.

2. Costly Scaling Issues

Scaling HashiCorp Vault compels organizations to invest in expensive infrastructure or risk downtime and performance degradation. As your Vault deployment expands across different regions, additional clusters become necessary, each incurring further licensing and hardware expenses. This is essential to enable Disaster Recovery and Performance Replication across these clusters.

3. Hidden Costs of Enterprise Features

The Vault Enterprise version unlocks key security features but at a high licensing cost. Some alternatives provide secure access and automated secrets management at a lower price.

Now that we’ve covered Vault’s challenges let’s explore Akeyless and why it’s quickly becoming the go-to secrets management tool.

Spotlight on Akeyless: The Leading HashiCorp Vault Alternative

What is Akeyless?

Akeyless is a cloud-native, SaaS-first secrets management solution that eliminates traditional vault-based architectures. It offers a simplified, scalable, and cost-effective alternative to Vault with robust security at its core.

Key Innovations of Akeyless

1. Vaultless® Architecture – No single point of failure, no need for complex HA setups.
2. Distributed Fragments Cryptography (DFC) – A patented technology that encrypts and splits secrets, ensuring that only authorized users can reconstruct them. Even Akeyless has no access to your secrets. This approach allows Akeyless to combine the scalability of a SaaS solution with enterprise-grade security, ensuring that secrets remain under customer control. When paired with Akeyless Gateways, which keep encryption fragments within the customer’s private network, organizations can leverage the benefits of SaaS without compromising on security or compliance requirements.
3. Universal Secrets Connector – Seamlessly integrates with AWS Secrets Manager, Azure Key Vault, GCP Secret Manager, and HashiCorp Vault.

Akeyless vs. HashiCorp Vault: A Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature	HashiCorp Vault	Akeyless
Ease of Use	Complex, requires deep expertise	Simple, intuitive, fast setup
Scalability	Expensive, infrastructure-heavy	SaaS-based, scales seamlessly with stateless gateways
Security Model	Centralized vault-based approach	Distributed Fragments Cryptography (DFC)
Secret Rotation for Root Accounts	Requires manual setup	Automated across multiple environments using Targets
Cost	High operational & licensing costs	Lower cost, no hardware dependency

With Akeyless, teams get a seamless, scalable secrets management solution that works without the operational headaches of Vault.

Deep Dive into Akeyless Features

1. Automated Secret Rotation

Akeyless streamlines the process of secret rotation by automating it for databases, cloud services such as AWS, Azure, and GCP, along with other sensitive systems, eliminating the need for manual efforts. This automation covers the rotation of Akeyless credentials used to connect with external services like AWS, GCP, Azure, or databases including Oracle and MySQL. The key feature here is effortless automation.

2. Dynamic Secrets for Secure Access

Akeyless has you covered when it comes to dynamic, just-in-time secrets. In addition to the common dynamic secrets offered by Vault, below are some additional ones, and the list keeps growing.

• RDP sessions
• Google Workspace
• Artifactory
• Chef
• Docker Hub authentication
• Ping

3. Secure Remote Access (Built-In)

Unlike Vault, which requires HashiCorp Boundary for remote access, Akeyless integrates secure access natively. This is a big deal since you wouldn’t need to set up two different systems and try to integrate them. In the Akeyless case, it’s just a license upgrade. Many organizations are now re-evaluating their privileged access management (PAM) strategy and looking to consolidate their secrets management solution with a PAM.

4. Password Manager & Browser Extensions

Akeyless provides password manager apps and browser extensions (Chrome, Firefox), making secrets management more accessible.

5. Secrets Migration & Synchronization

Akeyless supports automatic secrets migration from Vault, AWS Secrets Manager, Azure Key Vault, Kubernetes Secrets, etc, allowing seamless adoption.

Video Demo: Akeyless vs. Vault in Action

A hands-on comparison is the best way to understand why so many teams are switching from HashiCorp Vault to Akeyless. In the demo at the top of this blog post, we break down the key differences between the two solutions by exploring their architecture, secrets management, authentication methods, access policies, and a critical bonus feature—secure remote access.

If you’re struggling with Vault’s complexity and high costs, this comparison will show how Akeyless provides a simpler, scalable, and more cost-effective alternative.

Demo Part 1 – HashiCorp Vault Setup: Complexity & Cost Challenges

HashiCorp Vault is undeniably powerful, but its architecture and setup can be overwhelming. The demo highlights Vault’s high operational complexity, particularly when scaling across regions.

• Replication Challenges: Vault requires performance replication and disaster recovery replication to ensure high availability. Each region where applications are deployed needs its own Vault cluster, making scaling both complex and expensive.
• High Infrastructure Costs: Every cluster adds hardware expenses and licensing fees, making large-scale deployments financially unsustainable for many teams.
• Secrets Engines & Management: Vault’s secrets engines provide static and dynamic secrets, but they are missing some secrets found in Akeyless. I see Akeyless containing a superset of dynamic secrets.
• Authentication Methods: Vault supports multiple authentication mechanisms but struggles with on-prem machine authentication, requiring workarounds like AppRole authentication, which can be cumbersome.
• Policy-Based Access Control: Vault’s access policies rely on path-based ACL rules, which often lead to complex debugging when permissions aren’t working as expected.
• No Native Secure Remote Access: Vault lacks built-in secure remote access, requiring a separate product—HashiCorp Boundary—to manage privileged access.

Demo Part 2 – Akeyless Setup: A Streamlined Alternative

Akeyless was designed to eliminate the operational burdens of self-hosted vaults. The demo shows firsthand how Akeyless’ SaaS-based approach removes complexity while improving security.

• Vaultless® Architecture: Akeyless doesn’t require traditional vault clusters. Instead, lightweight gateways deployed in private networks handle all secret requests, eliminating the need for extensive infrastructure investment.
• Easy Scalability: Akeyless’ gateways are stateless, lightweight, and scalable, requiring no additional licensing costs.
• Comprehensive Secrets Management: Akeyless offers all the secrets management capabilities of Vault and more, including:
  • Automated secret rotation, even for root accounts.
  • Dynamic secrets with more integrations than Vault (e.g., RDP, GitHub, Docker Hub).
  • Universal Secrets Connector for syncing secrets across multiple providers.
• Universal Identity Authentication: Unlike Vault’s AppRole method, Akeyless provides Universal Identity for on-prem authentication without static credentials—a game-changer for secure machine authentication in on-prem environments.
• Simplified Access Control: Akeyless offers an intuitive role-based access model, simplifying permission management compared to Vault’s path-based ACL structure.
• Built-In Secure Remote Access: Unlike Vault, Akeyless offers secure remote access as an integrated feature within the platform, eliminating the need to deploy and manage a separate tool like HashiCorp Boundary—though it does require an additional license upgrade.

Key Takeaways from the Demo

1. Akeyless is significantly easier to deploy and scale
   • No need to set up clusters or manage performance replication.
   • Stateless gateways reduce hardware and operational costs.
2. Akeyless has built-in automation for secrets rotation
   • Unlike Vault, which requires manual rotation for root secrets, Akeyless automates this process.
3. Akeyless simplifies authentication & access management
   • Offers Universal Identity for on-prem authentication.
   • More intuitive role-based access control compared to Vault’s path-based ACLs.
4. Akeyless includes Secure Remote Access—no extra tools required
   • Unlike Vault, which requires Boundary, Akeyless provides native SSH, RDP, and database access using an additional license for secure remote access.

Watch the Full Demo to See the Difference

If you’re struggling with Vault’s complexity and costs, this demo makes it clear—Akeyless is the more scalable, secure, and cost-effective alternative.

User Stories & Testimonials

Many organizations have transitioned from HashiCorp Vault to Akeyless, and their feedback is overwhelmingly positive. They cite faster deployment, lower operational costs, and a security model that removes the complexity of traditional secrets management. Here’s what they have to say:

1. Faster Setup & Seamless Cloud Scalability

“Akeyless is true SaaS that allows you to scale. It’s purpose-built to live in the cloud. We saved 70% of our maintenance and provisioning time with Akeyless.”
— Richard Barretto, Progress

The Akeyless Vault SaaS Platform enabled Progress’ Infrastructure and Development teams to become more agile while ensuring high availability across multiple regions:
“The transition to Akeyless from HashiCorp Vault was simple. It has since allowed us to more efficiently scale our secrets management processes globally, achieve higher adoption rates, and significantly reduce TCO and complexity.”
— Richard Barretto, Progress

2. Lower Operational Costs & Maintenance-Free Management

“Akeyless’ platform approach, superb technology, and service excellence made it easy for us to decide to rip and replace HashiCorp Vault.”
— Daniel Fabbo, Senior Manager, Information Security at Cimpress-VistaPrint

Cimpress-VistaPrint saw immediate cost reductions but also gained long-term operational efficiencies:
“We immediately saw a massive reduction in costs, but the biggest returns came from lowering maintenance to virtually zero. Our partnership with Akeyless is expanding every day, and we are excited to embrace their new offerings for Secure Remote Access and Data Protection.”
— Daniel Fabbo, Senior Manager, Information Security at Cimpress-VistaPrint

These real-world testimonials showcase why Akeyless is the go-to HashiCorp Vault alternative for businesses that prioritize agility, cost-efficiency, and security.

Conclusion: Why Akeyless is the Best HashiCorp Vault Alternative

To recap:

• Vault’s complexity and high costs push teams to seek alternatives.
• Akeyless simplifies secrets management with a Vaultless® architecture.
• It’s more scalable, cost-effective, and secure—without the headaches of managing Vault clusters.

If you’re ready to simplify secrets management, I highly recommend exploring Akeyless.

Call to Action: Try Akeyless Today

✅ Sign up for a free demo
✅ Migrate from Vault in minutes
✅ Get a cost-effective, scalable security solution

👉 Learn More About Akeyless

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FAQs: Akeyless vs. HashiCorp Vault

1. How does Akeyless differ from HashiCorp Vault?

Akeyless is SaaS-based and features Vaultless® encryption, making it simpler and more scalable than Vault.

2. Is Akeyless secure?

Yes. Akeyless uses Distributed Fragments Cryptography (DFC), ensuring zero-knowledge encryption.

3. How much does Akeyless cost compared to Vault?

Akeyless is more cost-effective, eliminating hardware and high licensing fees. Depending on the environment and set-up, customers have seen upwards of 70% cost savings when switching from Vault to Akeyless.

4. What is the alternative to HashiCorp Vault?

Akeyless is truly the top alternative to HashiCorp Vault; if this blog post hasn’t convinced you yet, check out this one called Akeyless: The Leading HashiCorp Vault Alternative.

5. What is the AWS equivalent of HashiCorp vault?

The closest AWS alternative to HashiCorp Vault is AWS Secrets Manager. It provides secrets storage, automated rotation, and access control within AWS environments. However, it lacks the cross-cloud and on-prem support that many enterprises need. It also lacks dynamic secrets and other important features of a true cross-platform secrets management solution.

Akeyless, on the other hand, is a vendor-agnostic solution that works across AWS, Azure, GCP, and on-prem without being locked into a specific cloud provider. It also offers stronger security with Distributed Fragments Cryptography (DFC), ensuring that even Akeyless cannot access your secrets.

6. Is HashiCorp Vault still free?

Yes, HashiCorp Vault has a free community edition version, but it has significant limitations. Features like disaster recovery, performance replication, HSM support, and enterprise-grade access controls are only available in the paid Enterprise version, which can get expensive as you scale.

With Akeyless, you get a SaaS-first, fully managed solution that eliminates the operational burden and hidden costs of running Vault. Plus, Akeyless provides enterprise features without expensive hardware dependencies.

7. Who are the competitors of HashiCorp?

HashiCorp Vault competes with several secrets management tools, including:

• AWS Secrets Manager – Best for AWS-only environments but lacks multi-cloud flexibility.
• Azure Key Vault – Similar to AWS Secrets Manager but tied to Azure.
• CyberArk Conjur – Focused on privileged access management (PAM) for DevOps.
• Google Cloud Secret Manager – A basic secrets store for GCP users.

However, Akeyless stands out as a true HashiCorp Vault alternative with zero-trust encryption, cross-cloud compatibility, and a fully managed SaaS model, making it easier, more secure, and cost-effective.