August 14, 2026
Posted by Akeyless
Key Takeaways
- Venafi, now sold as CyberArk Certificate Manager, is the most feature-deep certificate platform on the market, and also the most expensive and operationally demanding.
- The credible Venafi alternatives include Keyfactor, DigiCert, AppViewX, Sectigo, and Akeyless, each suited to a different profile.
- Akeyless fits teams that want a SaaS-delivered platform with no PKI infrastructure to run and certificates unified with secrets and keys under one zero-knowledge platform.
- As TLS lifespans fall toward 47 days, the deciding factor is automation and consolidation, not how many connectors a vendor ships
Quick Answer: What Is a Venafi Alternative?
A Venafi alternative is a certificate lifecycle management or machine identity platform that teams evaluate in place of Venafi, now sold as CyberArk Certificate Manager. Most look for one of two reasons: to cut the cost and operational overhead of running Venafi, or to avoid roadmap uncertainty after CyberArk completed its $1.54 billion acquisition of Venafi in October 2024 (with CyberArk itself acquired by Palo Alto Networks in February 2026).
- Keyfactor is the most direct like-for-like competitor.
- Cloud-native teams often prefer SaaS platforms such as Akeyless that add no PKI infrastructure.
- The right alternative depends on estate size, cloud footprint, and whether you want certificates unified with secrets and keys.
Quick Facts
| Question | Short Answer |
| Is Venafi still available? | Yes, as CyberArk Certificate Manager (formerly TLS Protect), inside CyberArk’s machine identity portfolio |
| Who owns Venafi now? | CyberArk (acquired October 2024 for $1.54B); CyberArk itself was acquired by Palo Alto Networks (completed February 2026) |
| Most direct Venafi competitor | Keyfactor Command |
| Best no-infrastructure SaaS option | Akeyless (SaaS-delivered, zero-knowledge, unified CLM plus secrets) |
| Why teams switch | Cost, on-prem complexity, per-identity pricing, post-acquisition roadmap uncertainty |
| What matters most in 2026 | Automation for 47-day certificates and unifying certs with secrets and keys |
Why Are Teams Looking for a Venafi Alternative?
Venafi earned its reputation. It built the certificate lifecycle management category, it scales to well over a million certificates, and for a Global 5000 estate with strict compliance mandates it is still the safe default. The reasons teams start shopping are rarely about capability. They are about cost, complexity, and, since 2024, ownership.
On cost, Venafi is priced as a premium enterprise platform, and the model is often tied to the number of machine identities under management. That math turns against you in cloud-native environments, where containerized workloads can generate certificates at volumes far beyond a traditional server estate, so every new workload that requests a certificate adds to the bill. Several independent reviewers describe the pricing as opaque and note that it has risen since the acquisition.
On complexity, the on-prem product (the platform formerly known as Trust Protection Platform) expects dedicated Windows Server, IIS, and SQL Server infrastructure, and a typical rollout runs three to six months with meaningful professional services before a team sees value. Venafi also does not act as a certificate authority itself, so you still bring your own CAs and integrate them. Organizations without dedicated PKI staff frequently pay for depth they never fully use.
The third reason is newer. Venafi’s direction now follows CyberArk’s, and that changes the risk calculus for anyone who chose it as a best-of-breed standalone tool.
What Did the CyberArk Acquisition Change?
CyberArk completed its acquisition of Venafi from Thoma Bravo in October 2024 for about $1.54 billion, and has been folding the products into its machine identity portfolio. TLS Protect is now CyberArk Certificate Manager, and Firefly, the lightweight issuer for cloud-native workloads, is now CyberArk Workload Identity Manager. The strategic idea is that machine identity becomes a pillar of privileged access management. In a $25 billion deal that closed February 11, 2026, CyberArk itself was acquired by Palo Alto Networks, placing Venafi two acquisitions deep inside a much larger platform.
The consolidation logic is sound. If you already run CyberArk for privileged access, pulling certificates into the same identity platform can simplify your stack, and staying put may be the right call. The risk is asymmetric. If you bought Venafi purely for certificates and have no other CyberArk footprint, your PKI roadmap is now set by a company whose center of gravity is identity and access, not public key infrastructure. That is why reviewers report renewal-time questions about pricing structure, support continuity, and whether standalone certificate features keep getting investment. It is also why Keyfactor has been winning migration deals from Venafi customers who want a vendor focused only on PKI.
Akeyless vs Venafi: How Do They Compare?
The two platforms come at the problem from opposite ends. Venafi is a deep, dedicated certificate and machine identity suite with an on-prem heritage. Akeyless is a SaaS-delivered platform that treats certificates as one identity type among secrets, keys, and access, all under a single zero-knowledge model.
| Dimension | Venafi (CyberArk Certificate Manager) | Akeyless |
| Deployment | On-prem or SaaS; heavy infrastructure for on-prem | SaaS-delivered, no servers or agents to run |
| Acts as a CA | No; manages certificates from other CAs | Yes, private CA and PKI-as-a-service, plus public CA integration |
| Scope | Certificates and machine identity, in depth | Certificates unified with secrets, keys, and privileged access |
| Key protection | Traditional key storage | Zero-knowledge DFC; private keys never assembled in full |
| Pricing model | Premium, often per-identity; opaque, rose after acquisition | Consumption-based SaaS |
| Cloud-native fit | Retrofitted; per-identity cost grows with containers | Native ACME, Kubernetes, and Terraform automation |
| Post-quantum | Post-quantum readiness available via add-on capabilities | Quantum-resilient transport encryption built into the platform |
| Best for | Largest regulated estates, existing CyberArk shops | Cloud-first teams wanting no PKI infra and unified identity |
Where Venafi Is Still the Stronger Choice
A comparison that only flatters the sponsor is not much use, so here is the straight version. Venafi remains ahead in a few areas that matter for the largest organizations. Its discovery is the deepest in the category, combining network scanning, CA synchronization, and agent-based collection to inventory certificates and keys across sprawling hybrid estates, and it extends that discovery to SSH keys and code-signing assets that many competitors cover less thoroughly. It ships with a very large library of prebuilt connectors, so in a heterogeneous environment with legacy systems it probably integrates with what you already run. It is widely reported as FedRAMP authorized and used at very large scale across enterprise certificate estates. And for a shop already committed to CyberArk, the platform consolidation is a real advantage rather than a liability. If you are a regulated Global 5000 enterprise with dedicated PKI staff and the budget to match, Venafi is a defensible default.
Where Akeyless Fits Better
Akeyless is built for teams that do not want to run certificate infrastructure at all. It is delivered as a SaaS platform, with no clusters, agents, or databases to maintain, and it can act as your private CA through PKI-as-a-service while also integrating public CAs such as GlobalSign and ZeroSSL. It automates issuance, renewal, and rotation through ACME, SCEP, and EST, generates the CSR and key automatically, and replaces the certificate on the endpoint after renewal so nothing expires by surprise.
The larger difference is consolidation. Certificates in Akeyless live under the same control plane as secrets, encryption keys, and privileged access, governed by one policy model and one audit trail. Private keys are protected by Distributed Fragments Cryptography, so they are never assembled where anyone, including Akeyless, can see them, and the platform ships quantum-resilient transport encryption for the migration ahead. For a cloud-first team, that combination of no infrastructure, unified identity, and zero-knowledge key protection is the reason to look here rather than at another dedicated CLM suite. Because Venafi is now a CyberArk product, the Akeyless vs. CyberArk comparison is a useful companion to this one.
What About the Other Venafi Alternatives?
Akeyless is not the only option worth a look, and a good evaluation names the field. The shortlist below reflects where each tool is strong.
| Alternative | In Brief |
| Keyfactor Command | The most direct competitor; owns the EJBCA engine; ranked first in ABI Research’s 2025 Enterprise PKI Vendor Competitive Ranking, ahead of Entrust and DigiCert |
| DigiCert Trust Lifecycle Manager | CA-integrated management with seat-based licensing; strong if you are standardizing on DigiCert as your CA |
| AppViewX AVX ONE | Deep, customizable workflow automation; a fit for complex multi-cloud estates |
| Sectigo Certificate Manager | CA-integrated, cloud-native management; natural if you issue Sectigo certificates |
| Entrust PKI Hub | Container-based appliance combining PKI, CLM, and HSM integration |
| HashiCorp Vault (PKI) | Strong for cloud-native, short-lived certificates; weaker across legacy on-prem infrastructure |
Keyfactor is the usual head-to-head when the requirement is a like-for-like dedicated CLM at a lower price, and it has the advantage of owning both the CA engine and the lifecycle layer, a position independently confirmed by ABI Research’s 2025 Enterprise PKI Vendor Competitive Ranking. Akeyless is the choice when the requirement is different: no infrastructure, and certificates governed together with the rest of your machine identities.
How Akeyless Approaches Certificate Lifecycle Management
The Challenge
A team leaving Venafi usually wants to shed two things at once: the operational weight of running certificate infrastructure, and the silo that keeps certificates separate from the secrets and keys they sit next to. Swapping one heavy on-prem suite for another does not solve either problem, and a cheaper point tool still leaves certificates governed apart from everything else.
The Approach
Akeyless delivers certificate lifecycle management and PKI-as-a-service as a managed, SaaS-delivered platform. It supports the full range of certificate use cases, from TLS and SSL to SSH, code signing, and custom IoT certificates, through private CAs or integrations with public ones. Issuance, renewal, and rotation are automated over ACME, SCEP, and EST, with automatic CSR and key generation and endpoint provisioning to Linux and Windows. Expiration monitoring and multichannel alerts mean nothing lapses unnoticed, and a centralized repository gives full observability into certificate health for audit and compliance. Underneath, a built-in KMS secures keys under zero-knowledge encryption, and everything runs alongside secrets and access under one policy model.
The Outcome
Teams retire the servers, agents, and databases that a legacy platform requires, and they manage certificates in the same place as secrets and keys instead of stitching separate tools together. The practical results customers report are lower total cost of ownership, faster time to value than legacy PKI, and fewer outages because renewals happen automatically. Akeyless was also named an Overall Leader in the 2025 KuppingerCole Leadership Compass for Enterprise Secrets Management, which reflects the same platform its certificate capabilities sit on.
What This Looks Like for Real Teams
Cimpress, the parent company behind Vistaprint, replaced its previous approach and cut maintenance to almost nothing.
| “Akeyless’s platform approach, superb technology and service excellence made it easy for us to decide to rip and replace our existing solution. We immediately saw a massive reduction in costs, but the biggest returns came from lowering maintenance to virtually zero.”Daniel Fabbo, Senior Manager of Information Security, Cimpress |
Progress, which runs across AWS, Azure, and GCP, moved to a purpose-built SaaS control plane and reclaimed most of the time it had spent on maintenance and provisioning.
| “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, Chief Information Security Officer, Progress |
Choosing a Venafi Alternative
There is no single right answer, because teams leave Venafi for different reasons. If you run a large regulated estate with dedicated PKI staff and an existing CyberArk investment, staying may still make sense. If you want the same style of dedicated CLM for less money, Keyfactor is the obvious head-to-head. If what you actually want is to stop running certificate infrastructure and to govern certificates in the same place as your secrets and keys, Akeyless is the stronger fit. Map the decision to your estate size, your cloud footprint, and whether certificates belong in a silo or in your wider identity platform, and the shortlist narrows quickly.
FAQs About Venafi Alternatives
Is Venafi Still Available After the CyberArk Acquisition?
Yes. CyberArk completed the acquisition in October 2024 and sells the capability as CyberArk Certificate Manager within its machine identity portfolio. Existing deployments continue to run; the questions customers weigh at renewal are pricing, support continuity, and how much investment the standalone certificate features keep receiving now that CyberArk is itself part of Palo Alto Networks.
What Is the Best Venafi Alternative?
It depends on the reason you are switching. Keyfactor is the closest like-for-like at lower cost. Akeyless is the best fit for teams that want a SaaS-delivered platform with no PKI infrastructure and certificates unified with secrets and keys. DigiCert and Sectigo suit teams standardizing on those CAs, and AppViewX suits complex multi-cloud workflow needs.
How Is Akeyless Different From Venafi?
Venafi is a dedicated certificate and machine identity suite with an on-prem heritage that manages certificates from external CAs. Akeyless is a SaaS-delivered platform that can act as your CA, automates the certificate lifecycle over ACME, SCEP, and EST, protects keys with zero-knowledge cryptography, and manages certificates alongside secrets, keys, and privileged access in one platform.
Is Keyfactor Better Than Venafi?
Neither dominates outright. Keyfactor’s structural advantage is owning both the EJBCA engine and the lifecycle layer, at a lower price point. Venafi’s advantage is feature depth and, for CyberArk shops, platform consolidation. Enterprise pricing for the two is in the same order of magnitude.
Does a Venafi Alternative Need to Act as a Certificate Authority?
Not necessarily. Venafi manages certificates issued by other CAs and is CA-agnostic. Some alternatives, including Akeyless and Keyfactor, can also issue certificates directly through a private CA, which removes a dependency and can simplify the stack. Whether you need that depends on whether you already operate CAs you intend to keep.
