---
title: AWS Secrets Manager Reviews
meta_title: 'AWS Secrets Manager Reviews 2026: Details, Pricing, & Features | G2'
meta_description: Filter 18 reviews by the users' company size, role or industry to
  find out how AWS Secrets Manager works for a business like yours.
aggregate_rating:
  rating_value: 4.5
  review_count: 18
  scale: '5'
date_modified: '2026-05-09'
parent_category:
  name: Identity Management
  url: https://www.g2.com/categories/identity-management
---

# AWS Secrets Manager Reviews
**Vendor:** Amazon Web Services (AWS)  
**Category:** [Privileged Access Management (PAM) Software](https://www.g2.com/categories/privileged-access-management-pam)  
**Average Rating:** 4.5/5.0  
**Total Reviews:** 18
## About AWS Secrets Manager
AWS Secrets Manager helps you protect secrets needed to access your applications, services, and IT resources. The service enables you to easily rotate, manage, and retrieve database credentials, API keys, and other secrets throughout their lifecycle.




## AWS Secrets Manager Reviews
  ### 1. Best way to store local settings of python / application properties of java securely

**Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars

**Reviewed by:** Rahul S. | Devops engineer, Construction, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.)

**Reviewed Date:** March 15, 2023

**What do you like best about AWS Secrets Manager?**

Earlier we used to store our secret variables in GitHub, like DB endpoint/password. Which was not secure, and then we started to store it in SSM parameters in Secret Manager. And during build time, we "sed" all the values from SSM parameters to the application code, which made our secret values secure & inaccessible from the outside world.

**What do you dislike about AWS Secrets Manager?**

Nothing much to dislike it, but during code build, we need to give permission to AWS CloudBuild to access Secret Manager and need to write in yaml files all the values which we want to fetch, but it is all process we need to do to make things good. So not a bad thing to dislike it

**What problems is AWS Secrets Manager solving and how is that benefiting you?**

We used to store our local settings of python / application properties of java files in github only, which was not secure, then we moved to use Secret manager to make it private and only accessible by those who have access.

  ### 2. External Secret Definition with AWS Secrets Manager for our Elastic Kubernetes clusters

**Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars

**Reviewed by:** Ravi C. | Cloud Engineer, Information Technology and Services, Enterprise (> 1000 emp.)

**Reviewed Date:** January 30, 2022

**What do you like best about AWS Secrets Manager?**

AWS Secrets Manager is a service provided by Amazon cloud platform to store, retrieve and rotate our credentials. We employ it for our database passwords, API keys, and other secrets to manage our password lifecycle. Instead of hardcoding our passwords in the code, we can easily reference our secrets which are securely stored in our Secrets Manager.

**What do you dislike about AWS Secrets Manager?**

AWS Secrets Manager gives me the convenience to hold multiple versions of my credentials through its staged labels. It also allows me to maintain access priviledges when I define my IAM policies. No dislike with anything related to its service in our AWS environment.

**What problems is AWS Secrets Manager solving and how is that benefiting you?**

We establish the external secrets of our EKS clusters using AWS Secrets Manager. Secrets Manager's configuration is convenient thanks to our AWS CLI environment, which has plenty of programmatic capabilities. Backend password configurations are compatible, and it allows external secrets to be stored in our Secrets Manager. We can also give strict access privilege definitions while working with production environments to enhance credential security.

  ### 3. Secrets manager review

**Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars

**Reviewed by:** Verified User in Information Technology and Services | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.)

**Reviewed Date:** February 19, 2022

**What do you like best about AWS Secrets Manager?**

Our organization mostly used it for saving sensitive information e.g private key or rds credentials. The best feature is to rotate your credentials without any hassle. The lambda custom code feature is great  for rotation.

**What do you dislike about AWS Secrets Manager?**

Sometimes in dev, qa environment the rotation would not happen and it required manually resetting password.

**Recommendations to others considering AWS Secrets Manager:**

If anyone is worried about their secured resource then aws is the way to go. It will automate your credentials renewal every specific time.

**What problems is AWS Secrets Manager solving and how is that benefiting you?**

Connecting to rds without taking care of changing rds password or keeping api keys secret and accessig through lambda

  ### 4. AWS Secrets Manager really works

**Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars

**Reviewed by:** Jeff W. | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.)

**Reviewed Date:** June 26, 2020

**What do you like best about AWS Secrets Manager?**

The best thing is that it keeps all my secret passwords, well, secret!

**What do you dislike about AWS Secrets Manager?**

It took me a while to learn the usage but I got the hang of it

**What problems is AWS Secrets Manager solving and how is that benefiting you?**

We have a lot of secrets that we need to keep secret, this tool does the job.

  ### 5. Great alternative for Vault in the cloud

**Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars

**Reviewed by:** Verified User in Computer Software | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.)

**Reviewed Date:** December 10, 2018

**What do you like best about AWS Secrets Manager?**

Like in every AWS service, the link with an IAM role is seamless, thus allowing you to grant exact permissions to credentials stored in Secrets Manager to a specific instance/container/etc.  

It is managed quite easily and even integrates with other services, such as existing RDS instances, automatically. It allows rotating credentials a much easier task.



**What do you dislike about AWS Secrets Manager?**

I did not find any features I do not like with SM at the moment. The service is at its very early stages, and so is our usage. However, we are certain that upon further usage we might find a few hiccups here and there.

**What problems is AWS Secrets Manager solving and how is that benefiting you?**

We used to spin up different Jenkins slaves (built via different Dockerfiles) for various jobs.
Each of these containers only differed by the Amazon credentials they stored.

Now, we are spinning up a single slave - and it grabs the correct credentials from the SM service using the appropriate IAM permission role (attached via CloudFormation).

We are also close to integrate it with some of our other applications, especially those utilizing RDS for hosting MySQL DBs, so in the future we can rotate credentials without having to change code/app version to support that.

  ### 6. Managing Secrets Never Easier

**Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars

**Reviewed by:** Jeremiah K. | Senior Project Manager, Legal Services, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.)

**Reviewed Date:** January 30, 2019

**What do you like best about AWS Secrets Manager?**

The thing I like best is that we're able to rotate secrets safely without the need for code deployments. 

**What do you dislike about AWS Secrets Manager?**

I can't think of anything at this time that I would dislike. Our IT person doesn't have any issues with it either. 

**What problems is AWS Secrets Manager solving and how is that benefiting you?**

AWS Secrets Manager has been a huge help in securing the secrets in our organization. Although I can't pin point exact details, it seems like our security has been more solid with regards to passwords, etc. since using the program. 

  ### 7. A great service if you are already in the AWS ecosystem

**Rating:** 3.5/5.0 stars

**Reviewed by:** Verified User in Computer & Network Security | Enterprise (> 1000 emp.)

**Reviewed Date:** January 28, 2019

**What do you like best about AWS Secrets Manager?**

I like how easy it is to store and rotate secrets securely. I no longer have to manage any infrastructure to manage secrets. I can rotate a secret and my service can pickup the new value with ease. 

**What do you dislike about AWS Secrets Manager?**

I dislike how cumbersome retrieving secrets from the Secrets Manger is. It's not as easy as using Vault. The CLI is unintuitive.

**Recommendations to others considering AWS Secrets Manager:**

Evaluate your needs and see if it can do the job. If you aren't all in on AWS then it might not be for you.

**What problems is AWS Secrets Manager solving and how is that benefiting you?**

We needed to store some secrets for our other services to pull from. It's really easy to setup authorizations if you are already using IAM roles. 

  ### 8. Convenient and secure place to store secrets

**Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars

**Reviewed by:** Verified User in Restaurants | Enterprise (> 1000 emp.)

**Reviewed Date:** January 28, 2019

**What do you like best about AWS Secrets Manager?**

That my cloud deployed applications have an easy way to get secrets without us having to build a custom solution to integrate with another product.

**What do you dislike about AWS Secrets Manager?**

If permissions aren't configured correctly, one might expose secrets to an unauthorized AWS account user.

**What problems is AWS Secrets Manager solving and how is that benefiting you?**

We store credentials that our applications need to connect to various resources.  It's nice not to have to login to yet another tool to manage secrets so this has saved us time.

  ### 9. Good Managing tool with lot of features

**Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars

**Reviewed by:** Verified User in Information Technology and Services | Enterprise (> 1000 emp.)

**Reviewed Date:** January 28, 2019

**What do you like best about AWS Secrets Manager?**

We can store , rotate, monitor, and control access to secrets of lot of API's.This is great tool to hide lot of confidential information which is sensitive to business.Good thing is lot of API can restored with cheaper prices and we can manage all keys in one central repository.

**What do you dislike about AWS Secrets Manager?**

Even though it has great features some times I feel its difficult to permission for certain factors and its difficult to estimate the cost.

**Recommendations to others considering AWS Secrets Manager:**

Strongly recommended product.

**What problems is AWS Secrets Manager solving and how is that benefiting you?**

Using this, we have stored some keys used for APP and related configuration information. This is useful to manage all information is single place which is really important to any applications.

  ### 10. Feels secured and compliant

**Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars

**Reviewed by:** Verified User in Hospitality | Enterprise (> 1000 emp.)

**Reviewed Date:** January 30, 2019

**What do you like best about AWS Secrets Manager?**

It meets all our security and compliance requirements

It can also store binary data and OAuth credentials

Pay as you go which is great

Integrate with other AWS services and provide easy security auditing

server-less and Easy management

Customize lambda function for time-based credential rotations

**What do you dislike about AWS Secrets Manager?**

as a new user, Little hard to find options in places but it could be just me 

**What problems is AWS Secrets Manager solving and how is that benefiting you?**

Cloud based security/credential  management



- [View AWS Secrets Manager pricing details and edition comparison](https://www.g2.com/products/aws-secrets-manager/reviews/aws-secrets-manager-review-1677979?section=pricing&secure%5Bexpires_at%5D=2026-07-06+18%3A44%3A07+-0500&secure%5Bsession_id%5D=4a8c57bb-eebc-4e11-af74-a428ef3e5c94&secure%5Btoken%5D=e91eba5c3e224e08f6a24e0486515a70f442def9b3265ccca94530948071e318&format=llm_user)

## AWS Secrets Manager Features
**Administration**
- Policy, User, and Role Management
- Approval Workflows
- Automated Provisioning
- Bulk Changes
- Centralized Management
- Self-Service Access Requests

**Functionality**
- Audit trail
- Cental dashboard
- Universal approach

**Compliance**
- Access Management
- At-Risk Analysis
- DLP Configuration
- Sensitive Data Compliance

**Functionality**
- Multi-Factor Authentication
- Single Sign-On
- BYOD support
- Password Vault
- Centralized management
- Role-based security
- Live notifications
- Live session recording & playback
- Hide passwords
- Temporary, time-limited privilege

**Administration**
- Database Management
- Deduplication 
- Backup
- API / integrations

**Monitoring**
- Audit Logging
- Activity Logging
- Anomaly Detection

**Security **
- Multi-Factor Authentication
- Data Transport
- Data Types
- Security Tools

**Reporting**
- Audit log
- Reporting

## Top AWS Secrets Manager Alternatives
  - [Delinea Secret Server](https://www.g2.com/products/delinea-secret-server/reviews) - 4.4/5.0 (43 reviews)
  - [1Password](https://www.g2.com/products/1password/reviews) - 4.6/5.0 (1,786 reviews)
  - [Keeper Password Manager](https://www.g2.com/products/keeper-password-manager/reviews) - 4.6/5.0 (1,225 reviews)

