Software Alternatives & Reviews

Smallstep Certificates VS BastionXP

Compare Smallstep Certificates VS BastionXP and see what are their differences

Smallstep Certificates logo Smallstep Certificates

A private certificate authority (X.509 & SSH) & ACME server for secure automated certificate management, so you can use TLS everywhere & SSO for SSH.

BastionXP logo BastionXP

BastionXP Identity Based Infrastructure Access Platform is a Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) / Certificate Authority (CA) that creates, signs and distributes SSH, SSL X.509 certificates to servers and users upon successful SSO login via OAuth or SAML
  • Smallstep Certificates Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-08-22
  • BastionXP Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-10-05

BastionXP is a Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) / Certificate Authority (CA) that creates, signs and distributes SSH, SSL/TLS X.509 certificates to servers and end users upon successful SSO login and 2FA authentication via OAuth providers such as GitHub, G-Suite, Microsoft Office 365, Okta and more.

BastionXP automates certificate management at scale, while simplifying your end-user workflow without compromising security.

BastionXP also has a built-in SSH proxy server that can be configured to function as an SSH bastion host. BastionXP works seamlessly with OpenSSH server and client software.

BastionXP offers Zero Trust Network Access(ZTNA) Security. All servers and end-users are required to authenticate with the BastionXP Authentication Server using an SSO and 2FA login, before access to the network can be granted.

BastionXP issues short-lived SSH, TLS/SSL X.509 certificates to end-users so that no user would have an indefinite access to any network resource. Moreover, these certificates, issued to a specific user based on Role Based Access Control(RBAC) can be used to access only a specific server(s) in the network. BastionXP provides you fine-grained control over who can access what resources in a network and for how long.

All network access events are logged and available for download, so that the logs can be analyzed using a log analyzer for anamoly detection.

BastionXP solution is available in three different formats:

Software Features Best Suited For
Free Software Version Limited features & best-effort support Hobbyists, educational purposes and non-commercial use cases.
Cloud-Hosted Version All enterprise features & priority customer support Small teams and Startups.
Self-Hosted Version All enterprise features & priority customer support Enterprises and Large Organizations.

Smallstep Certificates features and specs

No features have been listed yet.

BastionXP features and specs

  • SSH Certificate Manager: Yes
  • SSL Certificate Manager: Yes
  • Certificate Authority: Yes
  • Public Key Infrastructure: Yes
  • SSH Key Manager: Yes
  • Bastion Host or Jump Host: Yes
  • SSH Session Recording and Playback: Yes
  • Auditing and Logging: Yes

Smallstep Certificates videos

No Smallstep Certificates videos yet. You could help us improve this page by suggesting one.

+ Add video

BastionXP videos

BastionXP SSH Session Recording Demo

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to Smallstep Certificates and BastionXP)
Web Development Tools
100 100%
0% 0
SSH Certificates
0 0%
100% 100
Configuration Management
100 100%
0% 0
SSL Certificates
0 0%
100% 100

User comments

Share your experience with using Smallstep Certificates and BastionXP. For example, how are they different and which one is better?
Log in or Post with

Social recommendations and mentions

Based on our record, Smallstep Certificates seems to be more popular. It has been mentiond 10 times since March 2021. We are tracking product recommendations and mentions on various public social media platforms and blogs. They can help you identify which product is more popular and what people think of it.

Smallstep Certificates mentions (10)

  • A convert from Judaism to Catholicism goes to r/Catholicism to ask if it would be appropriate to pass down a century old Jewish prayer shawl to his son. Not everyone is welcoming.
    Just a little heads up https://smallstep.com/certificates/. Source: about 1 year ago
  • Looking for an open source certificate management solution.
    Step-ca: Not web based, but the CLI is pretty user friendly: https://smallstep.com/certificates/. Source: about 1 year ago
  • Using k8s-apiserver as AAA server for microservices?
    I was just looking at https://smallstep.com/certificates a few days ago. It looks like they have an operator that fits your description as well as example docs for setting up inter-microservice mtls. Source: about 1 year ago
  • What are SSH Certificate Authority solutions?
    In the quick search I learned about Ssh cert authority which looks very manual and also like a dead project Smallstep's step-ca who put together very nice article about how to begin certificate authority process Netflix' BLESS is AWS only Cashier which also looks quite ok. Source: almost 2 years ago
  • Quickly prototyping and testing TLS services with valid certs
    If you want something a little fancier (I.e. Get automatic certs with all that ACME goodness) check out SmallStep. This is next on my list of homelab projects. Source: about 2 years ago
View more

BastionXP mentions (0)

We have not tracked any mentions of BastionXP yet. Tracking of BastionXP recommendations started around Jul 2023.

What are some alternatives?

When comparing Smallstep Certificates and BastionXP, you can also consider the following products

PKI.js - PKIjs is a pure JavaScript library implementing the formats that are used in PKI applications (signing, encryption, certificate requests, OCSP and TSP requests/responses). It is built on WebCrypto (Web Cryptography API) and requires no plug-ins.

OpenXPKI - OpenXPKI is a software stack that provides all necessary components to manage keys and certificates...

VeriSign - VeriSign Authentication Services provides solutions that allow companies & consumers to engage...

Teleport Database Access - Instant, secure, & privileged access to Postgres and MySQL

EJBCA - EJBCA® is a PKI Certificate Authority software, built using Java (JEE) technology.

Smallstep SSH - Single Sign-on SSH