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CRITICALSTART vs CrowdStrike Falcon Complete MDR comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 3, 2024

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

CRITICALSTART
Ranking in Managed Detection and Response (MDR)
31st
Average Rating
9.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
10
Ranking in other categories
Security Orchestration Automation and Response (SOAR) (27th)
CrowdStrike Falcon Complete...
Ranking in Managed Detection and Response (MDR)
1st
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
80
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of October 2025, in the Managed Detection and Response (MDR) category, the mindshare of CRITICALSTART is 0.8%, down from 0.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of CrowdStrike Falcon Complete MDR is 10.3%, down from 16.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Managed Detection and Response (MDR) Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
CrowdStrike Falcon Complete MDR10.3%
CRITICALSTART0.8%
Other88.9%
Managed Detection and Response (MDR)
 

Featured Reviews

JH
The transparency of data in the platform is perfect: You see everything as they are seeing it
Their Zero Trust Analytics Platform (ZTAP) engine, which is kind of their correlation engine, is by far and away one of the best in the business. We can filter and utilize different lists to build out different alerts, such as, what to alert on and when not to alert. This engine helps reduce our number of alerts and false positives. The service's Trusted Behavior Registry helps the provider solve every alert. The way that they have it built out is very intelligent. The way every alert comes in, it gets triaged one direction or another. If it is already a false positive, then it is still getting addressed and reviewed on a regular cadence. Also, true positive alerts get escalated to the appropriate personnel. Its mobile app is great. The ability just to be able to quick reference and see what's coming in when you're on the move or go. You don't always need to have your computer or laptop handy, because you can operate it just from the mobile app. It can communicate with analysts, which is great. The mobile app is great at affecting the efficiency of our security operations. Those guys are using it throughout the day, whether that be at the office, home, or off hours. Typically, they triage from the mobile app. Then, if an escalation needs to be done on a computer, they will pull out a computer. We were on the original UI for a few years, so the updated UI has been a refreshing change. It has significantly more ability to filter and translate data, then load that data. It is rather intuitive to click through for some of our junior analysts or interns, especially as we are starting to onboard and teach them different aspects of the security operations team.
Muhammad  Fahad - PeerSpot reviewer
Enhanced security team efficiency and proactive threat management with room to improve alert management and cost-efficiency
There are several issues we are facing with CrowdStrike Falcon Complete MDR, including data overload, noise, and false positive alerts. We experience alert fatigue, contextual gaps, integration complexity, and timeliness of intelligence challenges in our environment. Areas that should be improved include noise reduction, prioritization, real-time delivery, and advanced threat coverage. The filtering algorithm should be improved to address these concerns.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"There is a team of people who monitor our traffic and processes 24/7, so if anything raises a flag or alert, it will escalate back to me right away. That's the most incredible part: Humans working behind the scenes 24/7 to monitor our networks."
"Their Zero Trust Analytics Platform (ZTAP) engine, which is kind of their correlation engine, is by far and away one of the best in the business. We can filter and utilize different lists to build out different alerts, such as, what to alert on and when not to alert. This engine helps reduce our number of alerts and false positives."
"The most valuable feature of their service is their tuning... If we were getting 1,000 alerts a day without them, they tune it until they know what to do for 999 of them, and one will make it through to us per day. That tuning is the most valuable part of their solution."
"There are two parts of CRITICALSTART's services that are most valuable to us. The MDR solution where they monitor our computers, laptops, and users across the board; and their knowledge of Palo Alto firewalls."
"Outside of using the platform to manage alerts, the feature of the service that we get the most value from is being able to reach out to them and say, "Hey, we might go buy a SIEM," for example. They give us their overview of what's out there, what they've dealt with, what they integrate with, and what that looks like. That's been pretty powerful over the years for us."
"From where we were prior to going into them, the service has increased our analysts’ efficiency to the point that they can focus on other areas of the business. It gives me the ability to allow analysts to do Level 3 and 4 work and stay out of the weeds of the alerts, where you tend to get alert fatigue. The service takes care of much of the Tier 1 and Tier 2 triage. It is more effective than what we had been used to, because it allows the filtering of Level 1 and Level 2 type alerts to be taken care of. This leaves less for us to handle, which is a good thing."
"The quick interaction between the agents is the most valuable feature. If we have questions, they're quick to answer. If we make a change to our system, they quickly make the changes that are necessary to filter the logs correctly."
"The main difference between the other options and this one is the quality of the personnel within the SOC. It's their knowledge and depth and the way they handle customers."
"One unique thing that they offer is a breach warranty. We basically have a warranty of up to $100,000 should there be any breach that they're not able to manage."
"The most valuable feature of this solution is the real-time visibility into what is happening in your endpoint."
"It is a stable solution."
"I am not a CrowdStrike fanboy, but as an IT leader, they make my life easy. I like proactive monitoring and remediation, so I do not have to guess or run around. They are doing everything for me."
"It works as a security device and provides an extra layer of security to our devices and computers."
"It is an endpoint protection product. It has a very good reporting engine and dashboard. It has a good set of endpoint controls. It provides an effective set of protections. When we throw malware and stuff like that at it, it is able to stop them."
"The continuous improvement in detections and response times is valuable. They are more focused on threats that come from the cloud, not only that we see."
"I find the incident management feature valuable because it identifies new types of viruses and sends an alert to the console administrator to check the hardware."
 

Cons

"During the six-month integration and rollout, there were some bumpy roads along the way. There were communication breakdowns between the project manager, CRITICALSTART leadership, and us (as the customer). I expressed my displeasure during the integration in their inability to effectively communicate when there were holdups or issues. They were going through some growing pains at that time, but they have been right there for us ever since."
"The only thing I can think of that I would like to see, and I'm sure they could work this into a service pretty easily, is not only alerts on issues that are affecting my company, but some threat intelligence of a general nature on what's out there in the environment. That might be a nice add-in."
"They just did a user interface overhaul to the website portal that you use for troubleshooting tickets. The old one was fine. The new one is not intuitive..."
"They could dig a little bit deeper into the Splunk alerts when they feel like they need to be escalated to us. For example, if a locked account shows up, they could do a little extra digging to verify that the locked account was due to a bad password on the local system. They could just do a little extra digging within the Splunk environment instead of pushing it onto us to go do that extra little digging."
"There is room for improvement with the new UI, and that's about it. I would like to see a more intuitive design."
"The UI has become slower but it's not something I would call them out on."
"The updated UI is actually pretty bad. Regarding the intuitiveness, it is fairly easy to use, but the responsiveness, on a scale of one to 10, is a one. It's really poor performance."
"It has frustrated us that they don't have a native Slack integration, because most things do now. That's something we've asked for, for years, and it just doesn't really seem like it's a priority."
"The support from CrowdStrike Falcon Complete is very fast. The support could improve if it was in the French language."
"The improvements needed for CrowdStrike Falcon Complete are in the way the agent updates. The overall management of endpoints needs to be better."
"Their endpoint solution is excellent. But I would like to see them improve their HDR, as well as their DLP (Data Loss Prevention)."
"Their UI is a bit noisy."
"I want better integration with other security solutions; integrating with third-party apps wasn't as seamless as I expected."
"The documentation that they had for the use of their API's was not very helpful."
"The tool's customer service team’s inability to respond to our company’s queries is an area where improvements are needed."
"It would be good if they fleshed it out a bit more, possibly with additional areas such as security awareness training. They could build that in. They're leveraging the same endpoint base that they have the security software on, but then they could offer a centralized portal or hub whereby someone like me could leverage it to track and put out security awareness training for people on all the common topics. I could have a centralized hub for everyone's results from that training and for the evidence that training occurred. It would be relatively straightforward, but it would add a lot for people in the compliance area. It would be a great expansion."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Overall, for what I'm paying for it, and the benefit I'm getting out of it, it is right where it needs to be, if not a little bit in my favor. For what it costs me to actually have this service, I could afford one internal person to do that job, but now I have a team of 10 or more who are doing that job, and they don't sleep because they work shifts."
"As far as the expense goes, it's very competitive pricing and the services you get are almost like you have a person on your team."
"The pricing of other services was so insane that they weren't even an option."
"The pricing has always been competitive. They have always been good to us. They will make it a fight. They don't try to hide anything; it's always been fully transparent and well-worth what we pay for it."
"There are contractual penalties if their SLAs are not met. This commitment was very important in our decision to go with this service, because not having downtime is extremely important to us. The providers has not missed an SLA in the 18 months that I have worked with them."
"It costs a lot for what we felt comfortable to spend."
"I've told CRITICALSTART that I think the managed service they provide is cheaper than it should be. It's a really good deal."
"The solution needs to have human involvement, they could improve by having more automation where the solution can take the necessary action on time and more accurately."
"There are different lengths of licenses available, such as three and five years. The price of CrowdStrike Falcon Complete is expensive."
"It's expensive. Its price varies because it's a modular solution."
"CrowdStrike has a reasonable price."
"It is not cheap, and it is not overpriced. It positions itself in the upper half of pricing in the market. You can find a product that claims to do the same and is super cheap, but it'll be not at all good. You can find something that says it does everything in the world, and it is the best thing since sliced bread, but it would be incredibly expensive. Falcon Complete is neither of those. It is always best to go somewhere in the middle, but it is not in the middle. It is in the upper half. So, it is by no means cheap, but it is worth it. Its pricing is well fixed. Given what you get in return, you wouldn't feel bad paying for it. They have a great licensing model. You can add extra bells and whistles if you want. There is that ability to reduce the price by turning off certain features if you wish."
"While CrowdStrike Falcon Complete is expensive, it offers great features and functionality."
"The price of this solution is expensive compared to others solutions."
"Its price is very high. CrowdStrike Falcon Complete is 50% more expensive than Cisco AMP for Endpoints."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Real Estate/Law Firm
13%
Healthcare Company
12%
Computer Software Company
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Computer Software Company
15%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Healthcare Company
6%
Retailer
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business4
Midsize Enterprise3
Large Enterprise4
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business35
Midsize Enterprise17
Large Enterprise30
 

Questions from the Community

Ask a question
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What do you like most about CrowdStrike Falcon Complete?
It is a cloud-based solution. You can easily scale it.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for CrowdStrike Falcon Complete?
The cost is not reasonable and should be more cost-efficient. From an enterprise level perspective, it should be reduced by approximately 20 to 25%.
What needs improvement with CrowdStrike Falcon Complete?
There are several issues we are facing with CrowdStrike Falcon Complete MDR, including data overload, noise, and false positive alerts. We experience alert fatigue, contextual gaps, integration com...
 

Also Known As

Critical Start, CriticalStart
Falcon Complete
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Information Not Available
Palm Beach State College, Mercedes-AMG, Pokemon, Telstra, Goldman Sachs, Zebra
Find out what your peers are saying about CRITICALSTART vs. CrowdStrike Falcon Complete MDR and other solutions. Updated: September 2025.
868,787 professionals have used our research since 2012.