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CRITICALSTART vs Huntress Managed EDR comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Mar 29, 2026

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)
28th
Average Rating
9.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
10
Ranking in other categories
Security Orchestration Automation and Response (SOAR) (25th)
Huntress Managed EDR
Ranking in Managed Detection and Response (MDR)
1st
Average Rating
9.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.5
Number of Reviews
64
Ranking in other categories
Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) (6th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2026, in the Managed Detection and Response (MDR) category, the mindshare of CRITICALSTART is 1.2%, up from 0.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Huntress Managed EDR is 4.5%, down from 10.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Managed Detection and Response (MDR) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Huntress Managed EDR4.5%
CRITICALSTART1.2%
Other94.3%
Managed Detection and Response (MDR)
 

Featured Reviews

JH
Sr. Manager, Security Engineering at a financial services firm with 501-1,000 employees
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.
Abhishek Saini - PeerSpot reviewer
Professional Services Engineer at Next7 IT
Managed detection has transformed incident response and now delivers faster, focused protection
Overall, my experience with Huntress Managed EDR has been very positive. If I were to suggest improvements, I would like to see more advanced customization and reporting capabilities, particularly for MSPs managing multiple clients. For example, additional dashboard customization, more granular alert filtering options, and enhanced executive level reporting would help teams present security insights more effectively to their clients. Deeper integrations with a broader range of third party security and IT management platforms could also streamline workflows and reduce the need to switch between multiple tools. Another area of improvement would be expanding automation options for common remediation tasks, allowing security teams to respond even more quickly to certain types of threats while maintaining appropriate control. These are more enhancements than shortcomings, as Huntress Managed EDR already provides strong threat detection, excellent SOC support, and an easy-to-manage platform that delivers significant value in day-to-day operations. A few additional enhancements would make the platform even stronger, especially for MSPs managing a large number of endpoints and clients. From a user interface perspective, I would like to see more customizable dashboards that allow engineers to tailor views based on the client's priorities, threat levels, or operational metrics. Another useful feature would be additional automation and authorization options for common response actions such as isolating devices, initiating remediation workflows, or integrating with ticketing systems and SIEM platforms. Overall, these would be valuable additions, but they do not take away from the core strength of Huntress Managed EDR.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Customer service and their response are phenomenal. I would give their customer support a nine point five (out of 10). Our easy access to their SOC analyst, sales team, and leadership team instills confidence in me that they are there for us 24/7."
"In a given quarter, I get 589,000 security events and 584,000 of those get reduced by the service before they even get to me, so the alerts that actually come through to me end up being about 1,400 in that quarter, which is a 99.7 percent efficiency rate."
"We are absolutely seeing return on our investment from CRITICALSTART's services, as they're doing the job of a 24/7 SOC at a fraction of the price that it would cost me to run it myself."
"The biggest lesson is transitioning from alert overload to being at a point where we do have eyes on alerts, where every alert is truly possible."
"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."
"The new mobile app is awesome. It is one of the best I've ever seen. It's much better than its predecessor. It's more intuitive, a whole lot easier to navigate and get where you need to go. It's less repetitive and just generally easier to use. It allows me to not have to be sitting at my computer all the time. I can be on my phone or tablet or wherever I'm at. It makes it a lot easier to answer tickets and do that kind of thing."
"Out of all the service providers I've had to work with over the years—I've been here six years—CRITICALSTART is my favorite to work with."
"I also use their mobile app. It's very easy to use and very convenient to be able to respond to alerts wherever you are. I love the app. You can respond and communicate, per ticket, with their SOC in near real-time. The response is very quick."
"The benefits of Huntress Managed EDR were seen almost immediately after deploying it."
"Huntress Managed EDR requires very little from my end, as I get updates and dashboard alerts for changes and issues."
"I would absolutely recommend Huntress Managed EDR, as I consider them a leader in the field and am confident in their service."
"Using Huntress Managed EDR has helped reduce the need for expensive security tools or to hire expensive security analysts, which is very important as we can use the money that we saved on those in improving equipment."
"It is a ten out of ten in terms of ease of use."
"Huntress helps by highlighting potential issues, allowing us to take proactive measures."
"While threat hunting is undoubtedly the most valuable feature, the combination of IP scanning, foothold identification, and canary monitoring has also proven to be incredibly beneficial."
"The most valuable features of Huntress Managed EDR include the SIEM and the log ingestion from firewalls; it has been really effective for managing our security. Huntress Managed EDR has positively impacted my organization by significantly reducing tickets coming to the SOC team; we have seen far less noise in terms of tickets since its implementation."
 

Cons

"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."
"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."
"In terms of responsiveness, when I open up an alert, sometimes it takes a bit of time to load. However, it only happened once or twice."
"The biggest room for improvement is not necessarily in their service or offering, but in the products that they support. I would like them to further their knowledge and ability to integrate with those tools. They have base integrations with everything, and we haven't come across anything. They should just continue to build on that API interface between their applications and other third-party consoles."
"It costs a lot for what we felt comfortable to spend."
"They could dig a little bit deeper into the Splunk alerts when they feel like they need to be escalated to us."
"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 and I hate it."
"I also would love for them to make their new SIEM tool reports much more robust. They are currently way too simplified, and we need to have something better to send to our compliance clients."
"If Huntress decides to follow the path that SentinelOne and CrowdStrike seem to not understand isn't what their clients want, which is handing off their SOC to an AI, then we might be considering other options."
"Not every time, but sometimes when we click on the remediation, the auto-resolution of the alert, the screen gets stuck, and I need to contact support so they can confirm the remediation was applied, and they have to close the ticket."
"I would like to see an easier way to whitelist sites or to monitor some of the reporting that Huntress Managed EDR does."
"The integration with our RMM could be better."
"I'd like Huntress to implement a component that can analyze network traffic for specific sites."
"I would request that they make it an agent for Linux because we need it on Linux."
"Incident reporting could be a little bit cleaner."
 

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."
"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 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."
"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."
"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."
"The pricing of other services was so insane that they weren't even an option."
"It costs a lot for what we felt comfortable to spend."
"The cost-effectiveness of Huntress is much better compared to BlackPoint. Although Huntress does not offer all the finer details that BlackPoint does, it remains much more competitive in pricing."
"Huntress is an easy sell to clients because it does all the heavy lifting. Sometimes, they will buck a little at the price because they want a free antivirus or EDR. We tell them that we use Huntress on all our machines. That is our standard process for all the machines we roll out. When we give that advice, people are pretty willing to say okay."
"The pricing model for Huntress is similar to competitors and is charged per endpoint."
"I believe Huntress Managed EDR is fairly priced. The value I get from it in terms of peace of mind justifies the expense. You can justify it as a business expense."
"The Huntress pricing is an excellent value for what the product provides."
"The pricing is competitive, in line with Huntress's offerings, and aligns well with our business model."
"Huntress Managed EDR offers a fair pricing model."
"The solution is cheap compared to other alternatives. It offers good value for money. For the whole solution, it's up to about five pounds per device per month. Considering what it does, I think that's very good value."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Construction Company
12%
Outsourcing Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Computer Software Company
12%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Comms Service Provider
7%
Outsourcing Company
7%
 

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 Business63
Midsize Enterprise6
 

Questions from the Community

Ask a question
Earn 20 points
What needs improvement with Huntress?
Overall, my experience with Huntress Managed EDR has been very positive. If I were to suggest improvements, I would like to see more advanced customization and reporting capabilities, particularly ...
What is your primary use case for Huntress?
I have been using Huntress Managed EDR for approximately two years. My primary use case for Huntress Managed EDR has been endpoint threat detection, incident investigation, and response across mult...
What advice do you have for others considering Huntress?
Huntress Managed EDR's twenty-four-seven SOC support has had a positive impact on our security operations because it provides continuous monitoring and expert analysis outside of our normal busines...
 

Also Known As

Critical Start, CriticalStart
No data available
 

Overview

Find out what your peers are saying about CRITICALSTART vs. Huntress Managed EDR and other solutions. Updated: June 2026.
908,800 professionals have used our research since 2012.