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CRITICALSTART vs Huntress Managed EDR comparison

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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)
27th
Average Rating
9.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
10
Ranking in other categories
Security Orchestration Automation and Response (SOAR) (24th)
Huntress Managed EDR
Ranking in Managed Detection and Response (MDR)
1st
Average Rating
9.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.5
Number of Reviews
66
Ranking in other categories
Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) (6th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of September 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 4.2%, down from 10.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Managed Detection and Response (MDR) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Huntress Managed EDR4.2%
CRITICALSTART1.2%
Other94.6%
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

"When I start thinking about if I were to try to light up a SOC, which I've done before and I have no interest in doing, it could be a million dollars a year or more to do that, and for what I am paying them for the managed fees, it's a steal."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"Huntress Managed EDR has improved our security posture and has provided peace of mind for myself as well as the firm partners that our security stance can not only meet the minimum requirements but actually positions us well to protect our environment from modern and emerging threats."
"What stands out most is their human element: when faced with an unknown threat, real people, not just automated processes, are investigating it, and they're people we trust."
"My advice to others looking into using Huntress Managed EDR is to do it; it's really good, easy to manage, and a great solution."
"Huntress helped us to reduce the need for expensive security tools or expensive security analysts. That's very important, especially with us being a a smaller business. Not having to purchase larger software has been great."
"It is very easy to use. It is a great solution. They are one of the better vendors that I have ever worked with since I have been in the industry."
"Huntress Managed EDR requires very little from my end, as I get updates and dashboard alerts for changes and issues."
"Huntress Managed EDR has helped significantly reduce our workload so that our engineers can focus on other tasks at hand."
"I have nothing negative to say about my main use case or how my team interacts with Huntress Managed EDR because Huntress Managed EDR is superb."
 

Cons

"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."
"The biggest room for improvement is not necessarily in their service or offering, but in the products that they support."
"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."
"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."
"They could dig a little bit deeper into the Splunk alerts when they feel like they need to be escalated to us."
"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 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."
"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."
"One thing they could improve is evolving from an EDR to an MDR, like Blackpoint. This transition would enable automatic remediation of anything that looks dangerous, including within Microsoft 365."
"Huntress' Process Insights feature could benefit from more robust search and filtering capabilities."
"It would be ideal if they could create some incentives to help more partners get clients to onboard it."
"If I had to suggest an improvement, I would like to see a customizable dashboard and reporting along with additional integrations with third-party SIEM or SOAR platforms."
"Other products are a little more flashy and might have a little more marketing prowess because they have such a huge amount of information and they have security maps and threat portals and all sorts of features that we don't necessarily find to help security, but they do help those products when you're showing them to clients."
"We have been working on it, but their Rio agent has been having some issues trying to repair itself."
"If I were to suggest improvements, I would like to see more advanced customization and reporting capabilities, particularly for MSPs managing multiple clients."
 

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."
"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."
"It costs a lot for what we felt comfortable to spend."
"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 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."
"The pricing of other services was so insane that they weren't even an option."
"I believe Huntress offers competitive pricing overall."
"Regarding the pricing for Huntress Managed EDR, I was amazed when I heard the price; I thought it was going to be way more than what it is based on the quality."
"Huntress has a favourable pricing structure, and I appreciate the cost-effectiveness compared to previous solutions."
"Huntress is priced fairly for the services and value it provides."
"I rate the product's price a five or six on a scale of one to ten, where one is cheap, and ten is expensive since it is a fairly priced product."
"It is simple. It is reasonable. They raised my prices this year. We never like price increases, but they continue to add value, so we just keep adding agents as we grow and as our clients grow."
"It is very fair. I started at $2.50 and now I am at $3.50. When I signed up, I thought it was too cheap. It now reflects the price. It is very fair. I do not think you can find anything better."
"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."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Outsourcing Company
17%
Construction Company
11%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Healthcare Company
7%
Computer Software Company
10%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Outsourcing Company
8%
Comms Service Provider
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 Business64
Midsize Enterprise6
Large Enterprise2
 

Questions from the Community

Ask a question
Earn 20 points
What needs improvement with Huntress?
I would like to see more customization and deeper integration with SIEM and other security tools for Huntress Managed EDR, as better reporting and more detailed endpoint investigation data would al...
What is your primary use case for Huntress?
My main use case for Huntress Managed EDR is endpoint monitoring and threat detection, which I use to investigate suspicious processes, malware activity, endpoint alerts, and potential indicators o...
What advice do you have for others considering Huntress?
I would rate Huntress Managed EDR a nine out of 10 because it gives strong endpoint visibility, reliable threat detection, and effective remediation, while the managed SOC reduces the workload for ...
 

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: September 2026.
913,683 professionals have used our research since 2012.