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CRITICALSTART vs ReliaQuest GreyMatter comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

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)
29th
Average Rating
9.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
10
Ranking in other categories
Security Orchestration Automation and Response (SOAR) (24th)
ReliaQuest GreyMatter
Ranking in Managed Detection and Response (MDR)
19th
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
3
Ranking in other categories
Digital Risk Protection (11th), Extended Detection and Response (XDR) (32nd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of November 2026, in the Managed Detection and Response (MDR) category, the mindshare of CRITICALSTART is 1.4%, up from 0.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of ReliaQuest GreyMatter is 1.4%, down from 1.8% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Managed Detection and Response (MDR) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
ReliaQuest GreyMatter1.4%
CRITICALSTART1.4%
Other97.2%
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.
Omkar Korulkar - PeerSpot reviewer
Technology Analyst at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
Centralized visibility has improved SOC investigations and supports faster, more accurate incident response
I think ReliaQuest GreyMatter could be improved further in a few areas. First, I want to see more flexibility in dashboard customization so analysts can configure views based on their roles and investigation requirements. Second, improving alert correlation accuracy and reducing overall false positive rates would help analysts focus on genuine possible threats rather than spending time validating repetitive low-priority alerts or false positives. Third, more detailed investigation timelines, better reporting capabilities, and simpler investigation integration configuration would make the platform more effective. I suggest continuously improving automation workflows to reduce repetitive manual tasks while allowing analysts to maintain control over critical response actions. Overall, I think these enhancements can make the platform more user-friendly and improve the efficiency of SOC operations. One additional improvement would be enhancing the investigation experience by providing more detailed context directly within the alert. For example, having a clear incident timeline, related alerts, historical activity, and threat intelligence information available in one place would make investigations easier. I believe these improvements would make day-to-day SOC operations smoother and allow analysts to focus more on proactive threat hunting and other complex investigations.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"This has been a positive experience and money well spent."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"ReliaQuest GreyMatter has helped us to reduce security incidents by 89%, which is a significant amount of incidents we have seen."
"ReliaQuest GreyMatter saves around 60% of time or resources."
"One of the best features that ReliaQuest GreyMatter offers is the ability to bring together security tools and data that support threat investigation, detection, and response."
 

Cons

"The UI has become slower but it's not something I would call them out on."
"There is room for improvement with the new UI, and that's about it. I would like to see a more intuitive design."
"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 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."
"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."
"They could dig a little bit deeper into the Splunk alerts when they feel like they need to be escalated to us."
"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."
"Areas that have room for improvement include user interface and integration."
"ReliaQuest GreyMatter is stable to a certain extent, but there is still some room for improvement."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."
"The pricing of other services was so insane that they weren't even an option."
"I've told CRITICALSTART that I think the managed service they provide is cheaper than it should be. It's a really good deal."
"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."
"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."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Outsourcing Company
17%
Construction Company
10%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
7%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Construction Company
8%
Comms Service Provider
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business4
Midsize Enterprise3
Large Enterprise4
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

Ask a question
Earn 20 points
What needs improvement with ReliaQuest GreyMatter?
Areas that have room for improvement include user interface and integration.
What is your primary use case for ReliaQuest GreyMatter?
I use ReliaQuest GreyMatter for detection and response, XDR, and SIEM. The best features I like about GreyMatter the most are its efficiency and user experience.
 

Also Known As

Critical Start, CriticalStart
No data available
 

Overview

Find out what your peers are saying about CRITICALSTART vs. ReliaQuest GreyMatter and other solutions. Updated: September 2026.
920,929 professionals have used our research since 2012.