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CRITICALSTART vs Tines comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 5, 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

Torq
Sponsored
Ranking in Security Orchestration Automation and Response (SOAR)
4th
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.6
Number of Reviews
16
Ranking in other categories
AI-SOC (1st), AI-Powered Security Automation (1st)
CRITICALSTART
Ranking in Security Orchestration Automation and Response (SOAR)
25th
Average Rating
9.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
10
Ranking in other categories
Managed Detection and Response (MDR) (28th)
Tines
Ranking in Security Orchestration Automation and Response (SOAR)
6th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
9
Ranking in other categories
Threat Intelligence Platforms (TIP) (11th), AI-Powered Security Automation (2nd), AI IT Support (9th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2026, in the Security Orchestration Automation and Response (SOAR) category, the mindshare of Torq is 3.6%, down from 5.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of CRITICALSTART is 1.3%, up from 0.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Tines is 4.4%, down from 7.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Security Orchestration Automation and Response (SOAR) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Torq3.6%
Tines4.4%
CRITICALSTART1.3%
Other90.7%
Security Orchestration Automation and Response (SOAR)
 

Featured Reviews

AD
Solutions Architect at ProArch
Automation has streamlined multi-tenant SOC workflows and improves alert handling efficiency
Although the reporting within Torq is not that great, we did ask for many features regarding reporting in Torq, but due to some platform constraints, they could not make the whole dataset available for us to be used in reporting. Except for that, we used some basic reporting. When I used Torq, it was indeed in the early stages of AI capabilities. Only a few customers were allowed to use it, and we were among them. It functioned well as long as we summarized the data properly. If you input garbage, you would get garbage out. Thus, we had to do significant fine-tuning regarding what data context we provided to the AI orchestrator to get meaningful results. In terms of Torq's unified platform approach to AI SOC automation and case management compared to managing multiple point solutions across my security stack, I find it case-centric. The unified view in case management is good since it provides clarity, although there are limitations regarding how many items in case management can be modified at once. Bulk operations are very limited, potentially due to their back-end database or data retrieval processes that can be improved. Regarding improvements for Torq, when we were onboarded, there were aspects we were uncertain about, such as the number of cases that could be generated, what data we could bring in, how many clients we could onboard, and similar concerns. Initially, we also lacked clarity about the number of playbooks or workflows we could build. Different triggers like system triggers, case-based triggers, and others can be employed without restrictions, but when it comes to on-demand and scheduled jobs, there is a limitation based on the subscription and pricing tier that notably caps the number of workflows we can create. No bulk editing across cases was one issue, along with limited filtering related to single grouping constraints. Additionally, the out-of-the-box case templates provided require substantial modifications before they become usable. There is also a feature in the cases for notes that cannot be searched. They are only visible through the UI, which is another area for improvement. The workflow and execution-based charges seem misleading as this was not discussed initially. I am not sure if new customers are made aware of this. It seems that workflows revolving around cases hinder functionality outside of case management, as we have many use cases needing on-demand triggers and schedules for functions like reporting or polling devices. Creating additional workflows to achieve basic functionalities raises costs significantly, which disadvantages customers. While they facilitate optimization and scaling, the support received tends to be very basic. Improvements can be made in that area as well.
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.
Shadrach Godwish Chukwu - PeerSpot reviewer
SDR and Workflow Automation Specialist at a tech services company with 11-50 employees
Automation has replaced repetitive tasks and helps my team organize workflows in real time
Tines is overall good, but the setup can feel a bit technical at first. More templates for common workflows would make it much easier to start quickly without building everything from scratch. I can say that the documentation could be much simpler and mainly example-based, showing real workflows. Faster support responses would also help, especially when someone is building a very complex workflow so they can easily get support responses at any point. The setup time is considerable. It takes time to set it up, and the learning curve is steep. It is not hard once you know it, but getting started takes a whole lot of time and effort and slows new users down considerably. I will heavily dwell on a few things. More ready-made templates would help so you do not always start from scratch. A simpler onboarding flow for new users would also make it much easier to get started very quickly. Better in-app guidance when building workflows would also be helpful.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"With Torq, I automate actions while achieving SLA compliance and streamline alert investigation processes much better."
"Under one SOC tool in Torq, analysts get to know everything within the context of an alert or incident they are working on, and this ability to view the whole picture within Torq is one of the major breakthroughs and best offerings of Torq."
"Using that one piece of AI, we auto-closed 511 cases in quarter four alone."
"Since we started working with Torq, I am handling much fewer alerts, it is becoming really easy for me to handle an alert, I have all the information that I need, I do not need to connect to different vendors to receive this information, and the main thing I got from Torq is time, which now helps me to build another automated system and learn."
"Torq has helped a lot regarding SOC analyst efficiency."
"What I liked the most about Torq is the actual workflow builder, which is really great because they offer a lot of features and convenience features that are useful for any automation engineer."
"As an analyst, it has demonstrated potential to reduce workforce requirements and time needed for related activities."
"According to positive outcomes, Torq reduced manual work and made incident response more efficient."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"This has been a positive experience and money well spent."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"It proved that we could build enterprise-grade reliability into our backend without writing a line of custom Python script."
"Tines is a very solid tool overall; once you get used to it, it makes work much easier and saves a whole lot of time."
"One of the most valuable features is that it’s a low-code solution."
"For an analyst, it would take at least one hour to two hours to get the result with this much perfection, but with Tines, it happens instantaneously."
"The best advantage is the no-code automation, excellent customer support services, and ease of integration with other tools."
"Tines has positively impacted my organization because automation has brought a lot of changes, reducing a lot of effort and providing fast time to value."
"The tool was vendor-neutral."
"The best thing is that it's no code, so it doesn't require coding knowledge."
 

Cons

"It was able to capture data but was unable to differentiate between the agent hostname we are using and the hostname that resides on the back end of the Internet."
"Torq can probably use more ML and look at what can be closed and what cannot be closed in terms of data classification."
"We have MCP that we are working with our cloud security platform, and we wanted to connect this MCP to the case management."
"Regarding stability, I have noticed some lagging, crashing, and downtime, which is one of my largest gripes."
"If Torq could enhance its AI features, it would benefit customers significantly by making the platform even more user-friendly."
"The initial deployment of Torq was not easy."
"Additionally, the documentation for Torq is not very clear. Most of the information is presented in videos, which are not ideal for reading; there are mostly paragraphs and other text-based content."
"The workflow and execution-based charges seem misleading as this was not discussed initially, and creating additional workflows to achieve basic functionalities raises costs significantly, which disadvantages customers."
"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 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."
"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."
"There is room for improvement with the new UI, and that's about it. I would like to see a more intuitive design."
"They could dig a little bit deeper into the Splunk alerts when they feel like they need to be escalated to us."
"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 setup time is considerable; it takes time to set it up, and the learning curve is steep."
"They started implementing some AI, and their AI is isolated."
"Maybe Tines can add more features and demonstrations, like videos on how to use the features within the tool."
"Tines was a little bit more expensive than Torq."
"I would like Tines to improve by adding more advanced AI features that can help automatically analyze security alerts, summarize incidents, recommend response actions, and identify patterns from previous incidents."
"Reporting and dashboards could be more advanced for deeper analysis."
"There are three things that I would say could be better."
"However, for pre-existing SaaS software, it becomes a nightmare."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available
"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."
"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."
"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."
Information not available
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
13%
Construction Company
10%
Outsourcing Company
10%
Comms Service Provider
9%
Construction Company
12%
Outsourcing Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Construction Company
8%
Insurance Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business4
Midsize Enterprise5
Large Enterprise9
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business4
Midsize Enterprise3
Large Enterprise4
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business2
Midsize Enterprise2
Large Enterprise4
 

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with Torq?
The only thing is more out-of-the-box integrations. Torq already has a lot of supported integrations and adding new o...
What is your primary use case for Torq?
For Torq, first of all, it's a hyperautomation and AI assistant usage. Our EDR SentinelOne is integrated in Torq and ...
What advice do you have for others considering Torq?
I think I have told everything about Torq that I can share at this stage, but I am still in the process of learning t...
Ask a question
Earn 20 points
What needs improvement with Tines?
Tines is overall good, but the setup can feel a bit technical at first. More templates for common workflows would mak...
What is your primary use case for Tines?
My main use case for Tines has been automation. My main use has been automating simple workflows, such as moving data...
What advice do you have for others considering Tines?
My advice would be to start simple. The main thing is that you need to build small workflows first. When you build sm...
 

Comparisons

 

Also Known As

No data available
Critical Start, CriticalStart
No data available
 

Overview

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