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CRITICALSTART vs Splunk SOAR comparison

 

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

CRITICALSTART
Ranking in Security Orchestration Automation and Response (SOAR)
27th
Average Rating
9.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
10
Ranking in other categories
Managed Detection and Response (MDR) (31st)
Splunk SOAR
Ranking in Security Orchestration Automation and Response (SOAR)
3rd
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
47
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of October 2025, in the Security Orchestration Automation and Response (SOAR) category, the mindshare of CRITICALSTART is 0.3%, up from 0.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Splunk SOAR is 7.7%, down from 8.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Security Orchestration Automation and Response (SOAR) Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Splunk SOAR7.7%
CRITICALSTART0.3%
Other92.0%
Security Orchestration Automation and Response (SOAR)
 

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.
Mack Scott - PeerSpot reviewer
Improves response time by consolidating tools and automating threat detection
I haven't gone too far into it to see anything that needs improvement yet. We can likely include some features related to the integration with on-premises resources, rather than focusing solely on the existing automation. These are the additional features that could be included in the future. Splunk's Unified Platform does help consolidate networking security and IT observability tools. They should integrate Splunk Enterprise Security better into Splunk Cloud.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"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."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"My impression of the transparency of the data is that it has good detail. It allows you to see how many events have come in, how many of those events have made it down to their analysts to review, and then however many from their analysts to be able to close out, have been able to been escalated to us. It's a good metric that we can share with my management. They see the value of what the SOC is bringing on top of what my team is already doing."
"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 most valuable feature is the API connector, depending on how it's formatted and who made the actual app offering for it. The REST API is my favorite component. It's very easy to use. The filters are also really valuable. Those are the two primary features but I enjoy using the rest of it."
"The automation part of the product is great."
"Splunk SOAR has made a huge impact across security operations and the business overall."
"Surprisingly, the mobile app is valuable because it is very convenient for our on-call analysts to respond and get alerted to security alerts and events wherever they are. We are able to harness the power of Splunk SOAR and everything that we are doing, and we are also able to alert our on-call analysts 24/7. From their mobile phone, they can respond to those alerts."
"Our customers find it easy to conduct searches and consider it an excellent content management system."
"We are not a 24/7 SOC, so the most valuable feature of Splunk SOAR is the auto-response to threats when we are not in the office and the notifications that it sends to the on-call engineer."
"In Splunk SOAR, I find the playbooks valuable. We get to create multiple playbooks, and within each playbook, there is a different type of investigation attached to it, which helps out an analyst or new analysts coming on board."
"I like the way Splunk interacts with various systems via the API. The ability to integrate Splunk with our ticketing system has been an immense help because we can maintain our workflow while blending Splunk with our support desk and other ways that we track work."
 

Cons

"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. 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."
"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."
"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..."
"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."
"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."
"The UI has become slower but it's not something I would call them out on."
"It would be ideal for us if Splunk SOAR could integrate with Teams."
"I haven't used it fully, but based on my usage, I could not find simulation tools and features. It currently lacks simulation features, which are important for me for creating a playbook. It is also very expensive for my region."
"I haven't had any issues with the solution so far."
"SOAR is probably the most unreliable product Splunk has and that's because most of it is content driven from what you put into it. There are certain parts of it that have a little bit of difficulty at volume too. It's always changing. There is new stuff coming out for it that's going to make it a little bit better, but it does have some drawbacks."
"We want to see improvements made to the APIs such that we can connect to many different systems and data sources."
"The UI can be more customizable for the clients."
"Splunk SOAR should improve its ease of upgrade, which is a pain point for us right now."
"The creation of playbooks is complex in Splunk SOAR, and the number of integrations needs enhancement. Although it enhances alert handling, it still has a journey to compete with Palo Alto SOAR and FortiSOAR."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."
"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."
"I've told CRITICALSTART that I think the managed service they provide is cheaper than it should be. It's a really good deal."
"It costs a lot for what we felt comfortable to spend."
"I don't know the exact price, but for my region, it is very expensive."
"The tool is not cheap."
"Splunk SOAR is more expensive compared to other options for SOAR."
"While I can't confirm the exact pricing, some colleagues have mentioned that Splunk SOAR may be on the costlier side."
"The cost is high and the licensing is on an annual basis."
"We renewed it this year. This year was the first time there was a dramatic increase in the price. It was kind of non-negotiable. It was just a high increase. We had internal communications, and it was definitely a surprise to us. In a short time frame, we renewed it this year. Prices are going up everywhere, but they are not always justifiable, at least not to our eyes. The pricing this year was definitely a big shock."
"I found the price of Splunk SOAR to be good."
"Splunk SOAR is moderately priced, neither cheap nor overly expensive."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Real Estate/Law Firm
14%
Healthcare Company
12%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Computer Software Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Computer Software Company
10%
Manufacturing Company
9%
University
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 Business11
Midsize Enterprise7
Large Enterprise29
 

Questions from the Community

Ask a question
Earn 20 points
What do you like most about Splunk Phantom?
Splunk SOAR's quick response to incidents is the most valuable part.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Splunk Phantom?
I don't have experience with costs; management handles that aspect.
What needs improvement with Splunk Phantom?
I haven't gone too far into it to see anything that needs improvement yet. We can likely include some features related to the integration with on-premises resources, rather than focusing solely on ...
 

Also Known As

Critical Start, CriticalStart
Phantom
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Information Not Available
Recorded Future, Blackstone
Find out what your peers are saying about CRITICALSTART vs. Splunk SOAR and other solutions. Updated: September 2025.
869,771 professionals have used our research since 2012.