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Bitdefender MDR vs CRITICALSTART comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 3, 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

Bitdefender MDR
Ranking in Managed Detection and Response (MDR)
14th
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
11
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
CRITICALSTART
Ranking in Managed Detection and Response (MDR)
30th
Average Rating
9.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
10
Ranking in other categories
Security Orchestration Automation and Response (SOAR) (27th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2026, in the Managed Detection and Response (MDR) category, the mindshare of Bitdefender MDR is 2.4%, down from 2.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of CRITICALSTART is 0.9%, up from 0.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Managed Detection and Response (MDR) Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Bitdefender MDR2.4%
CRITICALSTART0.9%
Other96.7%
Managed Detection and Response (MDR)
 

Featured Reviews

Jörg Köhler - PeerSpot reviewer
Owner at AvalisNT AG
Efficient email security and link scanning streamline network protection
One area for improvement is the user-friendliness of the UI. It is not intuitive to manage policies as I have to go through several pages to find necessary information. Additionally, the profile management for scanning and protection profiles is clumsy and could be more straightforward. There should be some simplification in changing profiles due to performance issues.
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.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"I would rate the stability a nine out of ten."
"If you're looking at an enterprise with centralized control, you can actually push the policies to all your clients' endpoints easily across VPNs."
"It has a very good cloud console that's easy to use and install."
"A user cannot uninstall or disable the tool from their systems. It has ransomware blocking and zero-day threat protection. The tool also alerts us whenever a system or device has been compromised. It has a web control feature to manage website categories."
"I like the EDR feature."
"The most valuable features include email security and web URL scanning, particularly the link scanning aspect."
"A lot of the AI that is running in the background that deals with the response on different detections is important, and the learning from the labs themselves is also very important. That's where they set themselves apart from others. A lot of the other products that are out there on the market probably have a lot more bells and whistles, but they are not necessarily directed at the heart of what MDR should do, at least in my opinion. Everybody is entitled to their own opinion, and in my opinion, if you're getting back to the basics and doing what its true intention is, they've done a very good job in comparison to others."
"Customer service and support are very good."
"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 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."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"The way that the user interface presents data enables our team to be able to make decisions significantly quicker, rather than have to dig into the details or go back to the original tools."
"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."
"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."
 

Cons

"One area for improvement is the user-friendliness of the UI. It is not intuitive to manage policies as I have to go through several pages to find necessary information."
"The automatic backup isn't very big."
"The lack of integration with Microsoft Outlook is a significant drawback."
"Bitdefender MDR consumes too many resources during scanning which further affects developers' productivity."
"For improvements, focusing on the commercial viability of markets like India could make it more accessible. The pricing structure, especially for price-sensitive markets like those in Asian countries."
"We need more updates as there are always more threats coming."
"They can improve their support a little bit. We've had some issues with some of the installations in terms of getting the installation, configuration, and flows correct, and sometimes, their support is not as simple and easy to deal with as we'd like."
"One area for improvement is the user-friendliness of the UI."
"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."
"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..."
"The UI has become slower but it's not something I would call them out on."
"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."
"There is room for improvement with the new UI, and that's about it. I would like to see a more intuitive design."
"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 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."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Bitdefender fit well for customers with about 50 to 200 users. The price point is great, and you get a lot of bang for your buck."
"It varies based on the number of licenses."
"I would rate the tool's pricing a four out of ten."
"I know it is based on the volume and size and also on different multi-year agreements. There are different discounts applied, but I can't really speak about the specifics."
"As far as pricing is concerned, I would rate them not expensive, not cheap."
"It costs a lot for what we felt comfortable to spend."
"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."
"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."
"I've told CRITICALSTART that I think the managed service they provide is cheaper than it should be. It's a really good deal."
"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."
"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."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
13%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Retailer
9%
Construction Company
7%
Real Estate/Law Firm
17%
Healthcare Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Manufacturing Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business9
Large Enterprise2
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business4
Midsize Enterprise3
Large Enterprise4
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Bitdefender MDR?
The product is on the lower price range compared to competitors. However, there are additional licenses for every add-on, which increases the cost gradually. Despite this, it remains below average ...
What needs improvement with Bitdefender MDR?
One area for improvement is the user-friendliness of the UI. It is not intuitive to manage policies as I have to go through several pages to find necessary information. Additionally, the profile ma...
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Earn 20 points
 

Also Known As

Bitdefender Managed Detection and Response
Critical Start, CriticalStart
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Northstar, SeSa, Greenman-Pederson, TUI Benelux
Information Not Available
Find out what your peers are saying about Bitdefender MDR vs. CRITICALSTART and other solutions. Updated: January 2026.
881,082 professionals have used our research since 2012.