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CRITICALSTART vs CrowdStrike Falcon Complete MDR 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

CRITICALSTART
Ranking in Managed Detection and Response (MDR)
31st
Average Rating
9.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
10
Ranking in other categories
Security Orchestration Automation and Response (SOAR) (27th)
CrowdStrike Falcon Complete...
Ranking in Managed Detection and Response (MDR)
1st
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
80
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of October 2025, in the Managed Detection and Response (MDR) category, the mindshare of CRITICALSTART is 0.8%, down from 0.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of CrowdStrike Falcon Complete MDR is 10.3%, down from 16.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Managed Detection and Response (MDR) Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
CrowdStrike Falcon Complete MDR10.3%
CRITICALSTART0.8%
Other88.9%
Managed Detection and Response (MDR)
 

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.
Muhammad  Fahad - PeerSpot reviewer
Enhanced security team efficiency and proactive threat management with room to improve alert management and cost-efficiency
There are several issues we are facing with CrowdStrike Falcon Complete MDR, including data overload, noise, and false positive alerts. We experience alert fatigue, contextual gaps, integration complexity, and timeliness of intelligence challenges in our environment. Areas that should be improved include noise reduction, prioritization, real-time delivery, and advanced threat coverage. The filtering algorithm should be improved to address these concerns.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"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."
"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 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."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"There's less workload on the endpoint."
"It is a very good solution. It can provide detection and response in an extensive way, and for an endpoint, it can integrate the information that comes from the servers."
"I am not a CrowdStrike fanboy, but as an IT leader, they make my life easy. I like proactive monitoring and remediation, so I do not have to guess or run around. They are doing everything for me."
"Falcon Complete's best feature is detection. The interface is also user-friendly."
"One unique thing that they offer is a breach warranty. We basically have a warranty of up to $100,000 should there be any breach that they're not able to manage."
"The continuous improvement in detections and response times is valuable. They are more focused on threats that come from the cloud, not only that we see."
"The solution offers seamless SOC extension, zero-day protection, advanced threat intelligence, and rapid incident containment."
"The threat response from this solution is very comprehensive. It not only allows us to detect the threat, but also to isolate it and check the recovery capability of the compromised system."
 

Cons

"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 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."
"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."
"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."
"The UI has become slower but it's not something I would call them out on."
"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..."
"There is room for improvement with the new UI, and that's about it. I would like to see a more intuitive design."
"The simplicity of CrowdStrike Falcon Complete's content control and firewall management should be improved."
"When you enable a particular feature, it takes a long time, from 15 to 30 minutes, to implement in enterprise environments. This can be improved."
"The support from CrowdStrike Falcon Complete is very fast. The support could improve if it was in the French language."
"The biggest thing is to scan into your Office 365 environment, not from a cloud access security broker standpoint, but from the Secure Access Security Edge standpoint in protecting the Copilot ecosystem. Copilot has become more widely popular than I could have imagined. You need to back up and protect your Office 365 tools anyway, and Copilot is just a high sense of awareness."
"Some dashboards can be very complex, but once you get to know them, it is very logical."
"The solution is costlier compared to other solutions, which may be a concern for price-sensitive customers."
"They need to continuously integrate with other security tools such as CyberArk or Mimecast, to cover the entire IT infrastructure."
"At the moment, nothing is missing in CrowdStrike Falcon Complete. I'm amazed by it. It's perfect and I'm not aware of any other vendors that provide its features, but it would also depend on the configuration and policy management of the solution, for example, I can bring you an EDR solution and configure it badly, so it won't do anything. It also depends on the people, not just the technology you're obtaining, so this is the most important thing to do for all solutions, even for firewalls. You can obtain a firewall and if you permit everyone to go through it, then it's useless. What could be improved in CrowdStrike Falcon Complete is its management console. Currently, that console is on the cloud, so if the cloud is compromised, then the management console would also be compromised, and that's quite risky."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."
"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."
"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."
"The pricing of other services was so insane that they weren't even an option."
"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."
"If you are looking from an IT standpoint, you get what you pay for. There is proactive monitoring in addition to the insurance policy. They do that better than others. Would you like it cheaper? Yes, but at what cost?"
"CrowdStrike Falcon Complete is very expensive in comparison to Bitdefender."
"The pricing is a little bit higher than other OEM competitors in the market, like SentinelOne and Trend Micro."
"There is a license needed to use the solution. The price of the solution is fair."
"CrowdStrike has a reasonable price."
"This product is one of the more expensive ones on the market."
"It is expensive, but looking at the capabilities that it brings, it is reasonable. There are no additional costs to the licensing costs. If you increase the number of licenses, support is included."
"I think the pricing is a little high."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Real Estate/Law Firm
15%
Healthcare Company
12%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Computer Software Company
8%
Computer Software Company
14%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Healthcare Company
6%
Retailer
6%
 

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 Business35
Midsize Enterprise17
Large Enterprise30
 

Questions from the Community

Ask a question
Earn 20 points
What do you like most about CrowdStrike Falcon Complete?
It is a cloud-based solution. You can easily scale it.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for CrowdStrike Falcon Complete?
The cost is not reasonable and should be more cost-efficient. From an enterprise level perspective, it should be reduced by approximately 20 to 25%.
What needs improvement with CrowdStrike Falcon Complete?
There are several issues we are facing with CrowdStrike Falcon Complete MDR, including data overload, noise, and false positive alerts. We experience alert fatigue, contextual gaps, integration com...
 

Also Known As

Critical Start, CriticalStart
Falcon Complete
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Information Not Available
Palm Beach State College, Mercedes-AMG, Pokemon, Telstra, Goldman Sachs, Zebra
Find out what your peers are saying about CRITICALSTART vs. CrowdStrike Falcon Complete MDR and other solutions. Updated: September 2025.
872,778 professionals have used our research since 2012.