No more typing reviews! Try our Samantha, our new voice AI agent.

CRITICALSTART vs Exabeam comparison

Sponsored
 

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
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.6
Number of Reviews
18
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)
Exabeam
Ranking in Security Orchestration Automation and Response (SOAR)
10th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.6
Number of Reviews
21
Ranking in other categories
Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) (15th), User Entity Behavior Analytics (UEBA) (1st), Security Incident Response (6th), Threat Intelligence Platforms (TIP) (10th), AI-Powered Cybersecurity Platforms (11th)
 

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 Exabeam is 3.1%, up from 1.9% 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%
Exabeam3.1%
CRITICALSTART1.3%
Other92.0%
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.
reviewer2265966 - PeerSpot reviewer
Enterprise Account Manager South at a outsourcing company with 201-500 employees
Advanced analytics have transformed our threat detection and streamlined incident investigations
I would appreciate seeing additional dashboards in Exabeam Fusion SIEM or perhaps more options or the ability to customize them further. While we can customize them currently, there may be additional options available. I value the outcomes navigator because it matches the log piece to the use cases, which is helpful. The correlation rules are excellent. I am interested in whether there are additional threat intelligence feeds available that we could use, whether we can integrate our own, or if we could ingest different ones.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Torq has exceeded expectations by delivering workflows in a timely and lower effort manner than XSOAR, and it meets all my needs while saving a ton of time and targeting $600,000 saved this year, which is a substantial amount of money."
"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."
"According to positive outcomes, Torq reduced manual work and made incident response more efficient."
"If I review about 100 vendors that I might work with, Torq is definitely in the top five that gave me personally investment back, just because every bit of effort I put into Torq eventually became a workflow that gave it back to me."
"What I appreciate most about Torq is that it is an essential part of our system."
"With Torq, I automate actions while achieving SLA compliance and streamline alert investigation processes much better."
"Torq has impacted my organization positively by allowing us to earn time and invest resources in other projects that are more meaningful and more interesting, pushing deeper into what a SOC is, and building our processes."
"Torq has helped a lot regarding SOC analyst efficiency."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"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 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."
"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."
"CRITICALSTART makes us much more comfortable with knowing someone else is watching our data and our systems and knowing that professional security people are taking a look at any issues that do arise."
"The Exabeam SIEM has a user friendly UI interface."
"The setup is not difficult. It was easy."
"Exabeam has improved our organization by speeding up the investigation process."
"It's a very user-friendly product and it's a very comprehensive technology."
"The ThreatHunter in Advanced Analytics is the most valuable. It helps analyze compromised assets and provides analysis for any entity within my client's environment."
"The platform is not extremely expensive compared to its direct competitors; I would rate its pricing around six out of ten."
"We evaluated LogRhythm and Splunk as possible options but in the end, we went with Exabeam - it was the right choice for us taking into account the needs of our customers and projected future needs."
"I have customers that like the EUBA functionality of it; the solution has the ability to build a session, basically, pulling a lot of information together, for example, everything a user does in a specific timeframe, which is quite helpful."
 

Cons

"The initial deployment of Torq was not easy."
"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."
"There are some issues and bugs that I think need to be fixed, but they are currently not focused on it."
"I wish Torq's AI assistant for building templated workflows from scratch worked better; when you start with a blank slate, asking AI to help you build or template the workflow out does not go well."
"We have MCP that we are working with our cloud security platform, and we wanted to connect this MCP to the case management."
"Even now, we have workflows that are in production that use AI steps and I get different results, making it unusable to some degree."
"However, we did encounter some problems with custom steps, which definitely affected our progress, and the speed of bug fixes is also a bit slower than expected."
"Torq can be improved by adding some more features, such as adding more automation and providing a no-code option so I don't have to code for everything."
"They could dig a little bit deeper into the Splunk alerts when they feel like they need to be escalated to us."
"It costs a lot for what we felt comfortable to spend."
"The UI has become slower but it's not something I would call them out on."
"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."
"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."
"The biggest room for improvement is not necessarily in their service or offering, but in the products that they support."
"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."
"Exabeam should be a bit faster, especially in loading and vulnerability scanning."
"We still have questions surrounding hardware deployment."
"We had a large volume right from the beginning and they weren't quite prepared for that. That's something that they should think about when it comes to customers that have a large volume to start off with."
"The initial setup of Exabeam Fusion SIEM is complex because it needs to integrate with the SIEM solution, but after this is complete it is straightforward."
"Exabeam needs to improve its adaptive nature towards rules and its capability to understand the entire client environment faster."
"We use the on-prem Exabeam product and face limitations using the web UI and administration of custom models and rules."
"The product is good but the organization is rigid and not flexible in the way they operate."
"Exabeam needs to improve its documentation and provide more customization for dashboards and case management."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available
"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."
"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."
"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."
"The pricing of other services was so insane that they weren't even an option."
"The solution is expensive."
"Exabeam Fusion SIEM's pricing is reasonable."
"They have a great model for pricing that can be based either on user count or gigabits per day."
"Exabeam is not a cheap solution."
"The platform is not extremely expensive compared to its direct competitors; I would rate its pricing around six out of ten."
"There is an annual license required to use Exabeam Fusion SIEM. The price of the solution should be reduced."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Security Orchestration Automation and Response (SOAR) solutions are best for your needs.
909,725 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
13%
Construction Company
10%
Outsourcing Company
10%
Comms Service Provider
10%
Construction Company
12%
Outsourcing Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Construction Company
8%
Comms Service Provider
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business4
Midsize Enterprise5
Large Enterprise11
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business4
Midsize Enterprise3
Large Enterprise4
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business12
Midsize Enterprise5
Large Enterprise7
 

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with Torq?
Torq can be improved by adding some more features, such as adding more automation and providing a no-code option so I...
What is your primary use case for Torq?
My main use case for Torq is reviewing the incidents and responding to them. After that, I investigate them and take ...
What advice do you have for others considering Torq?
I would definitely recommend others to use Torq as it is an all-rounder tool which even integrates AI. As we all know...
Ask a question
Earn 20 points
What are the biggest differences between Securonix UEBA, Exabeam, and IBM QRadar?
It mostly depends on your use-cases and environment. Exabeam and Securonix have a stronger UEBA feature set, friendli...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Exabeam Fusion SIEM?
I would say the pricing for Exabeam Fusion SIEM is not cost prohibitive, but it was a little more than I initially th...
What needs improvement with Exabeam Fusion SIEM?
I would appreciate seeing additional dashboards in Exabeam Fusion SIEM or perhaps more options or the ability to cust...
 

Also Known As

No data available
Critical Start, CriticalStart
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Information Not Available
Information Not Available
Hulu, ADP, Safeway, BBCN Bank
Find out what your peers are saying about CRITICALSTART vs. Exabeam and other solutions. Updated: August 2026.
909,725 professionals have used our research since 2012.