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CRITICALSTART vs Field Effect 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)
32nd
Average Rating
9.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
10
Ranking in other categories
Security Orchestration Automation and Response (SOAR) (31st)
Field Effect MDR
Ranking in Managed Detection and Response (MDR)
3rd
Average Rating
9.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.6
Number of Reviews
30
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2025, in the Managed Detection and Response (MDR) category, the mindshare of CRITICALSTART is 0.8%, down from 0.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Field Effect MDR is 3.3%, up from 2.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Managed Detection and Response (MDR)
 

Featured Reviews

PB
Saves my team time and alert fatigue, allowing us to concentrate on more important things
The Trusted Behavior Registry helps resolve alerts in the sense that CRITICALSTART is doing a lot of that initial triage for me. Out of a given 500,000 events and alerts, for example, that come through, they're taking out 495,000 of them. That only leaves me with a subset of that to actually have to triage, and that's where it benefits us. They take care of Tier-1 and Tier-2 triage. And 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. Also, the intuitiveness of the updated user interface for the service is spot-on. It is much easier to navigate, and know where to navigate, in the newer interface. I've never had an issue with responsiveness. It's very quick and doesn't sit there and chug on anything. It's fast, it's efficient. It has enabled our SecOps team to take action faster because if you have multiple ways of connecting to it and actually getting your alerts answered and taking care of things fast, it is extremely helpful. All the information that you need to make a determination is usually in the alert itself that comes through the Zero-Trust Analytics Platform (ZTAP). I don't find myself going back to the app itself very often. That still happens, but not as often. The ability to flow the information forward, from the alert standpoint, helps me because it saves me from running back to get the information. It's improved my efficiency. Finally, there haven't been any data sources that the service wasn't able to integrate with.
Simon Cutler - PeerSpot reviewer
Helps to manage cybersecurity vulnerabilities, and improve our security team's efficiency and security posture
It would be incredibly valuable to have the Field Effect team handle some of the third-party application patching they're currently identifying. While it's fantastic that they're proactive in this area, the time commitment is significant. Integrating patching into their existing service offering would be a game-changer. I'd love to see a tool that aids sales discovery efforts when we engage new clients. Ideally, this internal tool would scan their network environment to identify potential risks and give us a comprehensive picture of their network infrastructure. This would be a huge asset in informing our sales strategies and showcasing our expertise.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"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."
"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 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 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 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."
"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 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 AROs have been incredibly helpful."
"The most valuable features are Action Recommendations of Observations, which keep us informed about existing vulnerabilities so we can proactively update our endpoints and those of our customers against potential threats."
"I like how comprehensive Field Effect Covalence is."
"We are getting visibility over the network, not just for those hosts that have a Field Effect EDR agent but also things like the Internet of Things, guest networks, or rogue devices. We definitely have visibility into all network traffic, which is very cool."
"The most valuable aspect of Field MDR is the comprehensive visibility the solution offers. Most solutions cover the traditional threat landscape of computers, endpoints, servers, etc. However, there are also things happening within the network environment, such as WiFi, mobile, the Internet of Things, smart TVs, video surveillance systems, etc., that have associated vulnerabilities. Most environments do not manage or protect these assets."
"The most valuable features are AROs, which provide timely notifications for out-of-compliance or out-of-specification detections."
"I appreciate the "set it and forget it" nature of Field Effect Covalence."
"One of the most useful and impressive features of the system is its detailed notification mechanism."
 

Cons

"There is room for improvement with the new UI, and that's about it. I would like to see a more intuitive design."
"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."
"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. 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 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 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."
"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."
"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 would be incredibly valuable to have the Field Effect team handle some of the third-party application patching they're currently identifying."
"While Covalence addresses our notification and visibility needs, it falls short in keeping information up-to-date, which is where our MSP comes in to supplement its functionality."
"The area where they can make it better is by giving responses to the end-user. For example, when there is an alert to the administrator, I get it. I have to copy and paste everything to everyone... And then I have to follow up with them, and it's a real pain."
"Field Effect Covalence could benefit from enhancing its packing slip process."
"One limitation is that if someone takes their laptop outside the office building, the DNS firewall provides minimal coverage, and we are unable to generate reports."
"The ConnectWise PSA integration is two-way but does not send our comments back to the Field Effect portal."
"Field Effect MDR could broaden its cloud application integrations to integrate better with Office 365, Azure, Salesforce, etc. They integrate about 15 to 20 out of the box. I'd love to see a lot more than that."
"In the AROs tab, if we encounter multiple duplicate recommendations, it would be helpful to be able to select and resolve or dismiss them all at once."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It costs a lot for what we felt comfortable to spend."
"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 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."
"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."
"I've told CRITICALSTART that I think the managed service they provide is cheaper than it should be. It's a really good deal."
"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."
"The cost of the solution is high."
"The pricing is comparable to what else is out there."
"A top-tier competitor to Field Effect in Magic Quadrant that we had been using until our switch to Field Effect was a great product, but each capability had an additional charge. We had to license modules separately, and each of those add-ons had to be added onto its own consumption and agreement. It was a nightmare from a billing perspective because we had multiple agreements, and each one had a jagged anniversary or a renewal anniversary. It was a nightmare, whereas Field Effect MDR is one product."
"The pricing is fair and reasonable."
"The pricing isn't sized, so Field Effect doesn't make it easy for anything under 25 users. I'm not crazy about that."
"Field Effect is fairly priced from my perspective. You get a lot of bang for the buck with this and a level of visibility that provides you with greater peace of mind knowing that the system is carefully monitored. You also have automated responses for known malicious behavior at any time of the day. Someone could have their Office 365 mailbox compromised at 2 in the morning on a Saturday when most people are asleep or not paying attention, and the system can prevent an issue in an automated way."
"The shift to a per-user pricing model and the introduction of a base price for the on-premises or virtual appliance has been particularly advantageous."
"Although Covalence is expensive, it provides good value for the price."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
12%
Healthcare Company
11%
Real Estate/Law Firm
11%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Computer Software Company
54%
Government
4%
Non Profit
4%
Retailer
4%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

Ask a question
Earn 20 points
What do you like most about Field Effect Covalence?
It is very user-friendly. We have regular reports to see what is going on.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Field Effect Covalence?
Pricing was initially a concern, but the recent updates have resolved that by offering a more accessible buying cost.
What needs improvement with Field Effect Covalence?
Some resources lack experience, but issues can be escalated to more knowledgeable contacts. Pricing needed improvement, which was addressed by reducing the buying cost recently. Like any product, s...
 

Also Known As

Critical Start, CriticalStart
Field Effect Covalence
 

Overview

Find out what your peers are saying about CRITICALSTART vs. Field Effect MDR and other solutions. Updated: April 2025.
850,028 professionals have used our research since 2012.