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CRITICALSTART vs Huntress Managed EDR comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Mar 29, 2026

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)
28th
Average Rating
9.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
10
Ranking in other categories
Security Orchestration Automation and Response (SOAR) (25th)
Huntress Managed EDR
Ranking in Managed Detection and Response (MDR)
1st
Average Rating
9.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.5
Number of Reviews
64
Ranking in other categories
Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) (6th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2026, in the Managed Detection and Response (MDR) category, the mindshare of CRITICALSTART is 1.2%, up from 0.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Huntress Managed EDR is 4.5%, down from 10.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Managed Detection and Response (MDR) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Huntress Managed EDR4.5%
CRITICALSTART1.2%
Other94.3%
Managed Detection and Response (MDR)
 

Featured Reviews

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.
Abhishek Saini - PeerSpot reviewer
Professional Services Engineer at Next7 IT
Managed detection has transformed incident response and now delivers faster, focused protection
Overall, my experience with Huntress Managed EDR has been very positive. If I were to suggest improvements, I would like to see more advanced customization and reporting capabilities, particularly for MSPs managing multiple clients. For example, additional dashboard customization, more granular alert filtering options, and enhanced executive level reporting would help teams present security insights more effectively to their clients. Deeper integrations with a broader range of third party security and IT management platforms could also streamline workflows and reduce the need to switch between multiple tools. Another area of improvement would be expanding automation options for common remediation tasks, allowing security teams to respond even more quickly to certain types of threats while maintaining appropriate control. These are more enhancements than shortcomings, as Huntress Managed EDR already provides strong threat detection, excellent SOC support, and an easy-to-manage platform that delivers significant value in day-to-day operations. A few additional enhancements would make the platform even stronger, especially for MSPs managing a large number of endpoints and clients. From a user interface perspective, I would like to see more customizable dashboards that allow engineers to tailor views based on the client's priorities, threat levels, or operational metrics. Another useful feature would be additional automation and authorization options for common response actions such as isolating devices, initiating remediation workflows, or integrating with ticketing systems and SIEM platforms. Overall, these would be valuable additions, but they do not take away from the core strength of Huntress Managed EDR.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"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."
"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 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."
"We are absolutely seeing return on our investment from CRITICALSTART's services, as they're doing the job of a 24/7 SOC at a fraction of the price that it would cost me to run it myself."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"After deploying Huntress Managed EDR, I saw the benefits immediately because as we were installing it, we started getting those alerts."
"My advice to others looking into using Huntress Managed EDR is to do it; it's really good, easy to manage, and a great solution."
"It is very easy to use. It is a great solution. They are one of the better vendors that I have ever worked with since I have been in the industry."
"The EDR is the most valuable feature."
"Huntress Managed EDR has positively impacted my organization because I can confidently tell clients that I am offering a best-in-class, state-of-the-art MDR solution incorporated within my offerings."
"Huntress Managed EDR is probably the easiest solution to use, both to deploy and to maintain, of all the product lines and vendor partnerships we have."
"After deployment, it takes some time to scan and process everything. Huntress has effectively flagged issues such as password files on desktops, which it identifies as low-level alerts. It also handles more significant threats effectively."
"Huntress helped us to reduce the need for expensive security tools or expensive security analysts. That's very important, especially with us being a a smaller business. Not having to purchase larger software has been great."
 

Cons

"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 UI has become slower but it's not something I would call them out on."
"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."
"It costs a lot for what we felt comfortable to spend."
"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."
"There is room for improvement with the new UI, and that's about it. I would like to see a more intuitive design."
"The alert emails that they send out with the different portions of their product sometimes are not similarly formatted, which makes automatically processing those alerts a bit more difficult in our PSA."
"The product could be improved in terms of customization options available for reports."
"It would be nice if Huntress Managed EDR started adding additional features that some of the other competitors have, but obviously, to keep it lightweight, they cannot pack too much into it."
"In the next release, I'd like to see more intuitive dashboards."
"I am anxiously watching to see how they evolve their MDR for Office 365. If anything, I would like more automated remediation capabilities in their MDR for Office 365."
"Some of Huntress' reporting could be improved."
"The Huntress is not a standalone solution. It really needs to be used with something else such as Microsoft Defender or another antivirus solution. It would be nice to see the product fleshed out by the Huntress team and include the antivirus solution part as well. I want it to be a full-fledged XDR product. It would push the tool to a higher price range but it would be nice to see the fleshed out features. I want them to integrate more features from the XDR realm."
"We have been working on it, but their Rio agent has been having some issues trying to repair itself."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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 pricing of other services was so insane that they weren't even an option."
"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."
"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."
"It is very fair. I started at $2.50 and now I am at $3.50. When I signed up, I thought it was too cheap. It now reflects the price. It is very fair. I do not think you can find anything better."
"I believe Huntress Managed EDR is fairly priced. The value I get from it in terms of peace of mind justifies the expense. You can justify it as a business expense."
"Huntress Managed EDR offers a fair pricing model."
"While other options have emerged since Huntress' arrival, I believe it still offers the best value for the features and services it provides."
"Huntress is priced fairly for the services and value it provides."
"It works well for an MSP."
"The pricing is competitive, in line with Huntress's offerings, and aligns well with our business model."
"The pricing model for Huntress is similar to competitors and is charged per endpoint."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Construction Company
12%
Outsourcing Company
10%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Computer Software Company
11%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Outsourcing Company
7%
Comms Service Provider
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 Business63
Midsize Enterprise6
 

Questions from the Community

Ask a question
Earn 20 points
What needs improvement with Huntress?
Overall, I will say it has been a reliable solution. I have not encountered any major issues. If I had to suggest an improvement, I would like to see a customizable dashboard and reporting along wi...
What is your primary use case for Huntress?
I have been using Huntress Managed EDR for approximately one year. I primarily use Huntress Managed EDR for threat detection and response, including continuous monitoring of endpoints for malicious...
What advice do you have for others considering Huntress?
I will say it is very easy to work with because it is very user-friendly. I would not call it basic; the overview is friendly for analysis and helps in observing any difficulties. I will say it is ...
 

Also Known As

Critical Start, CriticalStart
No data available
 

Overview

Find out what your peers are saying about CRITICALSTART vs. Huntress Managed EDR and other solutions. Updated: August 2026.
909,701 professionals have used our research since 2012.