CRITICALSTART vs Huntress Managed EDR comparison

Critical Start and Huntress are both solutions in the Managed Detection and Response (MDR) category. Critical Start is ranked #32, while Huntress is ranked #2 with an average rating of 9.5. Critical Start holds a 0.8% mindshare in MDR, compared to Huntress’s 10.5% mindshare. Additionally, 100% of Critical Start users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 100% of Huntress users who would recommend it.

CRITICALSTART

Read 10 CRITICALSTART reviews

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333 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

Huntress Managed EDR

Read 32 Huntress Managed EDR reviews

5,010 Views
3,655 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

CRITICALSTART

Huntress Managed EDR

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Mar 9, 2025

CRITICALSTART and Huntress Managed EDR compete in the cybersecurity solutions market. Huntress Managed EDR holds a stronger position due to its comprehensive features and value, although CRITICALSTART offers advantages in support and pricing.

Features: CRITICALSTART impresses with advanced real-time monitoring and threat analysis capabilities, rapid incident response, and seamless integration with existing network infrastructures. Huntress Managed EDR showcases advanced detection, automation in remediation processes, and an intuitive system for identifying emerging threats. These features make Huntress a favorite for streamlined threat management.

Room for Improvement: CRITICALSTART could enhance the intuitiveness and response time of their UI, and improve alert management for reduced false positives. Huntress Managed EDR could benefit from enhancing its customer support reach, increasing configurability of threat detection, and further improving its integration with third-party tools for security operations.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: CRITICALSTART offers a streamlined deployment process with extensive support resources, ensuring seamless network integration. Their responsive customer service enhances the deployment experience. Huntress Managed EDR uses a more automated deployment process with intuitive guidance, reducing the dependency on support services. Both companies have effective customer service, although Huntress gains an edge with its automation reducing setup complexity.

Pricing and ROI: CRITICALSTART is recognized for its competitive pricing and strong ROI resulting from effective threat management. Although Huntress Managed EDR may have higher initial costs, its superior detection and automation justify the investment, offering significant long-term value. Despite CRITICALSTART's cost-effectiveness, Huntress’s capabilities suggest greater sustainability for ROI.

To learn more, read our detailed CRITICALSTART vs. Huntress Managed EDR Report (Updated: April 2025).

Buyer's Guide

CRITICALSTART vs. Huntress Managed EDR

April 2025

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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

Ranking in other categories

Security Orchestration Automation and Response (SOAR) (31st)

Huntress Managed EDR

Ranking in Managed Detection and Response (MDR)

2nd

Average Rating

9.4

Reviews Sentiment

7.8

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) (7th)

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 Huntress Managed EDR is 10.5%, up from 7.9% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Managed Detection and Response (MDR)

Featured Reviews

Preston Broesche

Director of Information Technology at Kirby Corporation

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.

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Anto Baharian

Owner at Antra Tech

Never misses anything and has an attractive price point and a simple interface

One thing they could improve is evolving from an EDR to an MDR, like Blackpoint. This transition would enable automatic remediation of anything that looks dangerous, including within Microsoft 365. For instance, when one of my clients' Microsoft 365 account was breached, Blackpoint identified suspicious activity and disabled the account. It was in Dallas, and we are in California. Blackpoint knew something was wrong there, and they went in and disabled the account. Developing more automated remediation features would elevate them to an MDR level, but I understand that it might affect pricing. They are trying to keep it at a good price point because once they go to MDR, it is probably going to double the price. For now, I find the current features satisfactory, as they continue to add improvements. They have added security awareness training and then log collectors. They are adding pillars as they move along, and I assume they are going to have an option for MDR.

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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"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."

"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."

"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 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."

"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 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."

"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."

More CRITICALSTART pros

"Foothold detection is a valuable feature, acting as a valuable second set of eyes for both us and our clients."

"Huntress Managed EDR provides that human in the loop, which means someone is always watching your back, and that's the main difference."

"The most valuable aspect of Huntress Managed EDR is its personalized approach."

"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."

"It catches things that no one else catches. We occasionally have things slip through antivirus and other things, but Huntress catches them. It is awesome as an additional layer of defense on top of other things."

"I rate Huntress Managed EDR a ten out of ten."

"What stands out most is their human element: when faced with an unknown threat, real people, not just automated processes, are investigating it, and they're people we trust."

"Huntress is extremely well-written software. I used to be a developer, and I see how they've written it. It's excellent. I've never had an issue with it crashing a machine. It's small, tight code."

More Huntress Managed EDR pros

Cons

"There is room for improvement with the new UI, and that's about it. I would like to see a more intuitive design."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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..."

More CRITICALSTART cons

"It would be ideal if they could create some incentives to help more partners get clients to onboard it."

"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."

"There should be more engagement with the MSP group or their largest clients. They should have focus group discussions on what they can do to improve the product. A more transparent way for the support team at Huntress and our IT team to collaborate to make it faster and easier would be beneficial."

"Installing Huntress on a Mac presents a challenge for end users due to the operating system's security features, which require administrator privileges for installation."

"The reporting could be improved by providing a more simplified report that can be easily understood by clients."

"One issue is the managed antivirus. Huntress takes control of the antivirus built into Windows Defender, but it doesn't if, for some reason, Defender isn't working properly and doesn't attempt to fix it. We have to fix it with some scripts so that Defender reports correctly to Huntress. It would be nice if they took that action on our behalf. If they saw a problem with Defender, they should roll out a fix."

"We need an API to automatically retrieve metrics and data about backend activity so we can generate client reports."

"The existing features are perfect. However, I think they could add a more robust set of security features like dark web scanning, penetration testing, and risk assessment for clients. We would have one tool for everything. We wouldn't have to go to multiple vendors to pull something together. That would be more beneficial for us."

More Huntress Managed EDR cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."

"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 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."

"I rate the product's price a five or six on a scale of one to ten, where one is cheap, and ten is expensive since it is a fairly priced product."

"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."

"We haven't had any problems with Huntress' pricing. We're at 250 workstations, and we've grown considerably this year. They've been able to handle everything that we've thrown at them within that time frame. They're also reducing the price based on how many endpoints we add."

"The Huntress pricing is an excellent value for what the product provides."

"I believe Huntress offers competitive pricing overall."

"The solution's pricing is fair."

"It works well for an MSP."

"The cost-effectiveness of Huntress is much better compared to BlackPoint. Although Huntress does not offer all the finer details that BlackPoint does, it remains much more competitive in pricing."

More Huntress Managed EDR pricing and cost advice

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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

Computer Software Company

18%

Manufacturing Company

Insurance Company

Retailer

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

Questions from the Community

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What do you like most about Huntress?

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.

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What needs improvement with Huntress?

There should be more engagement with the MSP group or their largest clients. They should have focus group discussions on what they can do to improve the product. A more transparent way for the supp...

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What is your primary use case for Huntress?

We use it for our clients and ourselves. Huntress is a pretty comprehensive platform. Recently, they acquired the security awareness training platform, which helps us to fulfill our clients' needs ...

See all answers

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Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

CRITICALSTART

May 2025

Download CRITICALSTART product report

Buyer's Guide

Huntress Managed EDR

April 2025

Download Huntress Managed EDR product report

Also Known As

Critical Start, CriticalStart

No data available

Overview

The cybersecurity landscape is growing more complex by the day with the arrival of new threats and new tools supposedly designed for combating them. The problem is it’s all creating more noise and confusion for security professionals to sort through.

CRITICALSTART is the only MDR provider committed to eliminating acceptable risk and leaving nothing to chance. They believe that companies should never have to settle for “good enough.” Their award-winning portfolio includes end-to-end Professional Services and Managed Detection and Response (MDR). CRITICALSTART MDR puts a stop to alert fatigue by leveraging the Zero Trust Analytics Platform (ZTAP) plus the industry-leading Trusted Behavior Registry, which eliminates false positives at scale by resolving known-good behaviors. Driven by 24x7x365 human-led, end-to-end monitoring, investigation and remediation of alerts, their on-the-go threat detection and response capabilities are enabled via a fully interactive MOBILESOC app.

Critical Start

Huntress Managed EDR offers robust managed detection and response capabilities with 24/7 threat hunting, intuitive deployment, and proactive threat management for small to medium businesses.

Huntress Managed EDR provides essential cybersecurity services to businesses by integrating seamlessly with existing tools like Microsoft Defender. Around-the-clock SOC expertise, proactive alerts, and automatic remediation define its core offerings. It effectively monitors threats, detecting footholds and malicious IPs while providing quick isolation of suspicious activities. The platform simplifies security management, reducing reliance on multiple security solutions and enhancing threat response efficiency.

What are the key features of Huntress Managed EDR?

24/7 SOC with expert threat hunting: Continuous monitoring and threat hunting by dedicated security teams.
Proactive alerts: Automated notifications for detected threats ensuring timely responses.
Automatic remediation: Swift action taken to mitigate threats without user intervention.
Easy deployment: Seamless integration with existing security infrastructures like Microsoft Defender.
Intuitive interface: User-friendly design facilitating efficient threat management and monitoring.
Foothold detection and IP scanning: Identification of persistent threats and suspicious network activities.

What benefits should be evaluated in reviews?

Seamless integration: Minimizes need for multiple security tools by interfacing well with current products.
Quick threat response: Rapid isolation and resolution of issues enhancing security posture.
Peace of mind: Reliable threat management with expert supervision ensuring continuous protection.

Huntress Managed EDR is commonly implemented in industries requiring enhanced cybersecurity, including finance, healthcare, and IT services. Its ability to complement traditional antivirus tools and integration with remote monitoring supports a comprehensive defense strategy against advanced threats. Its deployment is simplified for diverse IT environments, ensuring automated and fast response to emerging security challenges.

Huntress

Buyer's Guide

CRITICALSTART vs. Huntress Managed EDR

April 2025

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