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CRITICALSTART vs Huntress Managed EDR comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jun 15, 2025

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)
33rd
Average Rating
9.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
10
Ranking in other categories
Security Orchestration Automation and Response (SOAR) (28th)
Huntress Managed EDR
Ranking in Managed Detection and Response (MDR)
2nd
Average Rating
9.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.6
Number of Reviews
35
Ranking in other categories
Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) (6th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2025, in the Managed Detection and Response (MDR) category, the mindshare of CRITICALSTART is 0.8%, up from 0.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Huntress Managed EDR is 10.3%, up from 8.6% 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.
Anto Baharian - PeerSpot reviewer
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.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"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."
"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."
"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 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."
"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."
"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."
"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 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."
"The EDR is the most valuable feature."
"The features of Huntress that I found helpful are the one-click remediation piece and the ability for me to reach out to their customer service reps and get this under control when there is a threat."
"The endpoint protection is definitely the most impactful feature for clients. It just works. It is a set-it-and-forget-it type of solution."
"The EDR tools are the most beneficial. We protect all our clients' endpoints through their security operation center, which runs through the EDR. We like that it's a small installation that doesn't take up much processing space, and we can quickly install it on our machines. We push out the agents automatically and get everybody up and running quickly."
"The EDR product is simple to install. It is low maintenance. All the alerts go to Huntress first, and their analyst team reviews them and sends actionable things our way."
"We don’t have the required staff to watch the issues that are happening. It is good to have a team from Huntress who can watch the logs 24/7. The tool’s automatic remediation is also fantastic. The solution’s interface is also nice and easy to use. The Huntress team saves us time by going through the issues."
"Huntress Managed EDR eliminates the need to outsource expensive security tools or analysts, avoiding the high costs associated with external solutions."
"The solution's most valuable feature is that it has a manned security operation center, not AI-driven."
 

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."
"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..."
"The UI has become slower but it's not something I would call them out on."
"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 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 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."
"We have been working on it, but their Rio agent has been having some issues trying to repair itself."
"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."
"Huntress should have a more user-friendly interface because it takes some understanding to work our way through the interfaces."
"Their EDR can have increased coverage for Macintosh. They do not fully secure Macintosh computers."
"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."
"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."
"Using Huntress Managed EDR has not reduced our need for expensive security tools or hiring expensive security analysts, as we run redundancy and maintain all that in-house while Huntress serves as a partner, not a replacement."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It costs a lot for what we felt comfortable to spend."
"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."
"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."
"The pricing of other services was so insane that they weren't even an option."
"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 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."
"It works well for an MSP."
"Huntress is priced fairly for the services and value it provides."
"The solution's pricing is fair."
"Regarding the pricing for Huntress Managed EDR, I was amazed when I heard the price; I thought it was going to be way more than what it is based on the quality."
"It is fair. They provide good value for the product that they deliver. I have had one price increase in the entire time I have used them. They added a bunch of features and then said that they have to increase our price a little bit. That is a fair way to handle it."
"The tool’s price is very good. You just need to pay for the standard license. However, you need to pay the additional cost for Microsoft Defender."
"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."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Real Estate/Law Firm
12%
Healthcare Company
11%
Computer Software Company
11%
Retailer
9%
Computer Software Company
16%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Insurance Company
7%
Retailer
6%
 

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.
What needs improvement with Huntress?
We would love for Huntress Managed EDR to ingest logs from Microsoft Sentinel. Microsoft Sentinel is another SIM tool that produces logs, and we would want Huntress to be able to ingest those so th...
What is your primary use case for Huntress?
We use Huntress Managed EDR for threat hunting with our clients to try to keep their environment safe and make sure that if there's any kind of bad activity going on, we can try to find out about i...
 

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: July 2025.
865,384 professionals have used our research since 2012.