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CRITICALSTART vs Palo Alto Networks Cortex XSOAR comparison

 

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

CRITICALSTART
Ranking in Security Orchestration Automation and Response (SOAR)
27th
Average Rating
9.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
10
Ranking in other categories
Managed Detection and Response (MDR) (33rd)
Palo Alto Networks Cortex X...
Ranking in Security Orchestration Automation and Response (SOAR)
2nd
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
48
Ranking in other categories
SOC as a Service (2nd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of September 2025, in the Security Orchestration Automation and Response (SOAR) category, the mindshare of CRITICALSTART is 0.3%, up from 0.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Palo Alto Networks Cortex XSOAR is 9.7%, down from 12.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Security Orchestration Automation and Response (SOAR) Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Palo Alto Networks Cortex XSOAR9.7%
CRITICALSTART0.3%
Other90.0%
Security Orchestration Automation and Response (SOAR)
 

Featured Reviews

JH
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.
DayaramGoyal - PeerSpot reviewer
Offers automation but requires enhancements for intuitive configuration
Palo Alto Networks Cortex XSOAR is a good product with enhanced and efficient playbooks, as demonstrated during our use case simulations. We have implemented automation features, such as automated responses to email threats and automatic configuration of target devices for blocking specific IPs. The analytics feature in Palo Alto Networks Cortex XSOAR is impressive. The solution is quite exhaustive regarding integrations, with many pre-integrations available, especially for market-leading products. There might be challenges with make-in-India products, as they tend not to build the necessary connectors. This depends on whether you are selling to enterprises or other customers. For government customers, you might encounter many Indian products, such as firewalls, which could pose integration challenges unless you have open APIs. However, for market-leading products, there are ready-made integrations available.

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."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"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 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."
"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."
"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."
"I would rate the stability of Cortex XSOAR as nine out of ten."
"The strengths of Palo Alto Networks Cortex XSOAR stem from the fact that it provides functionalities related to patching and URL blocking...It is a scalable solution."
"The solution provides threat intelligence with EDR."
"The most valuable feature is automation."
"The most valuable features of Cortex XSOAR include its vast library of plugins, which allow us to integrate various tools and solutions seamlessly."
"What I appreciate most about Palo Alto Networks Cortex XSOAR is that it is very open, even more so than Anomali."
"Each incident collected is orchestrated with automation that selects the security analyst to be involved, or provides complex execution plans for managing security incidents."
"Cortex XSOAR's most valuable features are the playbooks, custom integration, the machine-learning model, and the layout, classifier, and mapper."
 

Cons

"There is room for improvement with the new UI, and that's about it. I would like to see a more intuitive design."
"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."
"The UI has become slower but it's not something I would call them out on."
"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 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."
"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."
"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."
"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 dashboard could be better."
"Creating complex playbooks using coding languages, such as Python, could be easier."
"It doesn't offer automatic internet reports out of the box."
"One of the significant issues we encounter is system slowdown when we receive an influx of alerts, which inhibits how quickly we can access the information needed for investigation."
"There should be an on-premise version available for customers to have different choices."
"The dashboard performance could be improved."
"The complexity of Cortex XSOAR has a trade-off with its versatility. The deployment requires integration and the development of integration modules."
"Corex XSOAR could be improved by reducing the time it takes to process large amounts of data and increasing the number of integrations."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."
"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've told CRITICALSTART that I think the managed service they provide is cheaper than it should be. It's a really good deal."
"It costs a lot for what we felt comfortable to spend."
"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."
"The pricing of other services was so insane that they weren't even an option."
"The price of Palo Alto Networks Cortex XSOAR could be reduced. We are always looking for a discount. There is an annual license needed to use this solution."
"The price of Palo Alto Networks Cortex XSOAR is expensive."
"The solution's pricing needs improvement."
"Palo Alto offers significant discounts to customers who purchase the products repeatedly."
"The pricing is fair. The pricing reflects the value and feature set it offers."
"The solution is expensive."
"The price of Palo Alto Networks Cortex XSOAR is comparable to other solutions in the market."
"It is approx $10,000 or $20,000 per year for two user licenses."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Real Estate/Law Firm
13%
Healthcare Company
11%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Computer Software Company
9%
Financial Services Firm
15%
Computer Software Company
11%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
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 Business19
Midsize Enterprise8
Large Enterprise24
 

Questions from the Community

Ask a question
Earn 20 points
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Palo Alto Networks Cortex XSOAR?
Comparing pricing to Micro Focus, they were offering bundles, making it free with their SIEM. For customers, it is zero versus $20 million, which is why they have to make a decision.
What needs improvement with Palo Alto Networks Cortex XSOAR?
To improve the solution, it needs to have complete features that are low-code, no-code, and should be plug-and-play. We need to see improvements in that area to facilitate cyber analysts.
 

Also Known As

Critical Start, CriticalStart
Demisto Enterprise, Cortex XSOAR, Demisto
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Information Not Available
Cellcom Israel, Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Kansas City, esri, Cylance, Flatiron Health, Veeva, ADT Cybersecurity
Find out what your peers are saying about CRITICALSTART vs. Palo Alto Networks Cortex XSOAR and other solutions. Updated: July 2025.
867,445 professionals have used our research since 2012.