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CRITICALSTART vs Swimlane 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)
28th
Average Rating
9.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
10
Ranking in other categories
Managed Detection and Response (MDR) (32nd)
Swimlane
Ranking in Security Orchestration Automation and Response (SOAR)
9th
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
9
Ranking in other categories
AI-Powered Security Automation (2nd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of June 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 Swimlane is 3.1%, down from 3.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
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.
Srikanth Nuthalapati - PeerSpot reviewer
Great support, scalable, and easier to code
The stability of the solution has room for improvement. I would like Swimlane to provide a single space where we can go to code, build, and automate. Where we have a provision to create tables, playbooks, and tables to produce results, connect all the dots, and make the flow automated. This would make it much easier to navigate than having to jump to different places. I would like to have a single button to click that would start me on the journey of creating my own code from the ground up, from the workflow algorithm to the automation process. This would be simpler than what I had with Splunk Phantom, where I had to piece things together and connect the dots to get the full picture. With this new feature, I could create the full picture with just one button click.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"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."
"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."
"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."
"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 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."
"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."
"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."
"Our primary goal was to reduce analyst time, and we have been successful in that."
"On a scale of one to ten, this solution deserves a rating of nine."
"Swimlane is a very effective way to represent workflows involving multiple users."
"Swimlane enables two SOC analysts to work efficiently as much as ten analysts would without Swimlane, which translates to significant manpower savings."
"We are using it for a SOAR platform at a Cyber Security company which is MSSP."
"The technical support from Swimlane is very good."
"Swimlane saves us 80 to 90 percent of our time by quickly helping us design the journey and efficiently passing information to various components."
"The most valuable feature of the solution is the support."
 

Cons

"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."
"There is room for improvement with the new UI, and that's about it. I would like to see a more intuitive design."
"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..."
"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 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."
"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."
"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."
"Swimlane is not scalable because it is not exposed. Currently, it's a manual component that requires configuration through coding."
"We faced a lot of issues with the product’s stability."
"There is a need for enhanced version control in Swimlane. Currently, our version does not support it, making it tough to move changes between environments during significant updates."
"I would prefer to have more colors added to represent different risks or notations, which can be used for the prioritization of risks and the significance of information."
"The initial setup and deployment are complex."
"I would like to see improvements in the minor bugs that occur with each update, as some features might have issues."
"The stability of the solution has room for improvement."
"Swimlane's search bar is not working effectively, and there is no option to differentiate between two cases at the same time."
 

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."
"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."
"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."
"The pricing of other services was so insane that they weren't even an option."
Information not available
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
13%
Healthcare Company
12%
Real Estate/Law Firm
12%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Financial Services Firm
16%
Computer Software Company
13%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
8%
 

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 Swimlane?
It provides us with a single portal for our logs from different solutions.
What needs improvement with Swimlane?
Swimlane should enhance its integration features beyond the current task assignment, reaction, and persistence capabilities. It should support integrations with multiple signals or queues. Addition...
What is your primary use case for Swimlane?
Swimlane is used for tasks that need multiple task owners. For instance, with bank applications, if you're opening a new account or need KYC, the application might undergo several stages - from sub...
 

Also Known As

Critical Start, CriticalStart
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Information Not Available
LinkedIn, TransUnion, Citrix, Aetna, Perspecta
Find out what your peers are saying about CRITICALSTART vs. Swimlane and other solutions. Updated: June 2025.
859,129 professionals have used our research since 2012.