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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)
27th
Average Rating
9.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
10
Ranking in other categories
Managed Detection and Response (MDR) (31st)
Swimlane
Ranking in Security Orchestration Automation and Response (SOAR)
8th
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
10
Ranking in other categories
AI-Powered Security Automation (2nd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of October 2025, in the Security Orchestration Automation and Response (SOAR) category, the mindshare of CRITICALSTART is 0.3%, up from 0.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Swimlane is 3.1%, down from 3.4% 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 (%)
Swimlane3.1%
CRITICALSTART0.3%
Other96.6%
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

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

Cons

"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."
"There is room for improvement with the new UI, and that's about it. I would like to see a more intuitive design."
"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."
"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."
"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 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."
"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."
"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."
"Swimlane is not scalable because it is not exposed. Currently, it's a manual component that requires configuration through coding."
"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."
"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."
"One of the disadvantages of Swimlane is that to manage the platform, we need hardcore developers."
"We faced a lot of issues with the product’s stability."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."
"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."
"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."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Real Estate/Law Firm
14%
Healthcare Company
12%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Computer Software Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
15%
Computer Software Company
12%
Government
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
 

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 Business2
Midsize Enterprise1
Large Enterprise5
 

Questions from the Community

Ask a question
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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...
What advice do you have for others considering Swimlane?
The best part of Swimlane is the persistent notifications and its ease of integration, requiring minimal coding. While it lacks response features, it can be integrated with messaging or queue servi...
 

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: September 2025.
869,566 professionals have used our research since 2012.