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CRITICALSTART vs ThreatLocker Cyber Hero MDR comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 11, 2026

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)
30th
Average Rating
9.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
10
Ranking in other categories
Security Orchestration Automation and Response (SOAR) (27th)
ThreatLocker Cyber Hero MDR
Ranking in Managed Detection and Response (MDR)
9th
Average Rating
9.2
Reviews Sentiment
8.7
Number of Reviews
9
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2026, in the Managed Detection and Response (MDR) category, the mindshare of CRITICALSTART is 0.9%, up from 0.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of ThreatLocker Cyber Hero MDR is 1.4%, up from 0.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Managed Detection and Response (MDR) Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
ThreatLocker Cyber Hero MDR1.4%
CRITICALSTART0.9%
Other97.7%
Managed Detection and Response (MDR)
 

Featured Reviews

JH
Sr. Manager, Security Engineering at a financial services firm with 501-1,000 employees
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.
Andres Plaza - PeerSpot reviewer
President & Chief Executive Officer at OneconnectionIT
Enables granular control through Ringfencing and works seamlessly for us as an MSP
The most valuable feature is ringfencing. It enables us to only allow what needs to be allowed into the environment and keep out anything else. It permits applications to perform without accessing anything they are not supposed to. For instance, if an application tries to utilize the command prompt unnecessarily, it blocks this action while still allowing users to operate the application. Being able to let the user or the customer continue to use that application but block the application from using the command prompt because it is not necessary is great. Being able to inform customers about enhanced security from a zero-trust standpoint has significantly improved our sales. We are able to walk up to a customer or call a new prospect and let them know that we are going to keep them secure at a level that they have not seen before. We are able to explain to them how cybersecurity works through it.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"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."
"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."
"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."
"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 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."
"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."
"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."
"Customer service and support are exceptional."
"ThreatLocker is worth every penny and a couple more."
"It's an important solution to have in order to maintain a strong security posture, especially as we're seeing things like supply chain attacks, where people are accidentally downloading malware from our vendors."
"We stopped two attacks so far."
"The ability to isolate the device when something is happening and the network access control element are valuable features."
"The most valuable feature, in terms of protection, is the allowlist, which ensures that only IT-approved applications run."
"Our clients feel a bit more secure when using their equipment now, and they can feel confident that we have their backs kind of when they're when they either get compromised."
"It's secure, and we know it's secure."
 

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."
"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."
"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."
"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..."
"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."
"From an MDR perspective, the solution can have the ability to ingest logs from other sources, such as M365, firewalls, external sources, and even cloud SaaS-based platforms. This way, we can obtain a holistic picture."
"From an MDR perspective, the solution can have the ability to ingest logs from other sources, such as M365, firewalls, external sources, and even cloud SaaS-based platforms. This way, we can obtain a holistic picture."
"The ultimate, most amazing solution in the market could be less pricey and more transparent."
"The Cyber Hero Support is not as effective as it is portrayed. There is a lot of miscommunication in notes, which are very buried and not easy to find."
"If there is any aspect to improve, perhaps affordability for small businesses could be considered."
"We have not used it for long enough, but there are some things users have asked for, such as integration with other platforms for reporting. They want a single glass location to use all the tools."
"It would be great if they handled patch management, and I am aware that they are currently working on it."
"The Cyber Hero Support is not as effective as it is portrayed. There is a lot of miscommunication in notes, which are very buried and not easy to find."
 

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 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."
"ThreatLocker is worth every penny and a couple more."
"It is pretty good. We would have been one of the biggest partners in Ireland, so we got pretty good pricing at the start, and it is still competitive. Pricing depends on what we are up against."
"The pricing is not so bad. My clients do not like it, but they are following our pricing."
"It has been excellent."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Real Estate/Law Firm
17%
Healthcare Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Computer Software Company
22%
Comms Service Provider
11%
University
9%
Financial Services Firm
9%
 

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 Business8
 

Questions from the Community

Ask a question
Earn 20 points
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for ThreatLocker Cyber Hero MDR?
The pricing is cost-efficient and provides good value given the level of security enhancement it provides.
What needs improvement with ThreatLocker Cyber Hero MDR?
There are still gaps in the EDR when benchmarked against SentinelOne, but it's improving quickly. The ability for ThreatLocker to digest the 365 logs provides an elevated level of 365 protection th...
What is your primary use case for ThreatLocker Cyber Hero MDR?
Our primary use case for ThreatLocker Cyber Hero MDR ( /products/threatlocker-cyber-hero-mdr-reviews ) is to reinforce a zero trust environment. We utilize it to avoid security faults and improve d...
 

Also Known As

Critical Start, CriticalStart
No data available
 

Overview

Find out what your peers are saying about CRITICALSTART vs. ThreatLocker Cyber Hero MDR and other solutions. Updated: January 2026.
881,114 professionals have used our research since 2012.