No more typing reviews! Try our Samantha, our new voice AI agent.

CRITICALSTART vs WithSecure Elements Infinite comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 18, 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) (26th)
WithSecure Elements Infinite
Ranking in Managed Detection and Response (MDR)
26th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
1
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of July 2026, in the Managed Detection and Response (MDR) category, the mindshare of CRITICALSTART is 1.1%, up from 0.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of WithSecure Elements Infinite is 0.9%, up from 0.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Managed Detection and Response (MDR) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
WithSecure Elements Infinite0.9%
CRITICALSTART1.1%
Other98.0%
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.
reviewer2508555 - PeerSpot reviewer
Head Of IT at a financial services firm with 11-50 employees
We now benefit from regular account reviews and proactive event monitoring
It could improve the customer portal and possibly reduce prices slightly. It's very good because it includes user behavior analytics, detection rules, and thorough log investigation. They also have robust threat-hunting capabilities in the backend, which is crucial for me as a one-man band in the IT department. The managed service wraparound is essential, especially with pre-authorization for incident response

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The biggest lesson is transitioning from alert overload to being at a point where we do have eyes on alerts, where every alert is truly possible."
"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."
"After a year of using the service, our expectations have been met in terms of services delivered on time, on budget, and on spec."
"When I start thinking about if I were to try to light up a SOC, which I've done before and I have no interest in doing, it could be a million dollars a year or more to do that, and for what I am paying them for the managed fees, it's a steal."
"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."
"It is a comfort to know that there is a team of professionals backing you up, especially in an area that you don't feel 100 percent comfortable."
"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."
"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."
"Our security posture has improved. We previously lacked intrusion detection and response capabilities, but now we benefit from regular account reviews and proactive event monitoring. Their portal provides a straightforward way to report suspicious activity, keeping us well-informed about potential threats."
 

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 biggest room for improvement is not necessarily in their service or offering, but in the products that they support."
"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."
"It costs a lot for what we felt comfortable to spend."
"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."
"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 could improve the customer portal and possibly reduce prices slightly. It's very good because it includes user behavior analytics, detection rules, and thorough log investigation."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."
"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."
"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."
"It costs a lot for what we felt comfortable to spend."
Information not available
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Managed Detection and Response (MDR) solutions are best for your needs.
902,988 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Construction Company
11%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Comms Service Provider
10%
Comms Service Provider
24%
Media Company
12%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Healthcare Company
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business4
Midsize Enterprise3
Large Enterprise4
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

Ask a question
Earn 20 points
What needs improvement with WithSecure Countercept Managed Detection and Response?
It could improve the customer portal and possibly reduce prices slightly. It's very good because it includes user behavior analytics, detection rules, and thorough log investigation. They also have...
What advice do you have for others considering WithSecure Countercept Managed Detection and Response?
It's lighter than CrowdStrike, and it has met our security needs without any intrusions so far. Once our pen testers detected someone attempting to breach our security, their SOC promptly alerted m...
 

Also Known As

Critical Start, CriticalStart
Countercept Managed Detection and Response, F-Secure Countercept
 

Overview

Find out what your peers are saying about Huntress, CrowdStrike, SentinelOne and others in Managed Detection and Response (MDR). Updated: June 2026.
902,988 professionals have used our research since 2012.