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CRITICALSTART vs CrowdStrike Falcon Complete MDR comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 3, 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 Managed Detection and Response (MDR)
33rd
Average Rating
9.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
10
Ranking in other categories
Security Orchestration Automation and Response (SOAR) (31st)
CrowdStrike Falcon Complete...
Ranking in Managed Detection and Response (MDR)
1st
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
79
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of March 2025, in the Managed Detection and Response (MDR) category, the mindshare of CRITICALSTART is 0.8%, down from 0.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of CrowdStrike Falcon Complete MDR is 14.5%, down from 15.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Managed Detection and Response (MDR)
 

Featured Reviews

PB
Saves my team time and alert fatigue, allowing us to concentrate on more important things
The Trusted Behavior Registry helps resolve alerts in the sense that CRITICALSTART is doing a lot of that initial triage for me. Out of a given 500,000 events and alerts, for example, that come through, they're taking out 495,000 of them. That only leaves me with a subset of that to actually have to triage, and that's where it benefits us. They take care of Tier-1 and Tier-2 triage. And 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. Also, the intuitiveness of the updated user interface for the service is spot-on. It is much easier to navigate, and know where to navigate, in the newer interface. I've never had an issue with responsiveness. It's very quick and doesn't sit there and chug on anything. It's fast, it's efficient. It has enabled our SecOps team to take action faster because if you have multiple ways of connecting to it and actually getting your alerts answered and taking care of things fast, it is extremely helpful. All the information that you need to make a determination is usually in the alert itself that comes through the Zero-Trust Analytics Platform (ZTAP). I don't find myself going back to the app itself very often. That still happens, but not as often. The ability to flow the information forward, from the alert standpoint, helps me because it saves me from running back to get the information. It's improved my efficiency. Finally, there haven't been any data sources that the service wasn't able to integrate with.
Otis Brinson - PeerSpot reviewer
Helps users keep track of everything from one place
The most valuable features of the solution stem from the fact that we can track all of it in one place across all those different locations. Because it's cloud-based and reports up to the cloud, we also have access to the back end, and an incident response team monitors all incidents. We also have an escalation process in place. From my perspective, there are other pieces of CrowdStrike that the security architect team uses as well, but I don't get involved with those as much. I usually just wait for the end results or the notification if I need to get involved if there is an incident.

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."
"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 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."
"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."
"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 most valuable feature of this solution is the real-time visibility into what is happening in your endpoint."
"With the support of the CrowdStrike team, I rate them a ten out of ten."
"CrowsStrike Falcon Complete is a good solid endpoint protection solution; it has a good engine and is on par in terms of efficacy with SentinelOne, and with Microsoft Defender for endpoint protection."
"We found the initial setup to be quick and easy for the most part."
"I like Falcon's AI functionality and vulnerability management. That has been so helpful. Falcon Complete can manage vulnerabilities, quarantine threats, and do all kinds of forensic incident analysis. It's a lightweight solution that only uses 1% of the CPU, which is a game changer. Other EDRs have had high CPU usage."
"CrowdStrike Falcon Complete has stable security."
"I would recommend Falcon Complete for anyone looking for a cheaper alternative that's almost the same quality as Cortex."
"It is working well. I tried a ransomware attack myself, and they were very fast in mitigating. I am very convinced of this product, and I am very satisfied with how it is working. The team behind the program itself is very valuable. If you don't have your own security team, they can do a great job for you. If your IT team isn't in the company, this can be of great value to you. Its documentation is very good. They have many different dashboards, and they do have a lot of information. Sometimes, it can be a bit overwhelming how much information is there, but once you find your way through with them, everything is very logical."
 

Cons

"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 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."
"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."
"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 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 support is good from CrowdStrike Falcon Complete. We call them and we have a response immediately. They could improve by increasing their knowledge."
"Falcon could use more SIEM capabilities, like a central place to monitor all our clients."
"They are doing very well in continuously improving their product. The only thing is that it is completely cloud-based, and some customers don't really like that type of approach, but you can only provide such a solution when you have cloud-based intelligence. On the other end, we know that it is sometimes a breaking point for some of the customers. They could potentially have an on-prem or hybrid solution. Any antivirus needs to have its features updated. If there could be a relay between them, it would be helpful, but that's very hard to do. So, you either accept that approach and have the benefit with this little disadvantage."
"Falcon Complete's user interface isn't very user-friendly, especially for writing rules."
"The downside that we see with CrowdStrike is that it is not part of a broader ecosystem. It is an endpoint product. They don't sell firewalls or a broader cybersecurity ecosystem. Some of the behavioral detections could be more robust. It does a good job of stopping common tools and techniques, but when it comes to using Windows utilities, such as PowerShell, etc, it doesn't stop them. These are some of the things where we have been able to get past it. An argument there can be that these are administrative tools, not malware, so maybe it is not its job to stop it, but we see some of the competitive products doing a very good job of detecting behaviors as opposed to malware."
"At the moment, nothing is missing in CrowdStrike Falcon Complete. I'm amazed by it. It's perfect and I'm not aware of any other vendors that provide its features, but it would also depend on the configuration and policy management of the solution, for example, I can bring you an EDR solution and configure it badly, so it won't do anything. It also depends on the people, not just the technology you're obtaining, so this is the most important thing to do for all solutions, even for firewalls. You can obtain a firewall and if you permit everyone to go through it, then it's useless. What could be improved in CrowdStrike Falcon Complete is its management console. Currently, that console is on the cloud, so if the cloud is compromised, then the management console would also be compromised, and that's quite risky."
"Some dashboards can be very complex, but once you get to know them, it is very logical."
"The technical support is satisfactory, but there is room for improvement to enhance it."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The pricing of other services was so insane that they weren't even an option."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"While the cost is relatively high, it is justified by the value it brings."
"The licenses are sold per user."
"CrowdStrike offers training at an additional cost, so many organizations wouldn't want that route."
"It is not cheap, and it is not overpriced. It positions itself in the upper half of pricing in the market. You can find a product that claims to do the same and is super cheap, but it'll be not at all good. You can find something that says it does everything in the world, and it is the best thing since sliced bread, but it would be incredibly expensive. Falcon Complete is neither of those. It is always best to go somewhere in the middle, but it is not in the middle. It is in the upper half. So, it is by no means cheap, but it is worth it. Its pricing is well fixed. Given what you get in return, you wouldn't feel bad paying for it. They have a great licensing model. You can add extra bells and whistles if you want. There is that ability to reduce the price by turning off certain features if you wish."
"The licensing cost for CrowdStrike Falcon Complete is fair, and I would give it a five out of five. You have to pay per device/user."
"While CrowdStrike Falcon Complete is expensive, it offers great features and functionality."
"The pricing is a little bit expensive for our region."
"I think the pricing is a little high."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
12%
Healthcare Company
11%
Real Estate/Law Firm
10%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Computer Software Company
15%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Financial Services Firm
7%
Healthcare Company
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

Ask a question
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What do you like most about CrowdStrike Falcon Complete?
It is a cloud-based solution. You can easily scale it.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for CrowdStrike Falcon Complete?
CrowdStrike has a reasonable price. It's a good price, but if CrowdStrike offered coupons or discounts on a monthly or quarterly basis, it would be more beneficial for smaller vendors trying to imp...
What needs improvement with CrowdStrike Falcon Complete?
There is room for improvement in the AI of CrowdStrike, known as Charlotte AI, which my team does not currently use. I have not had contact with it at this moment. Additionally, patch management in...
 

Also Known As

Critical Start, CriticalStart
Falcon Complete
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Information Not Available
Palm Beach State College, Mercedes-AMG, Pokemon, Telstra, Goldman Sachs, Zebra
Find out what your peers are saying about CRITICALSTART vs. CrowdStrike Falcon Complete MDR and other solutions. Updated: January 2025.
841,004 professionals have used our research since 2012.