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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)
30th
Average Rating
9.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
10
Ranking in other categories
Security Orchestration Automation and Response (SOAR) (26th)
CrowdStrike Falcon Complete...
Ranking in Managed Detection and Response (MDR)
2nd
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
81
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2026, in the Managed Detection and Response (MDR) category, the mindshare of CRITICALSTART is 1.0%, up from 0.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of CrowdStrike Falcon Complete MDR is 6.0%, down from 13.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Managed Detection and Response (MDR) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
CrowdStrike Falcon Complete MDR6.0%
CRITICALSTART1.0%
Other93.0%
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.
Sachin Bode - PeerSpot reviewer
IT Manager at IFB Industries Ltd
Managed detection has strengthened our defenses and has provided real-time threat visibility
Sometimes we are facing performance issues with the end-user systems, and sometimes it is blocking a few of our applications, which we later resolve with the team. Recently, we were having our call center application running on the systems, which suddenly stopped working because CrowdStrike Falcon Complete MDR was not allowing it to run. After removing CrowdStrike Falcon Complete MDR, it started working, and then later we added the application URLs and the communication URLs to CrowdStrike Falcon Complete MDR allow list, so it started working. Some processor utilization needs to be dropped because now Windows systems are consuming more CPU and RAM than earlier. Windows 10 was fine, but Windows 11 is consuming more CPU and RAM. If CrowdStrike Falcon Complete MDR is contributing to consuming the resources, then other applications are taking a lot of time to run. In Windows 11, we are facing this issue sometimes, and we need more powerful systems than earlier. I would also appreciate improvements on the pricing side. Some of our locations where people are isolated, we are not buying CrowdStrike Falcon Complete MDR due to the pricing. If there is a nominal reduction in the price, then we will go for everyone in the organization.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"This has been a positive experience and money well spent."
"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 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."
"CRITICALSTART makes us much more comfortable with knowing someone else is watching our data and our systems and knowing that professional security people are taking a look at any issues that do arise."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"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 features of Firewall Management control, combined with controls in NextGen, are the most useful for our clients."
"The solution is user-friendly."
"CrowdStrike Falcon Complete has stable security."
"The endpoint detection and response is very valuable."
"The most valuable feature is the Managed Detection and Response."
"Its machine learning and AI features are good, and the real-time updates that it gets with respect to threats are very good."
"I find the incident management feature valuable because it identifies new types of viruses and sends an alert to the console administrator to check the hardware."
 

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."
"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."
"It has frustrated us that they don't have a native Slack integration, because most things do now."
"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 and I hate it."
"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."
"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)."
"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."
"I would like to see them introduce DLP."
"I would like to see CrowdStrike Falcon Complete XDR integrate more effectively with other technologies."
"The only aspect where we've offered feedback for potential enhancement is essentially the user experience."
"Their UI is a bit noisy."
"The one issue with Falcon Complete is that it can't be run manually if you find any viruses or malicious files in a post."
"The simplicity of CrowdStrike Falcon Complete's content control and firewall management should be improved."
"It has a lot of false positives, which can be an issue, but you can verify these false positives."
"CrowdStrike Falcon Complete MDR offers an optional module that might not be cost-effective for all organizations."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It costs a lot for what we felt comfortable to spend."
"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."
"I've told CRITICALSTART that I think the managed service they provide is cheaper than it should be. It's a really good deal."
"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."
"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."
"While the cost is relatively high, it is justified by the value it brings."
"At approximately €60 per machine, per year, I think that it's a good price point."
"If you are looking from an IT standpoint, you get what you pay for. There is proactive monitoring in addition to the insurance policy. They do that better than others. Would you like it cheaper? Yes, but at what cost?"
"It's expensive. Its price varies because it's a modular solution."
"We pay 40,000 euros to use this solution."
"This product is one of the more expensive ones on the market."
"They are really reasonable for the services they are providing. When you add more endpoints, you are going to pay more for the license."
"Its licenses are expensive for small-scale companies."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Real Estate/Law Firm
11%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Comms Service Provider
8%
Healthcare Company
8%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Computer Software Company
9%
Financial Services Firm
7%
Healthcare Company
6%
 

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 Business35
Midsize Enterprise18
Large Enterprise32
 

Questions from the Community

Ask a question
Earn 20 points
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?
The cost is not reasonable and should be more cost-efficient. From an enterprise level perspective, it should be reduced by approximately 20 to 25%.
What needs improvement with CrowdStrike Falcon Complete?
Sometimes we are facing performance issues with the end-user systems, and sometimes it is blocking a few of our applications, which we later resolve with the team. Recently, we were having our call...
 

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: April 2026.
892,611 professionals have used our research since 2012.