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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 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 CrowdStrike Falcon Complete MDR is 5.4%, down from 12.6% 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 MDR5.4%
CRITICALSTART1.1%
Other93.5%
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

"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."
"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."
"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."
"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 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."
"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."
"In a given quarter, I get 589,000 security events and 584,000 of those get reduced by the service before they even get to me, so the alerts that actually come through to me end up being about 1,400 in that quarter, which is a 99.7 percent efficiency rate."
"This has been a positive experience and money well spent."
"They have been very responsive."
"What I found most valuable in CrowdStrike Falcon Complete is that it has a lot of monitoring dashboards and use cases, and I saw that it's a very good product, but my company has only tested it, so it's not been used for real use cases. My company hasn't tested the complete license for CrowdStrike Falcon Complete, so the team hasn't checked the open fiber rooms for zero-day attacks, IOAs and IOCs, or any indicators of fraudulent activities. I was also amazed at the solution and its licensing. My company did a competitive analysis of many EDR solutions, but it went with CrowdStrike Falcon Complete. It's one of the top-rated solutions on CyberRatings as well."
"The most valuable feature is the Managed Detection and Response."
"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."
"With the support of the CrowdStrike team, I rate them a ten out of ten."
"From a security efficacy point of view, I have not seen anything that's been as good as CrowdStrike and I've seen a lot them."
"The solution is quite flexible."
"I think the AI and the analytics around stopping threats as they come in and learning as threats happen is probably the biggest selling feature."
 

Cons

"They could dig a little bit deeper into the Splunk alerts when they feel like they need to be escalated to us."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"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 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."
"There can be an application for the mobile device for the administrator of the platform to have an overview. In less than two minutes, they should be able to see what is going on and take action."
"There are several issues we are facing with CrowdStrike Falcon Complete MDR, including data overload, noise, and false positive alerts."
"The training provided could be better. There is a need to have more training to allow us to fine-tune our settings. Not that training is not comprehensive; they do provide training in hotels where we can go and see videos and other helpful information. However, they should be providing hands-on experience to the system administrators because this would be more useful. The training is normally for corporations and should be available for personal users as well."
"I want better integration with other security solutions; integrating with third-party apps wasn't as seamless as I expected."
"Occasionally, navigating it to try to find what you want can be challenging because there is so much information there."
"The reporting could be better. It's not as good as it could be."
"Some processor utilization needs to be dropped because now Windows systems are consuming more CPU and RAM than earlier."
"I think the overall user experience for the operations team could be improved. The dashboard could be more effective, like Microsoft Defender. Microsoft worked on refining the user experience. The security monitoring tools could be simpler and more user-friendly. Integration with the application layer might be another area for improvement."
 

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."
"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."
"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."
"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 is expensive, but looking at the capabilities that it brings, it is reasonable. There are no additional costs to the licensing costs. If you increase the number of licenses, support is included."
"The price of this solution is expensive compared to others solutions."
"The pricing could be lower."
"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 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."
"Falcon Complete isn't too pricy."
"It is a fairly firm price. It is not the cheapest solution, but if you take the complete team into consideration, it is a great value."
"I think the pricing is a little high."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Construction Company
11%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Comms Service Provider
10%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Computer Software Company
8%
Comms Service Provider
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 Enterprise33
 

Questions from the Community

Ask a question
Earn 20 points
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...
What is your primary use case for CrowdStrike Falcon Complete?
We switched from Trend Micro products to CrowdStrike Falcon Complete MDR. Previously, our internal team was managing Trend Micro, but there were some gaps in managing it. We have now selected Crowd...
 

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: June 2026.
902,988 professionals have used our research since 2012.