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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 April 2026, in the Managed Detection and Response (MDR) category, the mindshare of CRITICALSTART is 0.9%, up from 0.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of CrowdStrike Falcon Complete MDR is 6.9%, down from 14.4% 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 MDR6.9%
CRITICALSTART0.9%
Other92.2%
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

"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."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"Out of all the service providers I've had to work with over the years—I've been here six years—CRITICALSTART is my favorite to work with."
"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."
"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 most valuable features of CrowdStrike Falcon Complete are the modern and intuitive capabilities, and because it is cloud-based it is much easier to adopt and roll out to the environment."
"CrowdStrike side, Falcon is the Endpoint Detection, Overwatch is the service that sits behind it. From a human point of view looks at the anomalies that normal AI and machine learning couldn't catch. So it is the combination of the two that really works well."
"There's less workload on the endpoint."
"The most valuable feature is that it has a zero-day approach. It does not work with the signature itself. It looks into what is happening on an endpoint and protects you better against threats that are not yet known but are captured in a signature. It provides far better detection than when it is only signature-based. You get much quicker protection against any new threat. This is the most important feature of the CrowdStrike solution."
"The main valuable features are feasibility, ease of deployment, and that it's all based in the cloud. I like that it is gradually updated and that the detection rate is higher than that of other endpoint solutions. There are fewer loopholes."
"The threat intelligence of CrowdStrike Falcon is the most valuable feature."
"It works as a security device and provides an extra layer of security to our devices and computers."
"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

"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."
"It has frustrated us that they don't have a native Slack integration, because most things do now. That's something we've asked for, for years, and it just doesn't really seem like it's a priority."
"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."
"It has frustrated us that they don't have a native Slack integration, because most things do now."
"The biggest room for improvement is not necessarily in their service or offering, but in the products that they support."
"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 would like to have the option to deploy on-premise."
"In the CrowdStrike, you have some sort of limited information and for the in-depth information you need to take it, Carbon Black provides that particular thing on the first view."
"It would be good if they fleshed it out a bit more, possibly with additional areas such as security awareness training. They could build that in. They're leveraging the same endpoint base that they have the security software on, but then they could offer a centralized portal or hub whereby someone like me could leverage it to track and put out security awareness training for people on all the common topics. I could have a centralized hub for everyone's results from that training and for the evidence that training occurred. It would be relatively straightforward, but it would add a lot for people in the compliance area. It would be a great expansion."
"The technical support is good. However, the technical support is outsourced to India which causes some language barriers."
"The initial setup was slightly complex although it's an easier solution."
"Some processor utilization needs to be dropped because now Windows systems are consuming more CPU and RAM than earlier."
"The solution should be lighter because it currently uses a lot of computing sources."
"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."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."
"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."
"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."
"CrowdStrike is more expensive than SentinelOne. Licensing works on the number of agents and the modules you buy. CrowdStrike has different modules, such as Falcon, Falcon Overwatch, Falcon Complete, etc. The pricing depends upon the module that the customer wants. They have different Incident Response (IR) teams, which are very expensive."
"The licensing cost for this solution is $5000 per license, with each machine requiring its own license."
"The price of this solution is expensive compared to others solutions."
"There is a standard license to use CrowdStrike Falcon Complete."
"CrowdStrike Falcon Complete is very expensive in comparison to Bitdefender."
"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."
"CrowdStrike Falcon Complete is expensive."
"We pay 40,000 euros to use this solution."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Real Estate/Law Firm
10%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Healthcare Company
8%
Marketing Services Firm
6%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Computer Software Company
9%
Financial Services Firm
6%
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: March 2026.
885,837 professionals have used our research since 2012.