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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)
31st
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 March 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 6.8%, 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 MDR6.8%
CRITICALSTART0.9%
Other92.3%
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

"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."
"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 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 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 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."
"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 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."
"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."
"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."
"Falcon's threat intel is strong, and the solution allows our customers to automate their site intelligence. We can integrate Falcon X with the other platforms we use, like FireEye, Insight, Cybertech, and Kaspersky."
"There's less workload on the endpoint."
"The solution offers seamless SOC extension, zero-day protection, advanced threat intelligence, and rapid incident containment."
"I find CrowdStrike Falcon Complete MDR to be effective and stable, with minimal false positives."
"It is a major anti-malware solution. It can stop zero-day attacks and ransomware attacks. There are so many features in CrowdStrike. Falcon Overwatch is a valuable module. It is lightweight on the endpoints. It doesn't have any scanning mechanism. It works on artificial intelligence, static analysis, and dynamic analysis. There is no signature available on this. It is a pretty easy solution. It is cloud-based, so there is no driver maintenance or anything like that. You can go anywhere in the world. If you have internet, you'll get connected to the cloud and the policies that it contains. It is pretty simple."
"We've seen a tremendous improvement since implementing CrowdStrike Falcon. In the past few years, we were exposed to 30 different attacks, but now our environment is completely monitored, and everything is detected. It catches threats and attacks before they occur."
"CrowdStrike Falcon Complete's most valuable features are efficient dashboards and their ease of management."
 

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."
"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..."
"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."
"There is room for improvement with the new UI, and that's about it. I would like to see a more intuitive design."
"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."
"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 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."
"We have a problem with the CrowdStrike Falcon Complete agent. It was closing the communication with the network or other computers."
"The solution should include some sort of DLP capabilities."
"We have also been using Cisco AMP for Endpoints for three years. We have received multiple detections in Cisco AMP for Endpoints, and we had to take some actions, whereas CrowdStrike has not detected anything critical since it has been implemented. Most of the incidents that it has detected are false positives. They should work on the false-positive issue. When it is implemented throughout the organization, it gets very difficult to check each false positive and investigate what is correct and what is not correct. It requires technical and manual intervention."
"This solution is lacking in a recovery feature. If there is a full compromise, this product can't recover the machine, which results in us having to rebuild the entire system."
"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."
"CrowdStrike Falcon Complete does not include patch management functionality."
"I prefer to put a pound into the prevention and an ounce into the cure, but CrowdStrike put more focus into the EDR. This works as a business model for them, as they get a lot of customers purchasing their MDR services, usually SMBs lacking the staff to leverage the EDR tool themselves adequately. We have many such customers. I would much rather see more refinement and investment into the prevention side of the equation, though CrowdStrike has a good engine. The solution is as effective as SentinelOne and Windows Defender for Endpoint; it's an excellent endpoint protection solution."
"The installation could always be a bit easier. You need to install it manually at the endpoint."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."
"I've told CRITICALSTART that I think the managed service they provide is cheaper than it should be. It's a really good deal."
"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 of other services was so insane that they weren't even an option."
"It costs a lot for what we felt comfortable to spend."
"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."
"CrowdStrike Falcon Complete is expensive."
"There is a standard license to use CrowdStrike Falcon Complete."
"The price of this solution is expensive compared to others solutions."
"The pricing is a little bit higher than other OEM competitors in the market, like SentinelOne and Trend Micro."
"The average price is approximately $500 per customer."
"Falcon Complete isn't too pricy."
"CrowdStrike offers solutions with the same functionality for both large enterprises and small to medium organizations with competitive pricing."
"We have a yearly license, and it could be cheaper."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Real Estate/Law Firm
10%
Healthcare Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Comms Service Provider
6%
Computer Software Company
10%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Retailer
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: January 2026.
884,076 professionals have used our research since 2012.