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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

"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."
"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 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."
"This has been a positive experience and money well spent."
"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."
"I also use their mobile app. It's very easy to use and very convenient to be able to respond to alerts wherever you are. I love the app. You can respond and communicate, per ticket, with their SOC in near real-time. The response is very quick."
"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."
"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."
"I would recommend Falcon Complete for anyone looking for a cheaper alternative that's almost the same quality as Cortex."
"Falcon Complete's best feature is detection. The interface is also user-friendly."
"It provides an effective set of protections; when we throw malware and stuff like that at CrowdStrike Falcon Complete, it is able to stop them."
"It works as a security device and provides an extra layer of security to our devices and computers."
"What's most valuable about CrowdStrike Falcon Complete as an endpoint security solution is that it provides different features against malware outbreaks. The solution is also cloud-based so it offers flexibility in terms of managing it. It's also easy to deploy the agent and you can deploy it through CrowdStrike, your CloudStrike console, or you can take that agent out and you can use different solutions to deploy it through your group policy, your SSCM, or any asset management tool."
"It is a very good solution. It can provide detection and response in an extensive way, and for an endpoint, it can integrate the information that comes from the servers."
"The system is valuable as it is a fully managed endpoint protection service designed to stop breaches, detect threats, and respond to incidents effectively."
"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."
 

Cons

"There is room for improvement with the new UI, and that's about it. I would like to see a more intuitive design."
"The UI has become slower but it's not something I would call them out on."
"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."
"There is room for improvement with the new UI, and that's about it. I would like to see a more intuitive design."
"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."
"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."
"It's my understanding that the reporting aspect of the solution could be improved. It should be more flexible and robust."
"We have a problem with the CrowdStrike Falcon Complete agent. It was closing the communication with the network or other computers."
"The support from CrowdStrike Falcon Complete is very fast. The support could improve if it was in the French language."
"It has a lot of false positives, which can be an issue, but you can verify these false positives."
"Pricing is definitely a problem. It could be cheaper for licensing."
"There is room for improvement in the AI of CrowdStrike, known as Charlotte AI, which my team does not currently use. Additionally, patch management in vulnerabilities needs improvement."
"It would be nice to have full-scale ESR reporting."
"In a future release, it would be ideal if they could add reporting and action histories to their suite of features."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."
"I've told CRITICALSTART that I think the managed service they provide is cheaper than it should be. It's a really good deal."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"The pricing is a little bit higher than other OEM competitors in the market, like SentinelOne and Trend Micro."
"The solution needs to have human involvement, they could improve by having more automation where the solution can take the necessary action on time and more accurately."
"The licenses are sold per user."
"The licensing cost for this solution is $5000 per license, with each machine requiring its own license."
"We pay $50,000 for the 200 endpoints we have."
"While CrowdStrike Falcon Complete is expensive, it offers great features and functionality."
"There is a license needed to use the solution. The price of the solution is fair."
"We have a yearly license, and it could be cheaper."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Real Estate/Law Firm
11%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Healthcare Company
8%
Manufacturing Company
6%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Computer Software Company
9%
Healthcare Company
6%
Financial Services Firm
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.
885,667 professionals have used our research since 2012.