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CRITICALSTART vs eSentire 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) (27th)
eSentire
Ranking in Managed Detection and Response (MDR)
26th
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
2
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2026, in the Managed Detection and Response (MDR) category, the mindshare of CRITICALSTART is 0.9%, up from 0.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of eSentire is 1.4%, down from 1.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Managed Detection and Response (MDR) Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
eSentire1.4%
CRITICALSTART0.9%
Other97.7%
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.
reviewer2136705 - PeerSpot reviewer
Independent Information Technology Consultant at a non-profit with 1-10 employees
A solid product for security, but the MSP program should be simpler
Their MSP program should be made much more simple. It's too convoluted in its process. They have two different kinds of people that sell their product. They have resellers and MSPs. A reseller would just be a company going and saying that I need licenses, and that in turn goes to eSentire, which then goes to the customer, and they do the transaction. We were on the MSP side. We were the ones who took a potential customer to eSentire, and we were the ones who closed the deals. We were the ones who went through everything, and in the end, it was just a notice saying that let's spin up a new tenant. That's the kind of difference we're talking about. From my standpoint, their MSP program, in general, needed to be worked on. It should be made much more simple. It's too convoluted in its process. I know it was in the process of being revamped, and as of the end of January, it was not finished. That was the last contact I had with eSentire, but I know that, at this point of the year, they were supposed to have rolled that new MSP program out to take care of all of the negative things. They were going through that process and making it much better. Once they get that implemented, they will be a good, solid vendor.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"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."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"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 Managed Detection and Response (MDR) feature was really good and most valuable. We were handling very sensitive data, and we needed a quick response in real-time, which eSentire provided. It was also cost-effective, and their SOC team was very responsive."
"The managed detection response (MDR) product was the most valuable."
 

Cons

"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."
"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."
"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 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 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."
"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. 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."
"The UI has become slower but it's not something I would call them out on."
"Its GUI can be a lot better."
"From my standpoint, their MSP program, in general, needed to be worked on. It should be made much more simple. It's too convoluted in its process. I know it was in the process of being revamped, and as of the end of January, it was not finished."
 

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."
"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."
"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 was cost-effective and not very expensive. Licensing was on a yearly basis. There were no additional costs to the standard licensing fee."
"The MSP model we were in needed some work. It was not MSP-friendly, which means that an MSP is going to say that I have five thousand endpoints that I will eventually get to you, but for now, we're gonna start moving and let me purchase a thousand. So, you buy a thousand licenses, and you ramp up to that thousand. When you're ready to move on, you buy the next how many. That's the way an MSP likes to work, whereas it was a little bit different with eSentire. You had to purchase specific amounts for specific customers. It wasn't very friendly when it came to pricing for MSPs."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Real Estate/Law Firm
16%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Healthcare Company
7%
Manufacturing Company
12%
Government
11%
Computer Software Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business4
Midsize Enterprise3
Large Enterprise4
No data available
 

Also Known As

Critical Start, CriticalStart
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Information Not Available
Melissa & Doug, Mavenir System, COMMONFUND
Find out what your peers are saying about CRITICALSTART vs. eSentire and other solutions. Updated: November 2025.
879,986 professionals have used our research since 2012.