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CRITICALSTART vs Fortinet FortiSOAR comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 5, 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 Security Orchestration Automation and Response (SOAR)
31st
Average Rating
9.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
10
Ranking in other categories
Managed Detection and Response (MDR) (32nd)
Fortinet FortiSOAR
Ranking in Security Orchestration Automation and Response (SOAR)
10th
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
16
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2025, in the Security Orchestration Automation and Response (SOAR) category, the mindshare of CRITICALSTART is 0.2%, up from 0.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Fortinet FortiSOAR is 4.2%, up from 3.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Security Orchestration Automation and Response (SOAR)
 

Featured Reviews

PB
Saves my team time and alert fatigue, allowing us to concentrate on more important things
The Trusted Behavior Registry helps resolve alerts in the sense that CRITICALSTART is doing a lot of that initial triage for me. Out of a given 500,000 events and alerts, for example, that come through, they're taking out 495,000 of them. That only leaves me with a subset of that to actually have to triage, and that's where it benefits us. They take care of Tier-1 and Tier-2 triage. And 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. Also, the intuitiveness of the updated user interface for the service is spot-on. It is much easier to navigate, and know where to navigate, in the newer interface. I've never had an issue with responsiveness. It's very quick and doesn't sit there and chug on anything. It's fast, it's efficient. It has enabled our SecOps team to take action faster because if you have multiple ways of connecting to it and actually getting your alerts answered and taking care of things fast, it is extremely helpful. All the information that you need to make a determination is usually in the alert itself that comes through the Zero-Trust Analytics Platform (ZTAP). I don't find myself going back to the app itself very often. That still happens, but not as often. The ability to flow the information forward, from the alert standpoint, helps me because it saves me from running back to get the information. It's improved my efficiency. Finally, there haven't been any data sources that the service wasn't able to integrate with.
Augustine Onewo - PeerSpot reviewer
Inexpensive while enhancing security operations with intuitive automation tools
Usually, FortiSOAR is used for some of our security operation tasks where it is necessary to ascertain the integrity of threat vectors and then take action against them. In addition, we automate other processes within our security operations procedure through FortiSOAR FortiSOAR is really…

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"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."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"The good news is that FortiSOAR is not hard to maintain. If you prepared well and deployed strong initially, then maintenance will take half an hour every other week, not more than that. A single person can do it."
"It's great that the solution is integrated with FortiAnalyzer."
"Fortinet FortiSOAR is a very interactive and user-friendly solution."
"Generally, the tool helps just automating a lot of manual load or repetitive tasks."
"The most fascinating aspect of FortiSOAR is its modern and simple to understand and operate dashboards."
"We use the product for security."
"The most valuable feature of Fortinet FortiSOAR is the number of available connectors and the simplicity to start to automate."
"It has a quick detection and response time."
 

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."
"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."
"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. That's something we've asked for, for years, and it just doesn't really seem like it's a priority."
"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..."
"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 area that needs improvement is integration with multiple third-party vendors."
"The technology and integrations are important so should continue to be enhanced."
"The solution lacks proper documentation, so we have to test and trial each playbook and integration."
"Fortinet FortiSOAR's dashboard is not easy to understand."
"Technical support could be improved."
"The UI design of the solution needs to be changed since it can get difficult for a newbie to operate."
"The solution doesn't connect well with the network devices."
"Fortinet's tech support overall is not great when they are at their best."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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 of other services was so insane that they weren't even an option."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"It costs a lot for what we felt comfortable to spend."
"The price of the product should be lower. The brand value that Fortinet has, it has the reputation of being a reasonably priced product, and they have an enormous customer base in India. Most of the SME market is covered by FortiGate firewalls. It becomes an easy way for consultants, such as us, or even system integrators, to open the door with the Fortinet product lines."
"The solution offers both licensing and subscription models that are similar in price to other products."
"Fortinet FortiSOAR is expensive."
"Considering all the features of Fortinet FortiSOAR, I think it has a good price."
"If you compare Fortinet FortiSOAR's price with the prices of the market leader, Palo Alto, then it can be considered a cheaper product."
"Since Africa is struggling with foreign exchange, the solution is pretty expensive there."
"Fortinet FortiSOAR is an expensive solution."
"Pricing is fine compared to other solutions."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
12%
Healthcare Company
11%
Real Estate/Law Firm
10%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Computer Software Company
17%
Financial Services Firm
11%
University
7%
Healthcare Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

Ask a question
Earn 20 points
What do you like most about Fortinet FortiSOAR?
Fortinet FortiSOAR is a very interactive and user-friendly solution.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Fortinet FortiSOAR?
FortiSOAR is considered costly, and I would rate its pricing at three out of ten, where one is high and ten is low.
What needs improvement with Fortinet FortiSOAR?
FortiSOAR needs to improve the response time for executing playbooks. Compared to IBM Resilient, the execution time for playbooks is slower. Additionally, FortiSOAR should include more ready-to-use...
 

Also Known As

Critical Start, CriticalStart
CyberSponse, FortiSOAR
 

Overview

Find out what your peers are saying about CRITICALSTART vs. Fortinet FortiSOAR and other solutions. Updated: March 2025.
847,625 professionals have used our research since 2012.