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CRITICALSTART vs LMNTRIX Active Defense comparison

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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)
27th
Average Rating
9.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
10
Ranking in other categories
Security Orchestration Automation and Response (SOAR) (24th)
LMNTRIX Active Defense
Ranking in Managed Detection and Response (MDR)
39th
Average Rating
9.8
Reviews Sentiment
8.0
Number of Reviews
5
Ranking in other categories
Threat Deception Platforms (14th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of October 2026, in the Managed Detection and Response (MDR) category, the mindshare of CRITICALSTART is 1.3%, up from 0.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of LMNTRIX Active Defense is 0.9%, up from 0.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Managed Detection and Response (MDR) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
CRITICALSTART1.3%
LMNTRIX Active Defense0.9%
Other97.8%
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.
EQ
Chief Information Officer at The C&S Companies
It gives us fantastic information about the security of our environment
The dashboard can seem overwhelming at times. It's fairly simple for the end user, and we don't need to do much to make it work, but the dashboard makes it seem a little more complicated than it actually is. There could also be more guidance on how to set up playbooks.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"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."
"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 biggest lesson is transitioning from alert overload to being at a point where we do have eyes on alerts, where every alert is truly possible."
"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."
"We are absolutely seeing return on our investment from CRITICALSTART's services, as they're doing the job of a 24/7 SOC at a fraction of the price that it would cost me to run it myself."
"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."
"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."
"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 sleep better at night knowing that LMNTRIX is monitoring our systems and has the ability to respond to threats as they happen."
"Customer service is stellar and they really care about their customers."
"I have no regrets about standardizing on LMNTRIX as our endpoint protection agent."
"LMNTRIX first validates incidents before alerting us of the activity, so we're not inundated with false positives."
"The fact that it's constantly hunting, looking for anomalies, and can evict without any intervention is really incredible."
"We have a dedicated technical representative that is very responsive."
"LMNTRIX gives us fantastic information about the security of our environment. It tells us about possible threats and how to fix any issues."
"For companies like us that couldn't afford to setup and staff a 24/7 SOC, LMNTRIX is the perfect solution."
 

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 biggest room for improvement is not necessarily in their service or offering, but in the products that they support."
"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."
"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 costs a lot for what we felt comfortable to spend."
"They could dig a little bit deeper into the Splunk alerts when they feel like they need to be escalated to us."
"The dashboard can seem overwhelming at times."
"The portal is still a bit buggy, although it's new and still being refined."
"The next release might include a monthly newsletter."
"The only multifactor authentication that is available is Google Authenticator. I would love to see other multifactor applications added to this list as well as physical devices such as Yubikey."
"The only multifactor authentication that is available is Google Authenticator."
"The dashboard can seem overwhelming at times. It's fairly simple for the end user, and we don't need to do much to make it work, but the dashboard makes it seem a little more complicated than it actually is. There could also be more guidance on how to set up playbooks."
"In the beginning, we were having issues with the LMNTRIX respond agent not playing nice with Cisco AMP."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."
"The pricing of other services was so insane that they weren't even an option."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"It's not the cheapest solution, but you certainly get what you paid for."
"The cost is going to be a little higher than traditional endpoint protection, but you are getting the 24/7 monitoring and validation by highly skilled analysts and that makes it worth it."
"The pricing and ease of install are great!"
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Outsourcing Company
17%
Construction Company
11%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Construction Company
18%
Financial Services Firm
17%
Outsourcing Company
8%
University
7%
 

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
Alliance Funding Group (AFG) - USA Kestrel Coal - Australia Success Resources - Malaysia
Find out what your peers are saying about CRITICALSTART vs. LMNTRIX Active Defense and other solutions. Updated: September 2026.
917,433 professionals have used our research since 2012.