Best Endpoint Security for Small Business: Huntress vs. SentinelOne vs. CrowdStrike

Small businesses are the most common ransomware target because they usually lack proper endpoint security. Here's how the three dominant EDR platforms compare at small-business scale.

By The StackMatch Research Team

Huntress Managed EDR, SentinelOne, and CrowdStrike Falcon pricing varies by team size — choose based on headcount, not features

~$85/moHuntress Managed EDR

typically $12-18/endpoint/moSentinelOne

typically $15-25/endpoint/moCrowdStrike Falcon

All three tools serve the same category. The wrong pick means paying for complexity you don't use — or outgrowing simplicity too fast.

Monthly cost comparison

Huntress Managed EDR: ~$85/mo for 10 endpoints — the small-business default

Huntress is the EDR platform we see in virtually every curated vertical at ~$85/mo for a 10-endpoint deployment. It's the right choice for most small businesses because it's designed for teams without a dedicated security person — the 24/7 human monitoring is included, the alerts are actionable (not noise), and the setup is minimal. Huntress doesn't require a security engineer to interpret logs. The trade-off is that it's less customizable than enterprise EDR platforms — but most small businesses don't need that customization.

SentinelOne: typically $12-18/endpoint/mo — the automated-response option

SentinelOne is the strongest alternative to Huntress, especially for businesses that want automated threat remediation (killing malicious processes, isolating infected endpoints) without waiting for human analysts. It's priced at roughly $12-18 per endpoint per month, which scales to $120-180/mo for 10 endpoints — more expensive than Huntress but with deeper automation. The downside is that SentinelOne requires more internal technical knowledge to manage false positives and policy configuration.

Endpoint tools only work if every device is actually enrolled — the gap is usually a laptop nobody onboarded, not a missing feature.

The most expensive EDR mistake isn't picking the wrong vendor — it's buying a policy-heavy platform like SentinelOne with no one assigned to tune the alerts, so real threats get buried in noise the same way an unmonitored antivirus popup gets dismissed.

CrowdStrike Falcon: typically $15-25/endpoint/mo — the enterprise-grade choice

CrowdStrike is the dominant EDR in the enterprise world and increasingly available to small businesses through MSPs and managed security providers. At $15-25 per endpoint per month, it's the most expensive of the three. The technology is genuinely best-in-class — the threat intelligence and detection capabilities are unmatched — but the complexity is real. CrowdStrike is only the right choice for small businesses that have an IT provider managing it for them, or that handle particularly sensitive data (healthcare PHI, financial client data) where the compliance stakes justify the cost.

A ransomware incident at a 15-person business routinely costs more in downtime and recovery than five years of any of these three subscriptions combined — that's the number to weigh against the monthly fee, not "do we really need this."

The actual decision rule

Questions to ask before choosing an EDR platform

Do we have no dedicated IT staff? Huntress's human-monitored alerts are built for exactly that gap.
Do we have a technical person who can tune policies and triage automated alerts? SentinelOne's automated response is worth the added cost then.
Do we handle regulated data — healthcare PHI, financial client records, legal files? CrowdStrike's audit trail and detection depth justify the premium if someone manages it.
Are we currently relying on Windows Defender or free antivirus alone? Any of these three is a real upgrade — the specific choice matters less than making one before an incident forces it.

Run the free audit to see whether your current security stack meets the baseline for your industry and team size — and which EDR platform fits your actual threat model.

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