CrowdStrike vs Webroot and ThreatDown (Malwarebytes): Which Fits MSPs and IT Teams

Searching "CrowdStrike vs Webroot" or "CrowdStrike vs Malwarebytes" in 2026 means comparing two brands that changed their names, plus one that didn't. Webroot's business line now ships as OpenText Core Endpoint Protection, and Malwarebytes sells to businesses as ThreatDown. This comparison maps the old names to the new products, then puts their November 2026 prices, test records and MSP programmes beside CrowdStrike Falcon.

TL;DR

• Short answer. CrowdStrike is the higher-cost platform with threat intelligence and Falcon Complete, ThreatDown publishes the cheapest EDR tier of the three, and OpenText Core Endpoint Protection is a lightweight prevention agent with an MSP billing platform behind it.
• Names. Webroot Business is now OpenText Cybersecurity, and Malwarebytes for Business became ThreatDown in November 2023.
• Price. At 20 devices, ThreatDown Advanced EDR lists at $1,580 a year, while CrowdStrike's EDR tier is Falcon Enterprise at $3,699.80.
• MSP billing. OpenText bills MSPs month to month through Secure Cloud, ThreatDown runs OneView, and CrowdStrike goes through partners and distributors.

Who Is Who in 2026

Webroot has sat in MSP stacks for years. It was bought by Carbonite in 2019, and OpenText bought Carbonite in December 2019. The business products kept the Webroot name for years. They don't anymore. OpenText's legacy Webroot page says Webroot Business "is now part of OpenText Cybersecurity", while the Webroot brand carries on for consumer products.

The product itself is the same agent with a new label. Webroot Business Endpoint Protection is sold as OpenText Core Endpoint Protection, and an August 2025 agent release rebranded the agent's interface to OpenText. Existing customers still use the Webroot support portals. If a client's quote says "OpenText Core" and their laptop tray says Webroot, nothing went wrong.

ThreatDown is the business half of Malwarebytes. The company split the brand in November 2023: Malwarebytes for consumers, ThreatDown for businesses and MSPs. One agent, one cloud console called Nebula, and OneView for MSPs managing many clients. Our ThreatDown review covers the bundles in depth.

CrowdStrike is the only one of the three that kept its name. It sells Falcon as bundles and modules on one sensor, and its pricing page lists three self-serve tiers. Everything above them is quoted.

How Each One Detects

CrowdStrike runs one sensor per device and does most of its correlation in the cloud. The Falcon sensor streams process, file and network events to the Threat Graph, which links activity across every customer. Machine learning on the device still blocks known-bad files when a laptop is offline. The Falcon sensor guide covers the agent and how it installs.

OpenText Core Endpoint Protection is built to be light. The product page describes real-time machine learning, OpenText Threat Intelligence in the cloud and an agent that "installs in seconds". Its FAQ says the base product includes some EDR features, device isolation and process visualisation, while full EDR is a separate product, OpenText Core EDR. So the base agent is mostly prevention, with response tools added at the next tier.

ThreatDown stacks its tiers on one agent. Core is next-gen antivirus with device control, application block and vulnerability assessment. Advanced adds EDR, ransomware rollback of up to seven days, patch management and host firewall management. Elite adds 24/7 MDR, and Ultimate adds MDR Plus and identity threat detection.

The useful way to compare them is by job. Prevention is the base layer all three sell. Detection and response, the recorded history an analyst needs to investigate, starts at Falcon Enterprise, ThreatDown Advanced and OpenText Core EDR. Managed response by the vendor's own analysts starts at Falcon Complete, ThreatDown Elite and OpenText MDR.

What the Independent Tests Show

The three vendors don't sit in the same lab tests, so there's no single scoreboard. CrowdStrike Falcon Enterprise is in AV-Comparatives' Business Security Test H1 2026, published 15 July 2026. It blocked 98.5% of 400 real-world attack cases, with six compromised, and 99.7% in the malware protection test, with zero false alarms on business software.

ThreatDown's test record comes from MRG Effitas, a lab that runs a quarterly 360 assessment. In March 2025 MRG Effitas named ThreatDown its EPP Product of the Year 2025 and said it was the only product on the panel with level 1 certification in every category for 14 quarters in a row. ThreatDown isn't in the AV-Comparatives business test, and CrowdStrike isn't on the MRG Effitas panel.

OpenText has no 2026 business-lab result we could find. It isn't on the AV-Comparatives H1 2026 business list. The PassMark benchmarks OpenText cites for Webroot cover its consumer products, and they measure speed and footprint, not detection.

What that means for a buyer: the labs answer different questions. AV-Comparatives and MRG Effitas measure blocking, and a PassMark score measures how light an agent runs. Ask each vendor for its latest third-party result on the product tier you're quoting, with the date, and run your own trial on your heaviest machines.

Pricing as of November 2026

Two of the three publish list prices, so the table compares 20 devices on one year. CrowdStrike's figures come from its pricing page, read on 9 November 2026. ThreatDown's come from its pricing page as read on 22 October 2026, since the page now shows local currency by region.

OpenText doesn't put a list price on its endpoint page. The page's buy button opens a Webroot cart for a five-seat, one-year licence, and that cart showed no price from our region on 9 November 2026, per the Core Endpoint Protection page. Ask OpenText or your distributor for a current number.

Read the table by job, not by row. For EDR, ThreatDown Advanced at $79 a device costs less than half of Falcon Enterprise at $184.99. For managed response, ThreatDown Elite lists at $99, while Falcon Complete is quoted on top of a platform tier. The ThreatDown store takes 5 to 20 devices, per its pricing page, and Falcon Go stops at 100, so larger fleets get a quote from both.

None of these prices covers the rest of the stack. Remote access, patch schedules, scripting and ticketing still sit in a management layer on all three. Flamingo builds OpenFrame, which competes with some of the tools covered here: open, AI-native infrastructure for IT and security that runs its own RMM next to any of these agents. At $1 per device a month with 10M AI tokens included, per OpenFrame pricing, the same 20 devices add $240 a year.

MSP Programmes and Billing

OpenText sells to MSPs through Secure Cloud, its multi-tenant partner console. Its cybersecurity site says partners can "license, manage, configure and bill" across their client base, month to month, with no long-term commitments. The endpoint FAQ lists integrations with more than 40 third-party tools, RMMs included. Partner rates are quoted, not published.

ThreatDown runs OneView, a multi-tenant console that tracks usage and billing per client, down to the site. MSPs buy through the ThreatDown partner programme or a distributor such as Pax8, and those rates are quoted too. The ThreatDown review has the integration list for RMM and PSA tools.

CrowdStrike licenses MSPs as partners who manage a client's own Falcon instance, or as service providers who buy licences and bundle them into their own service. Flight Control, the parent and child tenant model, keeps each client's data separate. MSPs on r/msp report 100-seat starts through distributors, and the CrowdStrike for MSPs guide walks through each route.

Price is where MSPs compare ThreatDown and CrowdStrike most directly. In a July 2025 r/msp thread about a ThreatDown OneView trial, one MSP said the EDR and MDR bundle "puts you in S1/CS territory", meaning SentinelOne and CrowdStrike pricing. The Malwarebytes CEO replied in the same thread.

Managed Detection: Who Watches the Console at 3am

All three sell a managed service, and they package it differently. Falcon Complete is CrowdStrike's own analysts hunting, containing and remediating inside your tenant. It's quoted per endpoint on top of a platform tier. The Falcon Complete review covers what it takes off your plate.

ThreatDown puts MDR into the bundle ladder. Elite adds 24/7 human-led monitoring and response, plus ThreatDown AI. Ultimate adds MDR Plus, identity threat detection and premium support. Because Elite has a list price, an MSP can price MDR for a 20-seat client without a sales call.

OpenText sells MDR as its own service. Its site describes a 24/7 MDR that pairs AI-powered alert prioritisation with human-led investigation. First-hand MSP reports on it are thin in public, so ask for references from MSPs your size. Our guide to what MDR covers explains which work the analysts take and which stays with your technicians.

The IT Operations Angle

Security agents now reach into IT work, and here the three differ most. ThreatDown Advanced includes patch management, vulnerability assessment, host firewall management and Windows drive encryption in the same bundle as EDR. For a small team without an RMM, that's patching and endpoint security on one bill.

CrowdStrike sells this as a separate module. Falcon for IT, quoted on top of a Falcon bundle, queries live endpoint state with osquery, pushes scripts to the hosts a query returns and patches by exploitation likelihood. The Falcon for IT review covers where it overlaps an RMM and where it stops.

OpenText leans on integrations instead. The Core Endpoint Protection page points to RMM and automation tools rather than a patch module of its own, which fits its MSP-first design: the RMM patches, the agent protects. ThreatDown's own walkthrough of the Nebula console, published in October 2026, shows how EDR, ITDR and MDR sit in one place.

For an MSP the overlap matters less than it looks. The RMM already patches every client, and moving thirty tenants' patch windows into a security console is a project of its own. For an in-house team without an RMM, ThreatDown Advanced is the cheapest way here to close the loop from finding to fix.

What Practitioners Report

The most detailed account on r/msp in 2025 is a migration. In August 2025 a small MSP posted that it had moved 188 endpoints from Webroot to ThreatDown. The cleanup found 29 malware infections and about 8,700 potentially unwanted programs. The poster also said it moved up from endpoint protection to EDR for what it had been paying for Webroot.

Treat that as one fleet's result, not a benchmark. A migration surfaces everything the new agent's first full scan finds, and PUPs are mostly toolbars and bundled software, not attacks. What it does show is the practical test for any switch: run the new agent's first scan on a few clients before you commit the whole book.

Who It Fits: MSPs and In-House IT Teams

For an MSP. OpenText Core Endpoint Protection fits a book of small clients that already runs it, where a light agent and month-to-month Secure Cloud billing keep things simple. ThreatDown fits an MSP that wants EDR, rollback and patching on one agent with a list price it can quote. CrowdStrike fits clients whose insurers or contracts name it, and MSPs with the seat volume the partner route expects.

For an in-house IT team. Under 20 devices, ThreatDown and CrowdStrike both sell online, and Falcon Go is the cheaper entry at $59.99 a device. If an auditor or insurer asks for EDR by name, compare ThreatDown Advanced at $79 against Falcon Enterprise at $184.99 on CrowdStrike's list. For OpenText, get a quote with Core EDR included so the comparison is like for like.

For both. Check the brand on the quote against the product you think you're buying, because two of these three changed names in the last three years. The endpoint security guide explains which of EPP, EDR and MDR a fleet needs before it pays for any of them.

The short answer: ThreatDown is the lowest listed price for EDR and MDR of the three, OpenText Core Endpoint Protection is the familiar Webroot agent under a new name with MSP billing behind it, and CrowdStrike is the premium platform with Falcon Complete and Flight Control.

If the price is the open question, start with the CrowdStrike pricing breakdown.

For one more low-cost option, read the CrowdStrike vs Bitdefender comparison.