Best On-Call Software 2026: Rootly Stops Alert Fatigue

Alert fatigue is a major cause of burnout for engineering and Site Reliability Engineering (SRE) teams. When responders are constantly bombarded with notifications, they become desensitized, and critical alerts can easily get lost in the noise. With the average cost of downtime exceeding $300,000 per hour for many companies, the pressure on teams to maintain high uptime has never been greater.

The solution isn't just working harder; it's working smarter with modern on-call software. These platforms help manage alerts intelligently, reduce noise, and prevent burnout. This article reviews the best oncall software for teams in 2026, focusing on how top incident management tools like Rootly are specifically designed to combat alert fatigue.

What Is Alert Fatigue and Why Is It Getting Worse?

Alert fatigue is the desensitization of responders to alerts due to an excessive number of frequent, non-actionable notifications. This has serious negative consequences, including slower response times, a higher risk of missing critical incidents, and increased engineer burnout and turnover.

The problem is getting worse because of the rising complexity of tech stacks. The growth of microservices and complex cloud environments has led to an explosion in monitoring data, which can quickly create an overwhelming storm of alerts if not managed properly. Effective incident management software uses features like AI integration and instant alerting to help teams distinguish signal from noise [3].

Core Features of the Best On-Call Software for Teams

Modern on-call software goes far beyond simple paging. Here are the essential features teams should look for:

• Intelligent Alerting and Routing: Look for features that de-duplicate, suppress, and group noisy alerts into a single, actionable incident. This helps responders see the bigger picture. Routing rules should also be able to direct alerts to the correct on-call team based on the service, severity, or other custom properties.
• Automated and Flexible Escalation Policies: Automated escalations ensure an alert is never missed. If the primary on-call engineer doesn't respond, the system automatically progresses to the next person or channel. The best tools allow for different escalation paths for business hours versus after-hours. For instance, Rootly gives teams granular control over who gets paged and when, which you can learn about as you get started with the platform.
• On-Call Schedule Management: Your software should make it easy to create schedules, manage rotations across different time zones, and handle temporary overrides for shift handoffs.
• Deep Integrations and Collaboration: A critical feature is the ability to integrate with your entire DevOps toolchain. This includes monitoring tools (Datadog, Sentry), communication platforms (Slack), and ticketing systems (Jira).
• Analytics and Reporting: Tracking on-call metrics like unacknowledged alerts and mean time to acknowledge (MTTA) helps teams identify areas for improvement and balance workloads more effectively.

Top Incident Management and On-Call Tools for 2026

Here's a comparative look at the leading platforms for on-call management and incident response.

Rootly: The Modern Choice for Automation and Reliability

Rootly is a leader in the incident management space, purpose-built for engineering teams focused on automating the incident lifecycle and reducing manual work.

Key features include:

• Workflow automation that handles repetitive tasks like creating communication channels, inviting responders, and sending status updates.
• Intelligent alert grouping that reduces noise and prevents fatigue by consolidating related alerts.
• A deep, native Slack integration that allows teams to manage the entire incident lifecycle from their chat client.

Rootly provides an end-to-end platform, from detection and response to retrospectives. You can explore its full capabilities in this overview of incident management.

Best For: Modern engineering organizations aiming to build a mature reliability strategy.

PagerDuty: The Established Incumbent

PagerDuty is one of the most widely adopted platforms for real-time response and alerting [2]. It's known for its reliable notifications and extensive library of integrations. However, as a legacy solution, its complexity and pricing lead many teams to search for modern PagerDuty alternatives that may be more innovative or cost-effective [8].

Best For: Enterprises seeking legacy compatibility and a long-standing market solution.

PagerDuty Alternatives Gaining Popularity

For teams exploring options beyond the incumbent, several strong alternatives are gaining traction.

Zenduty

Zenduty is a strong PagerDuty alternative focused on SRE best practices [6]. It claims to be more cost-effective while offering powerful features like dynamic escalations and a focus on post-mortems [7].

Best For: Fast-growing teams looking for a feature-rich, cost-effective PagerDuty alternative.

Opsgenie (by Atlassian)

As part of the Atlassian suite, Opsgenie is a robust tool for alerting and on-call scheduling. It is a particularly compelling choice for teams already invested in the Atlassian ecosystem with tools like Jira and Confluence.

Best For: Teams prioritizing alerting and on-call scheduling within an Atlassian-centric workflow.

Better Stack

Better Stack is a unified platform that combines monitoring, logging, and incident management into a single solution. Its all-in-one approach appeals to developer-focused teams who want to simplify their toolchain with an integrated observability and response platform [1].

Best For: Teams seeking an integrated monitoring and incident response platform.

Comparison Table: Best On-Call Software 2026

Feature

Rootly

PagerDuty

Zenduty

Opsgenie

Alert Intelligence (De-duplication & Grouping)

Advanced, automated grouping

Yes, with configuration

Yes

Yes

Workflow Automation

Extensive, no-code engine

Available, requires configuration

Available

Available, rule-based

Slack-Native Experience

Fully native; manage incidents in Slack

Integration available, less native

Integration available

Integration available

Post-Incident Learning

Built-in, customizable retrospectives

Add-on feature

Integrated post-mortems

Integration with Confluence

Pricing Model

Per-user, feature-rich tiers

Per-user, tiered features

Per-user, often more cost-effective

Per-user, bundled with Atlassian

While all these tools offer on-call management, Rootly excels in automating the entire lifecycle, which is the key to truly stopping alert fatigue. You can see how various tools compare in this incident management platform showdown.

How Rootly Actively Prevents On-Call Burnout

Rootly includes specific mechanisms designed to reduce the manual work that leads to on-call burnout.

From Alert Storms to a Single, Actionable Incident

Rootly ingests alerts from sources like Datadog or Sentry and automatically groups them into one organized incident. This transforms dozens of noisy notifications into a single, actionable event, providing responders with context instead of chaos. This is a core part of Rootly's approach to detection and alerting.

Smart Escalations That Respect Responders' Time

Rootly's escalation policies can be configured with business-hour logic to avoid paging engineers for non-critical issues at night. If an alert is unacknowledged, Rootly reliably escalates it until someone responds, ensuring nothing is missed without unnecessarily waking the whole team. It's easy to configure these policies as you get started with Rootly.

Centralized Communication and Automated Status Updates

Rootly automates stakeholder communication, freeing up responders to focus on the resolution. Workflows can post to status pages or notify leadership based on incident severity or status changes, keeping everyone informed without manual effort.

Conclusion: Move Beyond Paging and Embrace Automation

The best on-call software in 2026 does more than just paging; it uses intelligent automation to reduce noise, provide context, and protect engineers' time.

While PagerDuty remains a major player, modern alternatives like Rootly are purpose-built to solve the alert fatigue crisis [5]. When evaluating tools, advise your team to look beyond basic alerting and consider which platform best fits your integration needs, automation goals, and collaboration style.

To see how Rootly's automation can stop alert fatigue and improve your team's reliability, start a free trial or book a demo today.

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