Managing on-call responsibilities is a significant challenge, especially for modern distributed teams working across different time zones. Without the right tools, ensuring rapid incident response can lead to alert fatigue, team burnout, and ultimately, system unreliability. Effective on-call software is no longer a luxury; it's a critical component of a resilient engineering culture.
This article provides a guide to choosing the best oncall software for teams spread across the globe. We'll explore the essential features to look for and compare top solutions to help you find the perfect fit for your organization's needs.
What to Look for in On-Call Software for Distributed Teams
Choosing the right software starts with understanding the core features that enable distributed teams to thrive. The ideal tool doesn't just send alerts; it orchestrates a calm, predictable, and effective response. Here are the key criteria for evaluating on-call solutions.
Flexible & Timezone-Aware Scheduling
For a distributed team, a one-size-fits-all schedule is a recipe for failure. Your software must handle complex rotations that account for different time zones, regional holidays, and individual team member availability. Look for features like multi-person rotations, layered coverage (e.g., primary and secondary responders), and the ability to define schedules based on business hours. Crucially, the system should allow for easy overrides for sick days or vacations without disrupting the entire schedule. As one buyer's guide notes, effective on-call scheduling and escalation are key criteria for evaluating any tool in this space [4]. Modern platforms allow for creating detailed on-call schedules that give teams control over their own rotations.
Robust Escalation Policies
A critical alert cannot be missed. Automated escalation is a non-negotiable feature that ensures every issue gets the attention it deserves. A robust escalation policy will automatically route an unacknowledged alert to the next person or team in the chain. This creates a safety net, guaranteeing that even if the primary responder is unavailable, the incident is still addressed promptly. Look for the ability to create multi-step escalation paths and define different rules based on the alert's source or urgency.
Multi-Channel Notifications
Reaching responders reliably means meeting them where they are, through the channels they use. A system that relies solely on email is insufficient. The best on-call software supports a wide range of notification methods, including:
- Voice calls that can override a phone's do-not-disturb settings
- SMS messages
- Mobile push notifications
- Email alerts
- Direct messages in collaboration tools like Slack
This mobile-first approach ensures that alerts are not just sent but are seen and acknowledged quickly [3].
Seamless Integration with Your Toolchain
On-call software doesn't operate in a vacuum. It must integrate smoothly with your existing monitoring, observability, and communication tools, such as Datadog, Grafana, Sentry, and Slack. Strong integrations create a unified workflow, allowing data to flow seamlessly from alert detection to resolution. This prevents context switching and ensures that responders have all the information they need within a single platform, right from the moment an incident is declared.
Top On-Call Software Solutions for Distributed Teams
Based on the criteria above, here is a curated list of the best on-call software solutions designed to support modern, distributed engineering teams.
1. Rootly: Best for Integrated On-Call and Incident Management
Rootly stands out as the top choice for teams that want a single, unified platform for both on-call scheduling and end-to-end incident management. It combines flexible schedules, powerful escalation policies, live call routing, and heartbeats to ensure the right person is always notified.
Rootly's core strength is its ability to centralize responsibility and eliminate the manual coordination that plagues many on-call teams. By integrating on-call management directly into the incident response workflow, it creates a seamless path from alert to resolution. This holistic approach helps reduce cognitive load on responders and ensures every critical signal is acted upon. You can get started with Rootly On-Call to explore its core functionalities.
2. PagerDuty: The Enterprise-Grade Veteran
PagerDuty is an established leader in the digital operations space, recognized for its powerful automation capabilities and an extensive library of integrations. It's a proven solution for large enterprises with complex and mature IT and DevOps environments [7]. Its power and breadth of features can also mean a steeper learning curve and a higher price point, which might be a significant consideration for smaller teams.
3. Upstat: Visual and Flexible Scheduling
Upstat excels at providing a highly visual and intuitive on-call scheduling experience. Its visual timeline makes it easy to see who is on call at a glance, and features like timezone-aware shifts and simple roster management are designed to reduce burnout [5]. While its strength is in scheduling and making rotations clear, teams may need to integrate it with a separate incident management tool to handle the full response lifecycle.
4. Opsgenie: Best for Atlassian-Centric Teams
For teams heavily invested in the Atlassian ecosystem (Jira, Confluence, Bitbucket), Opsgenie is often the natural choice. Its deep integration with Jira allows for a smooth flow of information between incident alerts and project tracking tickets [6]. This tight coupling is a major advantage for Atlassian shops, but teams that use different project management tools might find a more platform-agnostic solution offers greater flexibility.
5. SIGNL4: Mobile-First Alerting
SIGNL4 is built with a strong mobile-first philosophy, making it ideal for teams where responders are frequently on the go and away from their desks [3]. It focuses on reliable, persistent mobile notifications and integrated communication. Its approach is effective for field service and operational technology teams in addition to IT.
How Rootly Unifies On-Call and Incident Management
Rootly’s integrated approach offers unique advantages for distributed teams by consolidating workflows and creating a single source of truth.
A Single Source of Truth for On-Call Responsibility
With Rootly, on-call schedules, escalation policies, and team ownership are centralized in one place. This eliminates ambiguity about who is responsible at any given moment. Teams can own and manage their schedules, and alerts from specific services are automatically routed to the correct on-call responder, ensuring clear accountability.
From Alert to Resolution in One Seamless Workflow
The end-to-end process in Rootly is designed for efficiency. An alert from a tool like Datadog can automatically trigger an on-call notification. Once the responder acknowledges it, they can declare an incident with a single click. This action instantly creates a dedicated Slack channel, starts an incident timeline, and makes collaborative tools available, all within the same platform. Rootly manages the entire incident lifecycle, from the initial alert to the final retrospective.
Built for Collaboration in Slack
For distributed teams, Slack is the digital headquarters. Rootly allows teams to manage the entire on-call and incident response process without leaving Slack. Responders can acknowledge alerts, escalate to the next person on call, run automated workflows to communicate with stakeholders, and collaborate on a resolution, all from their primary communication tool.
Best Practices for On-Call Management with Distributed Teams
The right tool is only part of the equation. Adopting these actionable best practices is essential for a successful and sustainable on-call strategy.
Simplify Rotations and Schedules
Use clear, descriptive names for schedules (e.g., "us-east-backend-primary") to avoid confusion. Keep rotation cycles simple and predictable. For global teams, always use timezone-aware settings to ensure shifts are fair and handoffs are clear. Well-managed on-call schedules are the foundation of a healthy on-call culture.
Use Business Hours to Prevent Burnout
Not every alert requires an immediate, middle-of-the-night response. Configure different notification rules for working hours versus after-hours and weekends. For lower-priority issues, you might choose to send an email or a Slack message during business hours, reserving aggressive paging for critical, service-impacting events.
Automate Communications and Repetitive Tasks
Free up your responders to focus on diagnosis and resolution, not administrative toil. Use workflows to automate repetitive tasks like notifying stakeholders in a status channel, creating Jira tickets, updating a status page, or pulling in relevant logs and metrics.
Regularly Review On-Call Performance
Periodically review on-call metrics to identify areas for improvement. Are alerts frequently going unacknowledged? Are escalations happening too often for a particular service? Answering these questions can help you refine your schedules, improve your alerting rules, and address underlying system issues.
Conclusion
Choosing the best on-call software for distributed teams requires a focus on flexible, timezone-aware scheduling, robust escalation policies, and seamless integrations with your existing toolchain. While several strong contenders exist, each with its own tradeoffs, a unified platform offers significant advantages.
Rootly stands out by uniquely combining on-call management with a comprehensive incident response platform. This integrated approach creates a single, automated workflow that reduces manual coordination and empowers distributed teams to resolve issues faster. By centralizing responsibility and building the entire workflow within collaboration tools like Slack, Rootly helps enhance reliability while promoting a sustainable on-call culture.
Ready to see how a unified platform can transform your on-call management? Get started with Rootly to learn how you can reduce manual work and improve your team's incident response.