Being on-call is a core practice for modern engineering teams. For Site Reliability Engineering (SRE), DevOps, and IT operations, it's the function that ensures services remain available and performant. However, manual on-call processes are often plagued by challenges like alert fatigue, slow response times, and responder burnout.
In 2026, the best oncall software for teams does much more than just page engineers. These platforms are designed to automate the entire incident management lifecycle, from the initial alert to the final resolution. This article compares the top on-call tools, with a special focus on their automation capabilities, to help you choose the right platform for your team.
What to Look for in Modern On-Call Software
Choosing the right on-call tool means evaluating key features that support a strong, automated incident response process. The goal is to find a platform that reduces manual work and stress for your responders.
Flexible On-Call Scheduling
Modern teams are often distributed across different locations and time zones, requiring sophisticated scheduling. Look for software that can handle complex rotations, multiple layers of coverage (like primary and secondary responders), and timezone-aware planning. It's also critical that the system allows for easy overrides when someone is unavailable, without needing to rebuild the entire schedule. A visual timeline helps engineers easily see and manage their shifts and coverage.
Smart Escalation Policies
Escalation policies are your safety net, ensuring that critical alerts are never missed. Modern tools let you define multi-step policies that can page different people or teams if an alert isn't acknowledged quickly. The most advanced software allows for dynamic escalation paths that change based on the alert's content or severity, making sure the most urgent issues get attention immediately.
Comprehensive Incident Management Integration
On-call management shouldn't be a separate, disconnected function. The best software integrates alerts and on-call paging directly into a larger incident management framework. This allows your team to move smoothly from detecting an alert to coordinating a response. Instead of just notifying a responder, an integrated platform helps manage the entire incident lifecycle from one place.
Powerful Automation and Workflows
Automation is what sets modern on-call tools apart. A powerful workflow engine can automate repetitive tasks that would otherwise consume an engineer's time. For example, when a critical alert comes in, a workflow can automatically create a Slack channel, invite the on-call team, start a video call, pull up the correct documentation, and create a ticket. By using incident workflows, you reduce manual effort and allow responders to focus on solving the problem.
The Best On-Call Software for Teams in 2026
With these key features in mind, let's look at the top on-call management tools available today. The market offers many options, and the best fit depends on your team's specific needs and operational style [1].
Rootly: Best for Integrated Automation
Rootly is built for teams that want to automate the entire incident lifecycle, not just on-call paging. It's a unified platform that combines on-call schedules, incident response, retrospectives, and analytics into one seamless experience. This approach eliminates the need to juggle multiple tools and keeps all your data in one place.
Rootly On-Call acts as a decision engine that connects alerts to the right responders based on schedules and escalation policies. Its main strength is a powerful workflow engine that can trigger automated actions across your other tools, like Slack and Jira. This significantly reduces manual coordination and ensures every incident is handled consistently. For teams ready to build a highly automated and efficient response system, it's easy to get started with Rootly.
PagerDuty: The Enterprise Market Leader
PagerDuty is a well-established and feature-rich platform, making it a popular choice for large enterprises [2]. It offers a vast number of integrations and is a mature product in the on-call market. While powerful, its advanced features can come at a higher cost, and its various functionalities may feel less natively integrated compared to a unified platform where every component is designed to work together from the start.
Opsgenie (by Atlassian): Best for Jira-Centric Teams
Opsgenie is a strong contender, especially for teams that are heavily invested in the Atlassian ecosystem. Its deep integrations with Jira, Confluence, and Bitbucket help streamline workflows for users of those tools. For organizations that manage their development and operations within the Atlassian suite, Opsgenie is a logical choice for connecting on-call management with their existing processes.
Squadcast: Best for SRE and Reliability Focus
Squadcast is a platform designed with Site Reliability Engineering (SRE) principles at its core [3]. It goes beyond on-call management to provide tools for managing Service Level Objectives (SLOs), tracking reliability metrics, and promoting a culture of continuous improvement. For teams that have formally adopted SRE practices, Squadcast offers a specialized set of features to support that methodology.
Comparison of Top On-Call Management Platforms
When evaluating these platforms, it's helpful to compare their automation capabilities and overall value [4]. This table provides a side-by-side look at the tools discussed.
Feature
Rootly
PagerDuty
Opsgenie
Squadcast
Unified Incident Platform
Yes, native
Partial
Partial (via Atlassian)
Yes
Automation Workflows
Highly advanced, cross-platform
Strong, with many integrations
Good, especially within Atlassian
SRE-focused automation
Primary Use Case
End-to-end incident automation
Enterprise alerting & paging
Atlassian-integrated teams
SRE & reliability management
Pricing Model
User-based, all-inclusive tiers
User-based, feature-gated
User-based, feature-gated
User-based, with focus on SRE features
How Automation Transforms On-Call and Incident Management
Automation is more than just a convenience; it's essential for building a resilient and efficient incident management practice. It helps reduce human error, enforces consistent processes, and significantly lowers Mean Time to Resolution (MTTR). By using AI to correlate events, modern platforms can reduce alert noise by up to 80%, ensuring responders only deal with actionable issues [5].
Reducing Responder Burnout
Responder burnout is a serious risk to any engineering team. Automation helps fight this by making on-call work more sustainable. Automated scheduling ensures rotations are fair, and smart alerting prevents engineers from being woken up for non-critical issues [6]. By automating administrative tasks like creating channels, inviting users, and sending updates, responders are freed from tedious work and can focus on solving the problem.
Creating a Centralized System of Record
During an incident, having a single source of truth is crucial for effective coordination. An automated system automatically captures every action, decision, and event in a central timeline [7]. This provides a clear view of what's happening in real-time and creates a reliable record for post-incident reviews. This data is invaluable for learning from incidents and making improvements.
Conclusion: Choose a Tool That Automates Your Entire Process
The best on-call software for modern teams is more than just a pager—it's an integrated platform that automates the entire incident management lifecycle. This helps teams move from simply reacting to incidents to proactively improving reliability.
While tools like PagerDuty and Opsgenie are strong, Rootly stands out for its native, end-to-end automation that connects on-call management directly with a complete incident response platform. By choosing a solution that reduces manual work, enforces consistency, and helps your team learn, you can improve system reliability and build a more sustainable on-call culture.
Ready to see how a fully automated platform can transform your on-call operations? Book a demo of Rootly.