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In today's fast-paced digital world, keeping your systems online isn't just a goal—it's a necessity. On-call management and incident response platforms are the front line of defense for ensuring reliability. When an issue arises, you need a system that doesn't just wake someone up but guides your team to a swift resolution.
This article compares three major players in the on-call space: Rootly, PagerDuty, and Opsgenie. We'll explore their features, strengths, and weaknesses to show why Rootly’s integrated approach is the superior choice for modern engineering teams, especially if you're looking for PagerDuty alternatives or need to migrate from the sunsetting Opsgenie.
The State of Incident Management in 2025
Managing incidents has become more challenging as software systems grow in complexity. Downtime isn't just an inconvenience; it's a significant financial drain. In fact, major outages can cost organizations an average of over $300,000 per hour [2]. This makes having an efficient incident response process a top business priority.
One of the biggest hurdles for on-call teams is alert fatigue. Modern SRE and DevOps teams are often swamped with notifications, which can lead to missed alerts and slower response times [1]. To combat this, a modern platform needs to provide:
- On-call scheduling
- Intelligent alerting
- Automated response workflows
- Post-incident analysis and learning
Head-to-Head Comparison: Rootly vs. PagerDuty vs. Opsgenie
Let's see how these platforms stack up. The right tool should simplify your processes, not add another layer of complexity.
Feature
Rootly
PagerDuty
Opsgenie (by Atlassian)
Platform Type
Integrated Incident Management Platform
Primarily On-Call & Alerting
On-Call & Alerting (End-of-Life)
On-Call Scheduling
Flexible, intuitive UI, and deeply Slack-integrated
Mature and robust, with complex escalation policies
Integrated with the Atlassian suite
Incident Response Automation
Automates the entire incident workflow
Focuses on automating alerts and notifications
Basic workflow automation
Alerting & Noise Reduction
AI-driven event correlation and alert grouping
Strong alert filtering and escalation
Standard alerting features
Integrations
Extensive, with deep integrations across tools
Broad range of integrations
Strongest within the Atlassian ecosystem
Pricing Model
Bundled features for high value
A la carte, can become expensive with add-ons
No longer sold; existing users must migrate
Overall Verdict
The best all-in-one solution for modern teams.
A powerful tool for alerting but not a full solution.
A sunsetted product that is no longer a viable option.
Rootly: The All-in-One Solution
Rootly is a modern, comprehensive incident management platform that includes powerful on-call scheduling. It's designed to centralize the entire incident lifecycle—from the initial alert to the final retrospective—all within a single, cohesive system, often centered in Slack for seamless collaboration.
With the introduction of Rootly On-Call, the platform becomes a complete replacement for tools like PagerDuty. This allows teams to consolidate their tools and get more value from a single subscription. Rootly’s powerful workflow automation helps you codify and automate your response processes, which can dramatically reduce Mean Time to Resolution (MTTR) and free up your engineers to focus on fixing the problem. Rootly can help you replace your existing on-call tooling, but it also has a PagerDuty integration.
PagerDuty: The Legacy On-Call Specialist
PagerDuty has been a leader in the on-call and alerting space for a long time, making it a familiar name for many organizations [7]. Its primary strength lies in its robust alerting capabilities and flexible escalation policies, ensuring the right person is notified quickly when something goes wrong.
However, its focus remains on alerting. While PagerDuty has added incident management features over the years, they often feel less integrated compared to a purpose-built platform like Rootly. Its core function is to get a person's attention, not necessarily to manage the entire response process from start to finish. For teams not ready to switch completely, Rootly offers a deep integration with PagerDuty to bring powerful automation to your existing alerting setup, positioning Rootly as a great enhancement or PagerDuty alternative.
Opsgenie: The Sunsetted Atlassian Tool
Atlassian has announced the end-of-life for Opsgenie. This means it's no longer a viable option for teams looking for a new on-call solution, and existing users must find effective Opsgenie alternatives.
While Opsgenie offered solid features, particularly its integration with the Atlassian suite (like Jira and Confluence), its sunset status makes it a risky dependency. The focus for any Opsgenie user should now be on migrating to a modern, fully supported platform. Rootly is an ideal migration path, offering a more comprehensive and future-proof solution. We've even made it easy for you to migrate from Opsgenie to Rootly.
Feature Deep Dive: Where Rootly Pulls Ahead
When you compare oncall platforms, the differences are in the details. Here’s where Rootly truly stands out.
Beyond Alerting: Comprehensive Incident Automation
PagerDuty and Opsgenie are great at automating alerts, but Rootly automates the entire incident response process. While other platforms focus on routing notifications, Rootly’s specialty is automating the manual tasks that slow teams down during an incident [4].
For example, with Rootly, you can automatically:
- Create a dedicated Slack channel and Zoom bridge.
- Invite the right responders based on service dependencies.
- Assign incident roles and tasks.
- Spin up a public status page.
- Log all activity for a post-incident review.
This level of automation keeps everyone on the same page and lets engineers solve the issue instead of getting bogged down in administrative work.
On-Call Management: Flexibility and Ease of Use
A good on-call tool should be easy for everyone to use [6]. Rootly’s on-call scheduling is designed with a user-friendly approach that integrates directly into your team's existing workflows, especially Slack. Engineers can view schedules, acknowledge alerts, and manage on-call duties without constant context switching, which is a common pain point with other tools. This makes managing on-call responsibilities less of a chore and more a part of the daily routine.
Pricing and Total Cost of Ownership
When evaluating costs, it's important to look at the total cost of ownership. With PagerDuty or other legacy tools, you often pay for on-call management and then need to purchase separate tools for incident response, status pages, and retrospectives. These costs add up quickly.
Rootly provides superior value by combining on-call scheduling, incident response automation, retrospectives, and analytics into a single, unified subscription. This approach not only simplifies your tech stack and procurement process but also reduces the total cost of ownership for building a complete reliability practice.
Why Settle? Migrate to a Better On-Call Platform Today
Choosing the right on-call platform can significantly impact your team's effectiveness and morale.
- For PagerDuty Users: If you feel limited by PagerDuty's incident response capabilities, you have options. You can enhance your current setup by integrating it with Rootly to add powerful automation, or you can make a full switch to consolidate tools, reduce costs, and streamline workflows. Rootly is one of the best PagerDuty alternatives on the market today.
- For Opsgenie Users: With Opsgenie's end-of-life confirmed, the time to migrate is now. Waiting only increases the risk to your operations. Rootly offers a feature-rich, fully supported, and future-proof solution that makes the transition seamless. You can learn more about moving from Opsgenie to Rootly in our documentation.
Conclusion: Rootly is the Clear Choice for Modern Reliability
When you compare on-call platforms, it's clear that the landscape is evolving. While PagerDuty remains a strong choice for alerting, it falls short in providing the comprehensive, automated response capabilities that modern teams need. And with Opsgenie being sunsetted, it's no longer a contender.
Rootly stands out by offering a more complete, integrated, and cost-effective solution. It brings together best-in-class on-call scheduling and incident management in a single platform designed to reduce cognitive load and resolve issues faster.
For teams looking to improve their reliability and mature their incident management processes, Rootly is the superior choice.
Ready to see the difference? Book a demo or start a free trial of Rootly today.