PagerDuty has long been a foundational tool for on-call management and alerting. It established the standard for notifying the right engineer when something goes wrong. However, the world of software has evolved. Modern Site Reliability Engineering (SRE) and DevOps teams understand that an alert is just the beginning of a complex process. They require comprehensive, end-to-end incident management software that goes far beyond basic notifications.
This article explores the best PagerDuty alternatives and compares the top incident management tools. It will show why teams are looking for more than just alerting and how Rootly emerges as the superior choice for managing the entire incident lifecycle.
What’s included in the modern SRE tooling stack?
A modern SRE toolkit is more than a single application; it's a suite of site reliability engineering tools for incident tracking and management designed to improve system reliability and minimize downtime. While monitoring and alerting are critical, high-performing organizations use a variety of SRE tools to cover the entire incident lifecycle.
The essential components of a modern incident management software platform include:
- Detection & Alerting: Integrating with monitoring and observability platforms to automatically detect service degradation and trigger an incident.
- Response & Coordination: Automating the creation of communication channels (like Slack), assembling the right response team based on on-call schedules, and keeping stakeholders informed with status updates.
- Resolution & Mitigation: Providing a central command center with workflows and action items to help teams diagnose and remediate the problem efficiently.
- Learning & Improvement: Facilitating structured, data-driven retrospectives to understand the root cause and tracking action items to prevent recurrence and build systemic resilience.
- Analytics & Insights: Offering dashboards to monitor key reliability metrics like Mean Time to Resolution (MTTR) and Mean Time to Detection (MTTD) for continuous process optimization.
Common Reasons Teams Look for PagerDuty Alternatives
While PagerDuty excels at its core function, many teams find its capabilities limiting as their reliability practices mature. This leads them to search for PagerDuty alternatives that offer a more holistic approach.
- Fragmented Toolchain: Teams using PagerDuty often must stitch together multiple tools: one for alerting, another for status pages, a separate document for retrospectives, and project management software for follow-up tasks. This creates data silos and forces engineers to constantly switch contexts, increasing cognitive load.
- Limited Automation: PagerDuty has some automation, but it's often focused on the alerting step. Manual, repetitive tasks—like creating a Slack channel, inviting the team, and sending stakeholder updates—still fall on engineers, creating unnecessary toil.
- Cost and Complexity: PagerDuty's pricing can become a significant operational expense as a team grows. The cost is harder to justify when you still need other tools to fill gaps in its DevOps incident management functionality.
- Focus on Alerting, Not Lifecycle Management: PagerDuty was built for on-call alerting. It wasn't designed from the ground up to manage an incident from declaration through learning and prevention. This focus means features for retrospectives and process automation are often less developed than in dedicated platforms.
Compare On-call Platforms: A Look at the Top Incident Management Tools
When you compare oncall platforms, it's clear the market has expanded to include several strong Opsgenie alternatives and PagerDuty competitors. Here's how they stack up.
Rootly: The Complete Incident Management Platform
Rootly is an end-to-end incident management platform built to manage the entire incident lifecycle from a single place. Instead of juggling multiple tools, Rootly unifies the process, bringing calm and control to chaos.
Key features include:
- Powerful Workflow Automation: Automate hundreds of manual steps with a declarative, no-code engine—from creating dedicated Slack channels and Jira tickets to pulling metrics and updating status pages.
- Native, Collaborative Retrospectives: Automatically generate comprehensive retrospectives with data pulled directly from the incident timeline, ensuring accurate and blame-free post-mortems.
- In-Depth Analytics: Track reliability metrics, identify trends, and pinpoint areas for improvement with customizable dashboards.
- Deep Slack Integration: Manage the entire incident—from declaration to resolution—without ever leaving Slack.
Rootly can serve as a complete replacement for PagerDuty with its own on-call management and scheduling, or it can integrate seamlessly to enhance its capabilities. The platform provides a comprehensive overview of the entire incident management process, ensuring no step is missed.
PagerDuty: The Incumbent Alerting Tool
PagerDuty is the market leader in on-call scheduling and alert management. Its strengths lie in its robust notification system and its vast library of integrations with alert sources.
However, its limitations become apparent when managing the full incident lifecycle. Its retrospective features and workflow automation are less sophisticated compared to specialized platforms. Many teams find they need additional tools, which is why they integrate Rootly to enhance PagerDuty's capabilities and create a more unified solution.
Opsgenie: The Atlassian Alternative
As part of the Atlassian suite, Opsgenie is a strong competitor, particularly for teams already using Jira and Confluence. It provides solid functionality for alerting and on-call management, and its integration with other Atlassian products can be a major advantage.
While powerful for alerting, achieving the same level of seamless automation and full-lifecycle management found in Rootly can require significant configuration, workarounds, or connecting additional tools from the Atlassian marketplace.
Squadcast: A Strong Performer in IT Alerting
Squadcast is a well-regarded tool recognized by G2 as a 'Category Leader' in IT Alerting [2]. It has also been named a 'Momentum Leader' in Incident Management, reflecting strong customer satisfaction [4]. Users report a quick ROI achieved within 10 months and a user-friendly setup rated at 91% [3]. While it's a capable alert management software, its focus remains closer to PagerDuty and Opsgenie, with a primary strength in alerting and on-call. Rootly differentiates itself by providing deeper automation capabilities across the entire incident lifecycle.
Alert Management Software Comparison Table
This table provides a high-level alert management software comparison to help you visualize the differences between the top tools.
Feature
Rootly
PagerDuty
Opsgenie
Squadcast
End-to-End Workflow Automation
✅ Comprehensive & Native
🟨 Limited / Add-on
🟨 Limited / Add-on
🟨 Limited
Integrated Retrospectives
✅ Built-in & Automated
🟨 Basic / Manual
🟨 Basic / Manual
✅ Built-in
On-Call Management & Scheduling
✅ Built-in
✅ Core Feature
✅ Core Feature
✅ Core Feature
Slack-Native Experience
✅ Comprehensive
🟨 Limited Functionality
🟨 Limited Functionality
🟨 Limited Functionality
Advanced Analytics & Reporting
✅ Built-in
🟨 Add-on / Higher Tiers
🟨 Add-on / Higher Tiers
✅ Built-in
Status Pages
✅ Built-in
✅ Add-on
✅ Add-on
✅ Built-in
Pricing Model
All-in-one
A la carte / Add-ons
A la carte / Add-ons
All-in-one
Why Rootly is the Best PagerDuty Alternative for SRE and DevOps
Choosing the right incident management tool is a strategic decision. The market is full of leaders in specific niches, from threat intelligence platforms where top players receive 100% of user ratings at 4 or 5 stars [5], to incident response software where leaders are praised for having 97% of users rate them highly [1]. Major players like Google [8] and CrowdStrike [7] are recognized as leaders in incident response services. As noted in the Forrester Wave™ report, the effectiveness of these services depends on managing the entire incident response lifecycle, including preparation and recovery [6]. This holistic approach is where Rootly shines.
- Unifies the Entire Incident Lifecycle: Rootly replaces a messy and fragmented toolchain with a single, cohesive platform. By managing everything from detection to learning in one place, it reduces cognitive load and improves team efficiency.
- Reduces Toil with Powerful Automation: Rootly’s customizable Workflows automate tedious tasks, freeing engineers from process management so they can focus on what matters most: resolution.
- Fosters a Culture of Continuous Improvement: With integrated, data-rich retrospectives and powerful analytics, Rootly makes it easy to learn from every incident. It provides the insights needed to make data-driven decisions that strengthen system reliability.
- Works Where You Work: Modern teams live in Slack. Rootly’s best-in-class Slack integration allows teams to run the entire incident response process without needing to switch applications, keeping communication seamless.
Conclusion: Make the Switch to a Modern Incident Management Solution
While PagerDuty pioneered on-call alerting, the demands of modern software systems have outgrown its capabilities. Today's SRE and DevOps teams require an integrated, automated, and intelligent platform to manage incidents effectively.
Rootly isn't just one of the best PagerDuty alternatives; it's a strategic upgrade for any organization serious about building a culture of reliability. It provides the structure to stay organized during incidents and the insights to prevent them from happening again.
Ready to see the difference? Book a demo of Rootly and discover a better way to manage incidents.