In today's fast-paced tech world, keeping digital services online and running smoothly is non-negotiable. For DevOps and Site Reliability Engineering (SRE) teams, this means having the right tools to manage incidents—those unexpected outages or service disruptions. For years, the market for alert management software has been dominated by names like PagerDuty, Opsgenie, and xMatters. They laid the groundwork, but the nature of incident response has evolved. This article will compare these oncall platforms and show why Rootly stands out as the superior choice for modern teams that need a complete, collaborative solution.
The Expanding Incident Management Market
The need for robust incident management software has never been greater, and the market reflects this. The global incident and emergency management market was valued at approximately USD 141.79 billion in 2025 and is projected to reach USD 245.9 billion by 2034, growing at a steady rate [1].
What's driving this growth? Key factors include the rising frequency of cyber-security threats, increasingly complex digital systems, and a growing number of regulations that demand better public and digital safety measures [2]. As businesses rely more on technology, the cost of downtime goes up, making effective DevOps incident management a critical business function.
An Overview of Legacy On-Call Platforms
PagerDuty, Opsgenie, and xMatters are foundational tools that pioneered the on-call and alerting space. They helped companies move away from manual phone trees to automated notifications. However, while they excel at alerting, they often fall short of meeting the needs of modern, collaborative incident response, where communication and coordination are just as important as the initial page [3].
PagerDuty: The Alerting Pioneer
PagerDuty is well-known as a leader in on-call alerting. It's effective at getting a notification to the right person. However, its role often stops there, leading some users to describe it as a "very expensive phone call." Its focus is primarily on alerting, not on managing the entire incident. Common complaints include:
- A dated and clunky user interface.
- High costs with unexpected upsells for essential features.
- A design that tends to isolate engineering teams, making cross-functional collaboration difficult.
For teams looking for PagerDuty alternatives, a modern solution can offer a more integrated experience. You can find a detailed breakdown in this PagerDuty vs. Rootly comparison.
Opsgenie: The Atlassian Suite Staple
Opsgenie, now part of Atlassian, is a popular choice for teams heavily invested in the Atlassian ecosystem, like Jira and Confluence. While it integrates well with these products, it functions more as a basic alerting tool rather than a comprehensive incident management platform [4]. Teams using Opsgenie often find they need to stitch together other tools to manage the full incident lifecycle, from initial response to post-incident review. For those looking for Opsgenie alternatives that offer more, it's worth exploring platforms that handle everything in one place. Rootly also offers a seamless integration to enhance your existing Opsgenie setup, allowing you to centralize your incident response.
xMatters: The Conventional Enterprise Tool
xMatters is an established, enterprise-focused solution recognized for its ability to send targeted and enriched notifications. However, its traditional approach can mean less flexibility and a steeper learning curve than more modern platforms [5]. For fast-moving DevOps teams that need an intuitive and highly integrated tool, xMatters may feel rigid and overly complex.
Why Rootly Wins: A Modern Approach to Incident Management
Rootly was built with a different philosophy. It’s not just about sending an alert; it’s about providing a single, comprehensive platform to manage the entire incident lifecycle. Rootly centralizes response, collaboration, and learning in one place, making it one of the top incident management tools available.
A True End-to-End Incident Platform
Unlike tools that focus only on paging, Rootly supports the complete incident journey. This creates a consistent and efficient process for everyone involved. The incident lifecycle in Rootly covers:
- Detection & Alerting: Integrates with your monitoring tools to catch issues.
- Creating Incidents: Instantly spin up dedicated incident channels and bridges.
- Triage & Assess: Quickly determine severity and assign roles.
- Respond & Coordinate: Centralize all communication and automate status updates.
- Resolution: Document fixes and confirm the issue is resolved.
- Retrospectives: Automatically generate timelines and insights for post-incident reviews.
- Analytics: Track metrics to understand trends and improve reliability.
This holistic approach eliminates the fragmented, multi-tool workflow common with legacy platforms.
Designed for Seamless, Cross-Functional Collaboration
A major gap in older tools like PagerDuty is that they are built almost exclusively for engineers. This creates a silo where customer support, legal, and communications teams are left out of the loop. Rootly breaks down these silos. It was designed to be "simple, modern, and so easy that even non-engineers can use it."
Because it’s native to Slack, teams can manage the entire response—from paging responders to running retrospectives—without ever leaving the communication platform they use every day. This eliminates context switching and keeps everyone on the same page.
Superior On-Call Scheduling and Alerting
Rootly isn't just a management platform; it also provides some of the best oncall software for teams with advanced features that legacy tools lack.
- Schedule Gap Detection: Rootly automatically scans your on-call schedules and flags any gaps in coverage, so you're never caught without a responder.
- Seamless Overrides: Need to cover a shift for a teammate? Requesting an override for a specific time block or an entire shift is a one-click process.
- Flexible Paging: Page entire teams, specific individuals, or services directly from Slack, without navigating complex escalation policies.
These features go beyond basic alerting and provide the flexibility modern site reliability engineering tools demand. See how these features stack up against the competition in this PagerDuty vs. Rootly comparison.
Transparent Pricing at a Fraction of the Cost
Cost is a major factor when choosing a platform. PagerDuty is known for its high price tag and complex billing that can lead to surprise fees. Rootly offers straightforward, transparent pricing with no per-alert charges or silly upsells. You get more features, including a full incident management platform, at a significantly lower cost.
Feature-by-Feature: How the Platforms Compare
Here’s a direct alert management software comparison to see how Rootly stacks up against the competition.
Feature
Rootly
PagerDuty
Opsgenie
xMatters
End-to-End Platform
✅
❌
❌
❌
Slack-Native Collaboration
✅
❌
❌
❌
Automated Retrospectives
✅
Add-on
❌
❌
On-Call Gap Detection
✅
❌
❌
❌
Cross-Functional UI/UX
✅
❌
➖
➖
Workflow Automation
✅
Limited
Limited
✅
Transparent Pricing
✅
❌
➖
➖
Ease of Migration
✅
N/A
➖
➖
Don't Just Take Our Word for It: What Customers Say
Teams that switch to Rootly see immediate improvements in their incident response process.
"Rootly shipped features on their roadmap faster than we could build and maintain our in-house solution."
— Joanne H., Engineering Director at Canva
"The speed at which Rootly ships features and fixes is very impressive. I have never seen a company ship this fast."
— Scott K., Engineering Manager at Replit
"We explored several dedicated solutions and ultimately decided to go with Rootly given its flexibility and ability to meet the needs of a high-growth company like us."
— Chris I., Director of Engineering at Wealthsimple
"Rootly took our incident spin-up time from minutes to seconds."
— Matthew M., Senior Site Reliability Engineer at Upstart
Making the Switch to a Better PagerDuty Alternative
Worried about the hassle of switching? Rootly makes migration easy. You can automatically pull your existing schedules, escalation policies, and user details directly from PagerDuty into Rootly. A dedicated team of experts, including former PagerDuty employees, ensures a smooth and painless transition. Rootly can serve as a complete replacement for PagerDuty, unifying your on-call and incident management into a single, powerful platform. For more details, you can explore the PagerDuty integration.
Conclusion: The Clear Choice for Modern Incident Response
While legacy tools like PagerDuty, Opsgenie, and xMatters paved the way for on-call management, they are no longer enough. They are often siloed, expensive, and too complex for the collaborative needs of modern incident response.
Rootly is the definitive winner for today's DevOps, SRE, and engineering teams. It offers a truly end-to-end platform, seamless collaboration through Slack, superior on-call features, and a fair, transparent pricing model. If you're looking to improve your incident management process, it's time to move beyond basic alerting.
Go beyond basic alerting with Rootly's all-in-one on-call and incident management platform and schedule a demo to see why it's the best PagerDuty alternative on the market.