PagerDuty vs. Rootly: Total Cost Showdown

Engineering teams facing budget pressure need clear cost comparisons when evaluating incident management platforms. PagerDuty dominates market discussions, but its complex pricing structure often results in unexpected costs that exceed initial budgets. According to Vendr, the average contract with PagerDuty is around $64,621 per year, with many organizations experiencing sticker shock as add-ons and feature upgrades accumulate.

This comprehensive cost analysis examines the total cost of ownership between PagerDuty and Rootly, revealing significant savings opportunities for teams seeking enterprise incident management solutions without premium pricing.

PagerDuty Pricing Breakdown: Hidden Costs Revealed

PagerDuty's pricing structure appears straightforward on the surface but becomes complex when factoring in essential add-ons and feature limitations across tiers.

Core Pricing Tiers

The platform offers four main tiers (Free, Professional at $21/user/month, Business at $41/user/month, and Enterprise with custom pricing), but critical functionality is frequently reserved for higher tiers or requires expensive add-ons.

Professional Plan: The cheapest paid PagerDuty plan is the Professional plan at $21 per user per month when billed annually. This plan supports basic on-call scheduling, notifications, SSO, and integrations.

Business Plan: Business at $41/user/month includes additional features but still lacks critical capabilities for comprehensive incident management.

Enterprise Plan: According to industry data, Enterprise plans can cost anywhere from $60-90 per user per month, and that's before any add-ons.

The Hidden Cost Problem

The true expense emerges when teams require functionality beyond basic alerting. PagerDuty's core platform intentionally omits critical features that most teams need, forcing customers to purchase add-ons and this often costs as much as (or more than) the base subscription. For a team of 25 users on the Business plan who need automations, status pages, and basic AI capabilities, the annual cost quickly balloons from $12,300 to over $30,000 after add-ons.

Status Pages Add-On Costs

Status pages represent a significant additional expense. Status Pages are sold in 1,000-subscriber packs at $1,068 per pack annually (list price). For a 100-user Business plan with 2 packs (2,000 subscribers), you're looking at $51,336 total vs. $49,200 for base licenses.

AI and Advanced Features Premium

By treating AI capabilities as premium add-ons with costs starting at $699/month plus usage-based fees, PagerDuty is essentially tax companies attempting to modernize their operations.

Rootly Pricing: Transparent and All-Inclusive

Rootly takes a fundamentally different approach to pricing, emphasizing transparency and comprehensive feature inclusion without hidden costs.

Cost-Effective Structure

Best-in-class incident response should be accessible for everyone. All the features at a fraction of the cost. We used end of month to get best pricing and cut our PagerDuty spending by more than 50%, according to a company with 201-1000 employees who migrated from PagerDuty.

Feature-Complete Plans

Unlike PagerDuty's tiered approach that requires expensive add-ons, Rootly includes comprehensive features across its plans:

Essentials Plan: Designed for startups and growing teams looking to establish structured, reliable incident management. It provides core features such as Slack-native incident creation, templated workflows, and access to 70+ integrations, including ticketing and documentation tools. Essentials helps teams manage on-call escalations, coordinate response roles, and streamline post-incident reviews without overwhelming complexity. Built for ease of use, this plan includes onboarding support and guided best practices to help teams quickly operationalize their incident response process and improve mean time to resolution (MTTR).

Scale Plan: Built for large, fast-moving organizations that require advanced automation, security, and customization in their incident management process. It offers unlimited workflow automation, dynamic incident forms, and powerful integrations with tools like Jira, Confluence, and Zoom. This tier supports enterprise-grade features including multi-organization setup, granular role-based access control (RBAC), SCIM provisioning, audit logs, and sandbox environments. With access to Rootly AI and advanced analytics, teams can drive continuous improvement through detailed postmortem insights. The Scale tier includes dedicated support, 24/7 global coverage, and a customer success team to ensure operational resilience across complex infrastructures.

Total Cost Comparison: Real-World Scenarios

The financial impact becomes clear when examining actual deployment scenarios for teams of different sizes.

Small Team Scenario (25 users)

PagerDuty Total Cost:

• Business Plan: 25 users × $41/month × 12 months = $12,300
• Status Pages (2 packs): $2,136
• AI Add-on: $8,388 annually
• Total: $22,824 annually

Rootly Equivalent:

• Comprehensive features included without add-ons
• Cut our PagerDuty spending by more than 50%
• Estimated Total: $11,400 annually

Medium Team Scenario (100 users)

PagerDuty Total Cost:

• For medium teams, we're talking about $35k in yearly costs for PagerDuty alone
• Total: $35,000+ annually

Rootly Equivalent:

• All features included in base pricing
• Estimated Total: $17,500 annually

Large Team Scenario (200+ users)

PagerDuty Total Cost:

• For larger teams, PagerDuty deals can run around $119k per year
• Total: $119,000+ annually

Rootly Equivalent:

• Enterprise features without premium pricing
• Estimated Total: $59,500 annually

Beyond Cost: Value Proposition Analysis

Cost savings represent just one aspect of the total value comparison between platforms.

Implementation Speed

From sign-up to first incident in under 5 minutes. Seriously. Best practices based on how 100's of customers setup everything from Slack to Jira and packaged it into opinionated smart defaults. This rapid deployment reduces implementation costs and time-to-value.

Training and Onboarding

Let Rootly handle the heavy lifting in educating new incident responders, eliminating the training overhead that PagerDuty implementations often require.

Operational Efficiency

One of the biggest benefits has been a significant improvement in our incident metrics. Rootly has directly contributed to reducing our Mean Time to Detect (MTTD), Mean Time to Mitigate (MTTM), and Mean Time to Resolve (MTTR) stats. Automation and clear workflows allow us to respond faster and work more effectively as a team.

Making the Financial Case for Migration

The cost differential between PagerDuty and Rootly becomes more pronounced as teams scale and require advanced features.

Annual Savings Calculation

Organizations can typically expect:

• 50%+ cost reduction for equivalent functionality
• Elimination of add-on fees through comprehensive base features
• Reduced training costs due to intuitive interface design
• Lower implementation expenses through smart defaults and rapid setup

ROI Considerations

According to Gartner, the average cost of IT downtime is $5,600 per minute, which translates to over $300,000 per hour. Even modest improvements in response time generate substantial ROI that exceeds platform cost differences.

Negotiation Leverage

Present competitive quotes during your renewal window, but focus on total cost of ownership rather than just per-seat pricing. Rootly's transparent pricing provides strong negotiation leverage for teams evaluating alternatives.

The Clear Winner in Total Cost Analysis

The comprehensive cost comparison reveals significant advantages for organizations choosing Rootly over PagerDuty. Beyond the immediate 50%+ cost savings, teams benefit from transparent pricing, comprehensive feature sets, and enterprise-grade capabilities without premium pricing.

Most SRE teams are looking for PagerDuty alternatives due to the excessive cost, but also because the platform remains outdated, difficult to use, and fails to meet the needs of modern teams. Rootly addresses these concerns while delivering superior value through its all-inclusive approach.

For organizations seeking to reduce incident response time while controlling costs, Rootly provides the optimal combination of functionality and affordability. The platform's transparent pricing eliminates budget surprises, while its comprehensive feature set ensures teams have access to enterprise-grade capabilities from day one.

Ready to see how much your organization can save? Book a personalized demo or start a free 14-day trial to experience the cost-effective alternative that's transforming incident management for engineering teams worldwide.

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