Incident management has evolved from simple on-call alerting into a comprehensive, integrated practice. While tools like PagerDuty pioneered the on-call space, the needs of modern Site Reliability Engineering (SRE) and DevOps teams have outgrown their capabilities. Teams are now actively seeking PagerDuty alternatives that offer more than just paging. Rootly is a modern incident management software designed for the entire incident lifecycle, from detection and response to resolution and learning.
The Problem with Legacy On-Call Software
First-generation alert management software was built for a simpler era of software and infrastructure. Today, their limitations create friction for fast-moving engineering teams.
Limited to Alerting and Paging
Legacy tools primarily focus on getting an alert to the right person. While PagerDuty and Opsgenie have strong brand recognition in the alerting market [1], this siloed approach doesn't effectively address the coordination, communication, and resolution phases of an incident. This stands in contrast to a modern, holistic approach to DevOps incident management that treats an incident as a complete workflow, not just a single notification.
Escalating Costs and Hidden Fees
The pricing models of legacy tools can be a significant barrier. Essential features for a complete incident response workflow often require expensive higher-tier plans or add-ons, with some PagerDuty plans costing over $41 per user per month [2]. This makes them cost-prohibitive for growing teams who need a full-featured solution without a complex and expensive pricing structure.
Market Consolidation and Sunsetting Tools (e.g., Opsgenie)
The incident management market is shifting, and relying on legacy providers carries risk. Atlassian's decision to shut down Opsgenie—ceasing sales in June 2025 and completing the shutdown by April 2027 [7]—forces thousands of teams to find Opsgenie alternatives and manage a difficult migration. This highlights the risk of relying on providers who may consolidate or discontinue products, causing major disruptions.
What’s Included in the Modern SRE Tooling Stack?
Modern site reliability engineering tools must go beyond alerting. Today’s teams require a centralized platform that unifies the entire incident response process, turning chaos into a structured, automated workflow.
End-to-End Incident Lifecycle Management
A modern tool must provide robust features for every phase of an incident: Detect, Respond, Resolve, and Learn. Rootly is built to support this entire incident lifecycle seamlessly.
- Detect: Connect alerts from any monitoring tool to automatically trigger incident workflows.
- Respond: Coordinate teams in collaboration platforms like Slack, automatically create communication channels, and update status pages.
- Resolve: Move an incident to a resolved state and automatically trigger post-incident processes.
- Learn: Use automated retrospectives and analytics to capture key learnings and improve system resilience.
Powerful Automation with Workflows
To reduce Mean Time to Resolution (MTTR), teams must automate manual, repetitive tasks. This includes creating incident channels, paging the on-call engineer, assigning roles, and sending stakeholder updates. This automation allows responders to focus on fixing the problem, not on administrative overhead. With Rootly's flexible workflows, teams can automate their entire response process, from the first alert to the final retrospective.
Deep Collaboration and Analytics
Effective incident management is a team sport. A modern platform must have a collaboration-centric design, integrating deeply with tools like Slack and Microsoft Teams where engineers already work. It also requires robust analytics to track key SRE tools for incident tracking metrics like MTTR, Mean Time to Detect (MTTD), and incident frequency by service. Structured retrospectives are also critical, helping teams turn incidents into valuable learning opportunities. Rootly provides built-in postmortem templates and analytics to ensure every incident leads to improvement.
Compare Oncall Platforms: Rootly vs. Legacy Alternatives
When you compare oncall platforms, the difference between a modern, all-in-one platform and a legacy alerting tool becomes clear.
Rootly: A Modern, All-in-One Solution
Rootly combines on-call scheduling, alerting, and a complete incident management workflow into a single platform. With Rootly On-Call, teams can replace PagerDuty entirely, consolidating their toolchain and reducing costs. For teams that prefer a gradual transition, Rootly also offers a best-in-class integration with PagerDuty, allowing them to augment their existing alerting with powerful incident management capabilities.
PagerDuty & Other Legacy Tools
PagerDuty and other similar tools are primarily focused on on-call management and alerting. While they are established products, they often lack the native automation and end-to-end incident management workflows that modern platforms provide. Choosing the right tool requires evaluating your team's specific operational needs and workflows, not just the alerting mechanism [4].
Feature Comparison Table
Feature
Rootly
PagerDuty
End-to-End Incident Management
✅ Native (Detect, Respond, Resolve, Learn)
❌ Requires add-ons or separate products
No-Code Workflow Automation
✅ Comprehensive and flexible
➖ Limited, less intuitive
Native Slack/MS Teams Integration
✅ Deeply integrated for full lifecycle management
➖ Basic, focused on alerts and acknowledgements
Integrated Retrospectives & Analytics
✅ Built-in and automated
❌ Requires add-ons or manual processes
All-in-One On-Call & Incident Response
✅ Yes, single unified platform
❌ Primarily on-call, incident response is separate
Transparent, Value-Based Pricing
✅ All features included, predictable cost
❌ Complex tiers with expensive add-ons
Why Modern Engineering Teams Are Choosing Rootly
Rootly is one of the top incident management tools because it was built to address the gaps left by legacy tools. Modern platforms are designed for fast-growing teams that need more than just alerts [8]. By providing a single, unified platform for reliability, Rootly streamlines workflows, reduces costs, and helps teams build more resilient systems.
Ready to see how a modern incident management platform can transform your response process? Book a demo of Rootly today.