Effective incident management is non-negotiable in today's technology-driven world. For years, PagerDuty has been a dominant force in on-call scheduling and alerting. However, as the nature of incidents evolves, a new generation of tools has emerged. Rootly is a modern, comprehensive incident management platform designed to handle the entire incident lifecycle, not just the initial alert. This article compares Rootly and PagerDuty, explaining why Rootly is one of the best PagerDuty alternatives for teams aiming to modernize their response processes.
The Evolving Landscape of Incident Management
Incident management is no longer a purely reactive discipline. The industry has seen a significant shift toward proactive strategies designed to prevent issues before they impact users.
The Shift to Proactive Management
A recent report shows that 68.4% of companies now practice proactive incident management, a dramatic increase from just 35% four years ago [5]. This trend highlights a move toward using monitoring, alerting, and formal training to get ahead of problems. Despite this progress, many teams still struggle with visibility and a lack of context during active incidents [4].
Emerging Threats and Complexity
The complexity and nature of threats are also changing. Identity-based attacks are on the rise, with credential theft now a primary goal in 25% of incidents [2]. These attacks often exploit legitimate accounts, making them difficult to detect. As cybercriminals refine their tactics, organizations need a more robust and adaptable incident management strategy to keep pace [3].
PagerDuty: The Pioneer in On-Call Management
PagerDuty is a well-established and respected leader among top incident management tools. It holds the #1 ranking in IT alerting and incident management with significant market mindshare [8].
Core Strengths
PagerDuty's primary functions are its core strengths. It provides:
- Robust on-call scheduling and rotations.
- Reliable alert aggregation from hundreds of monitoring tools.
- Flexible and powerful escalation policies to ensure alerts reach the right person.
Where It Falls Short
While PagerDuty excels at alerting, its native capabilities for managing the broader incident response process—such as real-time coordination, automated retrospectives, and deep analytics—are less comprehensive than those of modern platforms. This focus on alerting can create gaps in the overall incident lifecycle, leaving teams to stitch together other tools for communication and post-incident learning. This is a key reason many organizations explore PagerDuty alternatives.
Rootly: The End-to-End Incident Management Platform
Rootly offers a holistic approach, providing a single platform to manage incidents from detection and response through resolution and learning. It’s a complete solution for on-call management and incident response built for today’s challenges.
A Holistic Approach
Unlike tools that focus on one piece of the puzzle, Rootly covers every phase of the incident lifecycle:
- Detection & Alerting: Integrates with monitoring tools or uses its native on-call management to trigger incidents.
- Response: Automates the creation of incident channels, Zoom rooms, and status page updates.
- Resolution: Tracks tasks, timelines, and key actions to streamline resolution.
- Learning: Automatically generates retrospectives and provides rich analytics to prevent future incidents.
Built for Modern Teams
Rootly is designed for speed and collaboration. Its powerful, codeless Workflows help standardize response processes and eliminate manual toil. The platform's Slack-native experience allows teams to manage entire incidents without leaving their primary communication hub, keeping everything organized and accessible.
Head-to-Head Comparison: A Feature Breakdown
When you compare oncall platforms, the differences often lie in their scope and philosophy. Here’s how Rootly and PagerDuty stack up.
Feature
Rootly
PagerDuty
On-Call & Alerting
Native solution included
Core product, highly mature
Incident Response Automation
Extensive codeless workflows for the entire lifecycle
Primarily focused on alert routing and escalations
Retrospectives
Automated generation, templates, and action item tracking
Basic functionality, often requires add-ons or other tools
Incident Analytics
Deep metrics on MTTR, incident causes, team performance, and more
Focused on alert and on-call metrics
Slack/MS Teams Integration
Fully Slack-native command center; manage incidents from chat
Strong notifications and basic actions; less comprehensive
Pricing Model
All-in-one platform with transparent pricing
Often involves add-ons for features like status pages and analytics
Functionality: Alerting Tool vs. Full Command Center
PagerDuty is an exceptional alert management software. Its job is to get the right people’s attention quickly.
Rootly acts as a complete command center for your incidents. It ingests alerts from any source (including PagerDuty) to kick off a consistent, automated response process. This centralizes all communication, task management, documentation, and stakeholder updates into one place, providing a more complete and unified platform.
Automation: Basic Paging vs. Intelligent Workflows
PagerDuty’s automation is centered on notifying and escalating alerts through on-call schedules. It’s effective for getting a human involved.
Rootly’s automation extends across the entire incident. Workflows can be configured to:
- Spin up a dedicated Slack channel and Zoom bridge.
- Automatically invite the right responders and assign incident roles.
- Post scheduled updates to internal and external status pages.
- Create and pre-populate a retrospective document the moment an incident is resolved.
Integration: Replace or Enhance?
A common question is whether you need both tools. The answer depends on your team's needs.
Can Rootly Replace PagerDuty?
Yes. With its native On-Call schedules and alerting, Rootly can serve as a complete replacement for PagerDuty. This makes it one of the best oncall software for teams looking to consolidate their toolchain and manage everything from alert to retrospective in a single platform.
Can They Work Together?
Absolutely. For teams heavily invested in PagerDuty, Rootly offers a powerful and seamless integration. You can continue using PagerDuty for on-call schedules while leveraging Rootly to manage the entire response. The integration creates a two-way sync, allowing you to trigger Rootly workflows from a PagerDuty alert and even page responders directly from Rootly.
Why Teams Are Choosing Rootly as a PagerDuty Alternative
Organizations are increasingly looking for more than just an alerting tool. They need a platform that helps them manage complexity, learn from failure, and improve system reliability.
Unified Platform & Cost-Effectiveness
Consolidating tools into a single platform like Rootly simplifies workflows, reduces context switching, and can be more cost-effective than paying for multiple specialized tools and add-ons.
Focus on Learning and Improvement
Rootly’s built-in features for retrospectives and analytics are central to its design. By making it easy to analyze incident data and track action items, Rootly helps teams move beyond firefighting and build a culture of continuous improvement—a key aspect often disconnected from traditional on-call platforms.
Third-Party Perspectives
While PagerDuty is the incumbent, modern alternatives like Rootly are gaining significant traction. External comparisons note Rootly's strengths in areas like AI integration and event orchestration [6]. Furthermore, Rootly's own performance benchmarks demonstrate its capability to handle incident management at scale, positioning it as a strong competitor [7].
Conclusion: Choose the Tool Built for Today's Incidents
The choice between Rootly and PagerDuty comes down to your organization's goals. PagerDuty is an excellent and reliable tool for on-call alerting. However, modern incident management requires more than just alerts.
For organizations seeking to mature their incident response practices, automate manual work, and foster a culture of learning, Rootly is the superior modern choice. It provides an end-to-end platform that addresses the full scope of today's operational challenges.
Ready to see how Rootly can transform your incident response? Book a demo or start your free trial today.