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In the high-pressure world of site reliability engineering (SRE), on-call engineers are the frontline defenders of system uptime. As modern systems, particularly cloud-native environments like Kubernetes, grow in complexity, the volume of data and alerts can become overwhelming. This often leads to alert fatigue, manual toil, and burnout. To combat this, teams need a new class of tooling. This article reviews the best tools for on-call engineers, helping you select the right incident management software to streamline workflows and build more resilient systems.
What is Incident Management Software and Why is it Crucial?
Incident management software is a platform designed to help teams respond to, manage, and resolve unplanned service interruptions as quickly as possible to minimize business impact [4]. With downtime costing an average of $9,000 per minute, efficient incident response is not just an IT issue—it's a critical business function [7].
These tools support the entire incident lifecycle, from initial detection and response to collaboration, resolution, and post-incident analysis. A modern platform like Rootly provides a comprehensive overview of the incident management process, centralizing all activities into a single, cohesive workflow. The market offers a wide variety of tools, each with different strengths and focuses [8].
Key Features to Look for in Tools for On-Call Engineers
Not all incident management platforms are created equal. SREs and on-call engineers have specific needs that demand more than just basic ticketing.
Intelligent Alerting & Automated Escalation
A key challenge for on-call engineers is alert noise. The best tools reduce this noise by filtering, de-duplicating, and grouping related alerts. This ensures that engineers only receive actionable notifications. Smart escalation policies are equally important, automatically routing alerts to the right person at the right time based on on-call schedules and service ownership. For example, Rootly helps you design smart escalation policies that prevent alert fatigue and ensure faster acknowledgment.
Centralized Collaboration & Communication
During an incident, scattered communication across different channels creates confusion and slows down resolution. Effective tools create a centralized "war room," often in a dedicated Slack or Microsoft Teams channel, where all incident-related context, data, and communication are consolidated [7]. Features to look for include automated incident timelines that log key events, one-click stakeholder updates, and seamless integration with your primary communication platforms.
Powerful Workflow Automation
Automation is the most effective way to reduce manual toil and cognitive load during a high-stress incident. Look for a platform with a powerful workflow engine that can automate repetitive tasks, such as:
- Creating a dedicated Slack channel and Zoom bridge.
- Inviting the correct responders based on the affected service.
- Automatically pulling in relevant runbooks and dashboards.
- Scheduling and assigning post-incident review action items.
Advanced automation can even trigger technical actions, like automatic Kubernetes rollbacks, to revert a bad deploy without manual intervention.
Seamless Integration with Your SRE Observability Stack for Kubernetes
An incident management tool cannot operate in a vacuum. It must integrate seamlessly with your team's existing SRE observability stack for Kubernetes and other critical systems. This includes integrations with:
- Monitoring tools: Prometheus, Datadog, New Relic
- Service catalogs: Backstage, Cortex
- Ticketing systems: Jira, ServiceNow
- Version control: GitHub, GitLab
The incident management platform should act as an intelligent action layer that sits on top of the data provided by your observability tools. AI-powered monitoring capabilities can further enhance this by proactively identifying anomalies and patterns that traditional, rule-based systems might miss.
A Review of the Best Incident Management Software for 2025
The market for incident management is crowded, with dozens of tools available, each serving different needs [5]. Here is a review of the top options for on-call engineers.
1. Rootly
- Best for: Teams seeking end-to-end automation and a cohesive incident response workflow.
- Overview: Rootly is a comprehensive incident management platform purpose-built for SREs and DevOps teams. It focuses on automating the entire incident lifecycle to reduce toil and improve reliability.
- Key Strengths:
- Deeply integrated with collaboration tools like Slack and engineering systems like Kubernetes.
- A powerful, no-code workflow engine automates everything from channel creation to post-mortem generation.
- AI-powered features suggest relevant actions, identify duplicate incidents, and summarize timelines.
- Acts as the orchestration layer that connects observability data with automated resolution actions. Rootly’s AI-powered edge gives SREs proactive insights beyond traditional monitoring.
2. PagerDuty
- Best for: Teams that primarily need a robust on-call scheduling and alerting solution.
- Overview: PagerDuty is a market leader in on-call management and alerting. It excels at ensuring critical alerts reach the right person quickly [6].
- Key Strengths: Highly reliable notifications, flexible scheduling, and a vast library of integrations for ingesting alerts.
- Considerations: While it has expanded its incident response features, its core strength remains in alerting. Teams looking for deep workflow automation may need to invest in additional configuration or other tools. Pricing starts at $21 per month [1].
3. Freshservice
- Best for: IT teams looking for an integrated ITSM and service desk solution.
- Overview: Freshservice is an IT Service Management (ITSM) platform that includes incident management as part of a broader suite of tools for IT support [4].
- Key Strengths: Offers a centralized command center, AI-powered ticketing, and strong service desk functionality.
- Considerations: Its focus is on traditional ITSM, which may be overly complex for a dedicated SRE or platform engineering team that prioritizes speed and automation within their development lifecycle. Pricing starts at $15.89 per month [1].
4. Opsgenie (by Atlassian)
- Best for: Teams already heavily invested in the Atlassian ecosystem.
- Overview: Opsgenie is Atlassian's on-call management and alerting tool.
- Key Strengths: It features tight integration with Jira Service Management for ticket tracking and offers powerful alert routing rules.
- Considerations: Much like PagerDuty, its primary focus is on alerting and on-call scheduling rather than providing a comprehensive, automated incident response workflow. Pricing begins at $9.45 per month [1].
How to Choose the Right Tool for Your Team
With many options available, selecting the right tool requires careful evaluation. Use this simple framework to guide your decision [2].
- Evaluate Your Needs: Is your primary pain point missed alerts, or is it the chaotic, manual process of responding to them? Define how much automation your team requires.
- Consider Your Toolchain: Make a list of your must-have integrations. Does the tool connect seamlessly with your Kubernetes environment, observability platforms, and communication channels?
- Assess Scalability: Choose a tool that can grow with your team and system complexity. A platform with a flexible workflow engine will adapt to your needs over time.
- Analyze Total Cost: Look beyond the subscription fee. Consider the "cost" of the manual toil a tool can eliminate. The right platform pays for itself by giving engineers back valuable time.
Conclusion: Embrace Automation to Build More Resilient Systems
The right incident management software is no longer a luxury—it's a necessity for modern on-call teams navigating complex distributed systems. The market is shifting from simple alerting tools to comprehensive platforms that orchestrate the entire response process through automation.
Rootly is at the forefront of this paradigm, empowering engineers to move from reactive firefighting to proactive reliability work. By automating the entire incident lifecycle, Rootly reduces cognitive load, speeds up resolution, and ensures that valuable lessons are learned from every incident.
Ready to transform your incident management? Explore how Rootly can help your team build more resilient systems and leave manual toil behind.