While PagerDuty was a pioneer in on-call management, many modern engineering teams are now looking for alternatives. Common reasons for this shift include high costs, complexity, and a growing need for features that cover the entire incident management process [1]. The landscape of on-call work has changed; today's tools need to do much more than just send alerts. This guide explores the best on-call management tools for 2025 that meet the evolving needs of engineering teams.
Why SRE Teams Switch from PagerDuty
Site Reliability Engineering (SRE) and other on-call teams often encounter specific challenges that drive them away from PagerDuty. Many are finding that a complete, end-to-end solution provides more value. For those exploring why SRE teams switch from PagerDuty to Rootly, it's clear that a comprehensive platform offers a compelling alternative for managing incidents from start to finish.
Frustrating Pricing and Constant Upsells
One of the biggest frustrations with PagerDuty is its pricing model. Essential features are often locked behind expensive tiers, with plans that can quickly jump from a base rate to over $41 per user per month [1]. In contrast, alternatives like Rootly offer simpler pricing, often at half the cost, with no per-alert fees or surprise bills.
A Dated and Unintuitive User Interface
Users often find PagerDuty’s interface to be complex, dated, and difficult to configure [4]. A modern, intuitive UI is critical for fast-moving teams who can't afford to waste time navigating a complicated system during a high-stress incident. A guided and user-friendly design, like the one Rootly offers, improves the overall experience and makes the platform more accessible to cross-functional teams.
Limited to Alerting, Not Full Incident Management
Many view PagerDuty as a very expensive "phone call"—it excels at alerting but falls short of managing the full incident lifecycle. Modern teams need integrated tools for collaboration, communication, and post-incident analysis. With PagerDuty, these are often costly add-ons. In contrast, Rootly powers the entire incident response lifecycle, from initial alert to final retrospective, all within one platform.
Stagnant Innovation and Missing Features
There's a growing perception that PagerDuty's innovation has slowed, allowing newer competitors to gain ground with more advanced features [5]. Teams need a platform that evolves with them. Rootly is committed to staying on the bleeding edge of innovation, ensuring users have access to cutting-edge tools that streamline incident management.
Best On-Call Management Tools 2025: A Comparative Look
Choosing the right on-call management tool depends on your team's specific needs, budget, and existing tech stack [6]. Here’s a look at some of the top PagerDuty alternatives for on-call engineers in 2025.
1. Rootly: The All-in-One Platform
Rootly stands out as a leading alternative that combines on-call management with a complete incident response platform. It's built to address the entire incident lifecycle, not just the initial page.
- Key Features:
- Intelligent alert grouping and deduplication to reduce noise.
- Native shadow rotations, on-call pay calculator, and seamless overrides.
- Automated incident workflows, communication, and retrospectives.
- Schedule gap detection to ensure 24/7 coverage.
- Best For: Teams of all sizes looking for an end-to-end solution that goes beyond basic paging and want to consolidate their incident tooling at a lower cost.
2. Opsgenie (by Atlassian)
Opsgenie is a strong contender, particularly for teams already invested in the Atlassian ecosystem. Its deep integration with products like Jira and Confluence makes it a natural fit for many organizations.
- Key Features:
- Tight integration with Jira and other Atlassian tools.
- Flexible scheduling and escalation policies.
- Considerations: Its integration options can be limited outside of the Atlassian suite [2].
3. Squadcast
Squadcast is a modern platform designed with SRE principles at its core. It focuses on helping teams maintain reliability and meet their Service Level Objectives (SLOs).
- Key Features:
- Strong focus on reliability and SLOs.
- Modern UI and affordable pricing.
- Considerations: May not have the deep enterprise customization available in other tools [2].
4. Zenduty
Zenduty is a solid PagerDuty alternative built for multi-team operations and those who need strong automation capabilities.
- Key Features:
- Dynamic escalations and on-call schedule management.
- Good support for communication tools like Slack and Microsoft Teams [3].
- Considerations: It has a smaller integration marketplace compared to some of the more established players.
How to Reduce Alert Fatigue with AI-Driven Alert Escalation Platforms
One of the most important features of a modern on-call tool is its ability to combat alert fatigue. The constant stream of notifications can lead to burnout and missed critical alerts. Learning how to reduce alert fatigue on-call is essential for maintaining a healthy and effective engineering team. AI-driven alert escalation platforms offer several powerful solutions.
Implement Smart Alert Grouping and Deduplication
AI-powered platforms can automatically cluster related alerts into a single, unified incident. This prevents responders from being paged multiple times for the same underlying problem. By reducing noise, smart alert grouping minimizes the cognitive load on engineers, allowing them to focus on what matters.
Use Automation to Triage and Add Context
Automation can be used to auto-resolve known issues, enrich alerts with helpful context like runbooks and links to past incidents, and route them to the right team. Context-rich alerts help responders make faster, more accurate decisions, which is a key strategy for reducing alert fatigue and protecting your on-call engineers.
Track and Analyze On-Call Metrics
You can't improve what you don't measure. Modern on-call platforms provide dashboards to track key performance indicators like Mean Time to Acknowledge (MTTA), Mean Time to Resolve (MTTR), and alert distribution. Monitoring these on-call metrics helps teams identify noisy monitors, unbalanced workloads, and bottlenecks in the escalation process.
Conclusion: Making the Right Choice for 2025
In 2025, the best on-call management tool is more than just an alerting system. It's a comprehensive platform that helps manage the entire incident lifecycle while protecting engineers from burnout. While PagerDuty is a well-known name, modern alternatives like Rootly offer a more integrated, user-friendly, and cost-effective solution.
When evaluating your options, consider a platform that offers intelligent alerting, seamless collaboration, and powerful automation. By addressing current pain points and planning for future needs, you can choose a tool that empowers your team to build more reliable services.
See a side-by-side comparison of how PagerDuty vs. Rootly stack up.