In the continuous effort to maintain system reliability and uptime, incident management platforms are essential for modern engineering. For years, PagerDuty has been a leader in the on-call and alerting space. But as engineering practices evolve, teams are looking for more than just alerts; they need comprehensive, integrated solutions. They're seeking top incident management tools that don't just identify a problem but help orchestrate the entire response. This is where Rootly emerges as the superior modern alternative, addressing common pain points of PagerDuty, such as high costs and feature limitations on basic plans [2].
What Is PagerDuty? A Look at the Incumbent
PagerDuty is a digital operations management platform known for mastering a critical piece of the puzzle: alerting. Its core strengths are on-call scheduling, alert aggregation, and escalation policies. This focus has earned it strong brand awareness in the market [1]. For many, PagerDuty's primary job has traditionally been to notify the right person when something breaks. But what happens after that person is awake?
What Is Rootly? The End-to-End Incident Management Platform
Rootly is a comprehensive incident management platform built for collaboration and automation. It goes beyond alerts to manage the entire incident lifecycle, turning a chaotic event into a controlled, streamlined process. With Rootly, you can manage everything from detection and response to resolution and learning in one place.
The platform guides teams through every critical phase of an incident:
- Detection & Alerting
- Creating and Triaging Incidents
- Coordinating a Response
- Resolution
- Retrospectives and Learning
- Analytics and Insights
Rootly provides a single platform to resolve the incident from start to finish. A key part of its design is a native integration with Slack, which centralizes incident response where your teams already work [6].
Rootly vs. PagerDuty: A Feature-by-Feature Comparison
To help teams compare oncall platforms and choose the right tool, this section provides a direct feature comparison.
Feature
Rootly
PagerDuty
Core Focus
Full incident lifecycle management
On-call management and alerting
Automation Engine
Powerful no-code workflow builder
Basic automation tied to response plays
Retrospectives
Integrated, automated, and data-rich
Basic, often requiring manual effort
Collaboration
Slack-native command center
App-centric with email and notifications
Pricing Model
Value-based, with core features included
Per-user tiers with expensive add-ons
Core Functionality: Alerting vs. Full Lifecycle Management
PagerDuty is excellent at on-call management and routing alerts. It’s a powerful tool for notification. However, notification is just the beginning.
Rootly’s approach is broader, providing a single platform for the entire incident process. It doesn't just tell you something is wrong; it helps you coordinate the response, automatically document a timeline, run blameless retrospectives, and track metrics like Mean Time to Resolution (MTTR) automatically. It provides a complete toolkit to manage the entire incident lifecycle.
Automation and Workflows
PagerDuty offers automation, but it's often centered around specific response plays. This can be rigid and may not adapt well to the unique nature of complex incidents.
In contrast, Rootly features a powerful, no-code workflow engine that allows teams to automate hundreds of manual tasks. You can automate creating incident channels, inviting responders, sending stakeholder updates, and creating Jira tickets, all without human intervention. With the ability to integrate with over 70 tools, you can customize workflows to fit your existing processes perfectly [7].
Pricing and Total Cost of Ownership
PagerDuty’s pricing can become complex and costly, especially for larger teams. Its pricing tiers often lock away advanced features, pushing teams to more expensive plans that can exceed $41 per user per month for comprehensive capabilities [5].
Rootly offers a more cost-effective solution by including critical features like retrospectives and a powerful workflow engine in its core offering. While other PagerDuty alternatives also compete on price, with some offering plans from $5 per user per month [4], Rootly focuses on delivering end-to-end value that goes beyond simple cost savings.
Can Rootly Replace PagerDuty Completely?
Yes. With the release of Rootly On-Call, Rootly can now serve as a complete replacement for PagerDuty and is one of the top Opsgenie alternatives available today. It handles on-call scheduling, escalations, notifications, and the full incident response process within a single platform.
For teams not ready to switch completely, Rootly offers a robust integration with PagerDuty. This allows you to use Rootly for its powerful incident response and automation while keeping PagerDuty for alerting, enhancing your workflow without disrupting your on-call management.
Why Rootly is the Best On-Call Software for Modern Teams
Rootly is more than just an alternative; it's an upgrade. It’s the best oncall software for teams looking to modernize their SRE, platform, and DevOps practices.
Centralized Command Center in Slack
Rootly turns Slack into a command center for incidents, reducing the need to switch between different tools. Responders can manage the entire incident—from declaration to resolution—without leaving their primary communication tool.
Fosters a Culture of Learning
Incidents are valuable learning opportunities. Rootly's integrated retrospectives feature automatically builds a timeline of events, making it easy to conduct blameless post-mortems and generate actionable follow-up tasks. Unlike PagerDuty, where retrospectives often require separate tools or manual effort, Rootly makes learning an automated part of the process.
Scalable and Customizable for Any Team
Rootly’s custom fields and flexible workflow engine allow it to adapt to any organization's incident management process. Whether you're a startup or a large enterprise, Rootly scales with your needs.
Conclusion: The Future of Incident Management is Here
While PagerDuty is a tool for alerting, Rootly is a platform for complete incident management and continuous improvement. As one of the best PagerDuty alternatives, Rootly offers a more comprehensive, automated, cost-effective, and collaborative solution. For teams looking to modernize their SRE and DevOps practices, Rootly is the clear choice.
Ready to see the future of incident management? Book a demo with Rootly today and discover a better way to respond.