Effective on-call management is crucial for modern technology and operations teams aiming to maintain high service reliability and ensure a rapid incident response. However, on-call teams face significant challenges, including alert fatigue from an overwhelming number of notifications, manual coordination during stressful outages, and coverage gaps that can delay critical responses [1]. The core problem is ensuring the right person is notified immediately when an issue arises.
On-call software is designed to solve these problems by automating on-call responsibilities. This article will guide you through the essential features of on-call software, compare the top tools available in 2026, and provide a framework for choosing the best solution for your team.
What Is On-Call Software?
On-call software is a specialized tool designed to automate and manage the process of alerting and engaging on-call responders. Its primary function is to act as a decision engine that determines who should respond to an alert, how urgently, and through which channel. By unifying key components like on-call schedules, escalation policies, and notification rules, these tools bridge the gap between automated issue detection and human-led resolution.
The main goal is to ensure every critical signal from your monitoring systems reaches the right person without manual effort. Platforms like Rootly allow teams to get started by centralizing these functions, creating a single source of truth for who is on call and how to reach them. This is a foundational element of a mature incident management practice [7].
Key Features to Look For in On-Call Software
While many on-call tools exist, the best ones share a common set of powerful features designed to make on-call management seamless and effective. Choosing the right software often comes down to evaluating how well it handles these core capabilities [5].
Flexible On-Call Scheduling & Rotations
The foundation of any on-call system is its ability to create clear, fair, and flexible schedules. Look for software that provides:
- Various rotation types: Support for daily, weekly, follow-the-sun, and custom rotation schedules.
- Time-zone-aware planning: Essential for distributed teams to manage handoffs smoothly.
- Layered coverage: The ability to set up primary, secondary, and tertiary responders.
- Easy overrides: Simple workflows for responders to trade shifts or find temporary coverage.
Modern platforms provide a visual interface to build and manage these complex on-call schedules, making it easy to see who is on call at a glance.
Automated Escalation Policies
Escalation policies are the safety net that ensures no critical alert is ever missed. They define what happens if a primary responder doesn't acknowledge an alert within a specified time. Key features to look for include:
- Multi-step escalation paths: If the first person doesn't respond, the system automatically escalates to the next person or team [4].
- Time-based logic: Different rules for business hours versus after-hours or holidays.
- Dynamic rules: The ability to change the escalation path based on an alert's severity, source, or payload content.
Multi-Channel Alerting and Notifications
To be effective, an on-call tool must be able to reach responders wherever they are, through multiple channels. Reliable alert delivery is a non-negotiable feature [3]. Essential notification channels include:
- Phone calls (with critical alert overrides for "Do Not Disturb" modes)
- SMS messages
- Push notifications via a dedicated mobile app
- Slack and Microsoft Teams messages
- Email notifications
Deep Integration with Your Toolchain
On-call software doesn't work in a vacuum. It must connect seamlessly with your team's existing monitoring, communication, and collaboration tools. Key integration categories include:
- Monitoring Tools: Datadog, Grafana, New Relic, and Sentry to receive alerts.
- Communication Platforms: Slack and Microsoft Teams for real-time notifications and collaboration.
- Incident Management Systems: To automatically declare incidents from alerts and trigger response workflows.
Analytics and Reporting
Data is essential for improving on-call processes and preventing burnout. The best on-call software provides analytics and reporting on key metrics, such as:
- Mean Time to Acknowledge (MTTA)
- Number of unacknowledged alerts and escalation frequency
- On-call workload distribution across team members
- Alert noise levels from different sources
These insights help teams identify process bottlenecks, tune alerting rules, and ensure a sustainable on-call culture.
Comparison of the Best On-Call Software in 2026
With a clear understanding of key features, let's compare some of the leading on-call management tools available today. While many tools focus solely on alerting, modern solutions are increasingly part of a broader incident management platform [6]. The best choice often depends on your team's specific workflow and existing toolset [2].
Rootly
Rootly is a comprehensive incident management platform with a powerful and fully integrated on-call solution. Its primary differentiator is its unified, automation-first approach.
- Unified Platform: On-call scheduling and alerting are built directly into the incident response lifecycle, not offered as a separate add-on. This connects the dots between getting paged and resolving the issue.
- Automation-First: Rootly uses powerful workflows to connect paging activity directly to incident creation, automated status updates, and post-incident learning.
- Key Components: The platform includes robust schedules, escalation policies, live call routing to bring responders together, and service heartbeats for proactive monitoring. Rootly’s goal is to eliminate manual coordination entirely.
PagerDuty
PagerDuty is a long-standing market leader, widely adopted by IT and DevOps teams. Its strengths lie in its mature and highly reliable alerting capabilities, an extensive library of integrations, and robust on-call scheduling features. However, PagerDuty is often considered a point solution focused primarily on alerting and on-call management. This means teams may need to integrate it with other tools to manage the full incident lifecycle, which can create data silos and process gaps.
Opsgenie (by Atlassian)
Opsgenie is a strong competitor that benefits from deep integration with the Atlassian ecosystem, including Jira Service Management and Confluence. This makes it a natural choice for teams already heavily invested in Atlassian products. It offers flexible scheduling and alerting rules comparable to other top tools. The main trade-off is that its value is maximized within the Atlassian suite, and it may feel less integrated for teams that rely on other platforms for project management and documentation.
On-Call Software Comparison Table
Feature
Rootly
PagerDuty
Opsgenie
On-Call Scheduling
✅
✅
✅
Escalation Policies
✅
✅
✅
Integrated Incident Management
✅ (Native & Fully Integrated)
❌ (Requires integration)
❌ (Requires Jira integration)
Alerting Channels
Phone, SMS, Push, Slack, Email
Phone, SMS, Push, Slack, Email
Phone, SMS, Push, Slack, Email
Pricing Model
User-based, with all features
User-based, tiered by features
User-based, tiered by features
Best For
Teams seeking a unified incident management platform with built-in on-call.
Teams needing a dedicated, mature alerting and on-call point solution.
Teams heavily invested in the Atlassian (Jira) ecosystem.
How to Choose the Right On-Call Software for Your Team
Making the right choice requires a careful evaluation of your team's unique needs and workflows. Here is a practical framework to guide your decision [5].
1. Assess Your Team's Specific Needs
Start by considering your team's size, the complexity of the services you support, and your current pain points. Are you struggling with missed alerts? Is manual scheduling causing confusion? Is alert fatigue leading to burnout? Understanding these challenges will help you prioritize features. Some tools are better for large enterprises, while others are designed for smaller, more agile teams [8].
2. Evaluate Integration Capabilities
Check for native, bi-directional integrations with the tools your team already uses every day. This includes monitoring systems (Datadog, Sentry), communication hubs (Slack, Teams), and ticketing systems (Jira). A lack of deep integration can force you to build and maintain custom solutions, adding unnecessary overhead.
3. Prioritize User Experience (UX)
The software should be intuitive for everyone involved. This includes administrators setting up schedules and escalation policies, as well as on-call engineers who need to acknowledge alerts quickly under pressure. A clunky or confusing interface can add friction during a stressful incident, defeating the purpose of the tool.
4. Analyze Pricing and Scalability
Look beyond the sticker price. Understand how the pricing model works and how costs will scale as your team grows or your usage increases. Some vendors charge per user, while others may have tiers based on the number of alerts or services. Ensure the model aligns with your projected growth.
Conclusion: Streamline Your On-Call Process with the Right Tool
The best on-call software does more than just send alerts—it brings order, predictability, and automation to the entire on-call process. A modern solution should tightly integrate scheduling, escalations, and notifications with the broader incident management workflow, from detection to resolution and learning.
For teams looking to centralize their response efforts and reduce the manual toil associated with incidents, a unified platform like Rootly offers a compelling solution. By connecting on-call management directly to the rest of the incident lifecycle, you empower your team to respond faster and more effectively. Properly managing your teams and their on-call responsibilities within a single platform is key to building a more resilient engineering organization.