Effective on-call management is critical for maintaining system reliability and enabling rapid incident response. When services fail, teams need an automated process to alert the right person and resolve the issue quickly. While PagerDuty is a well-known name in this space, the market has evolved, offering many powerful alternatives tailored to different team needs and budgets. This article reviews PagerDuty and its top alternatives to help you find the best on-call software for your team.
What Makes a Great On-Call Software?
On-call software is a system that automates alerting the right person at the right time when an issue occurs. Its importance can't be overstated; it reduces manual coordination, prevents responder burnout, and minimizes Mean Time to Resolution (MTTR). A long MTTR doesn't just frustrate engineers—it directly impacts revenue and customer trust [1].
The essential components of a robust on-call platform include:
- On-Call Schedules: Defining rotations, coverage, and business hours ensures there are no gaps in coverage. A flexible system allows for easy schedule management and overrides.
- Escalation Policies: Creating automated, multi-level rules ensures an alert is acknowledged, even if the primary responder is unavailable.
- Multi-Channel Notifications: Reaching responders via their preferred channels—like SMS, phone calls, push notifications, and Slack—is crucial for a timely response.
- Alert & Incident Management: Connecting alerts to a broader incident response workflow streamlines investigation and resolution.
Modern platforms like Rootly On-Call unify these components to ensure every critical signal reaches the right person. You can get started with a platform that integrates alerting directly into your incident management lifecycle.
PagerDuty: The Incumbent Leader and Its Drawbacks
PagerDuty pioneered the on-call management market and remains a popular choice for large enterprises with complex service architectures and extensive service needs [2]. It offers numerous integrations and a robust, service-based alerting model.
However, many teams seek alternatives due to several common limitations. According to a direct PagerDuty vs. Rootly comparison, these drawbacks often include:
- High Cost: It's frequently described as a very expensive tool, especially for its core alerting functionality.
- Limited Scope: It is primarily an alerting tool. Full incident management features often cost extra and feel disconnected from the core workflow.
- Dated User Experience: The UI can feel unintuitive and difficult to configure, particularly for non-engineers.
- Poor Collaboration: It lacks native collaboration features, forcing teams to rely on other tools like Slack to manage incidents effectively.
- Inflexible Configuration: Setting up and updating schedules or creating workarounds (like modeling teams as services) can be difficult and cumbersome.
The Best PagerDuty & On-Call Software Alternatives
Here's a comparison of the top on-call software solutions to consider in 2026.
Tool
Best For
Key Features
Pricing Model
Rootly
All-in-one incident management
Integrated on-call, response automation, retrospectives, Slack-native UI, advanced scheduling
Tiered, per-user
Opsgenie
Teams in the Atlassian ecosystem
Deep Jira integration, flexible routing rules, ITSM capabilities
Tiered, per-user
OnPage
Critical, high-stakes alerting
Persistent "loud" alerts, structured escalations, reliable delivery
Tiered, per-user
Upstat
Simple, visual scheduling
Visual timeline editor, timezone-aware shifts, easy overrides
Tiered, per-user
1. Rootly: The All-in-One Incident Management Platform
Rootly is a modern, comprehensive alternative that integrates on-call management into a full end-to-end incident response platform. It goes beyond basic alerting to provide a unified solution for the entire incident lifecycle.
Key differentiators include:
- Complete Solution: Rootly combines on-call schedules and alerting with incident response automation, retrospectives, and analytics in one platform.
- Intuitive and User-Friendly: Designed for cross-functional teams, not just engineers, its modern and easy-to-navigate UI simplifies configuration and daily use.
- Slack-Native: It allows teams to manage on-call duties, page responders, and run entire incidents without leaving Slack.
- Advanced Scheduling: Features like Schedule Gap Detection, seamless overrides, and vacation-aware scheduling adapt to how real teams work.
- Transparent Pricing: Rootly offers a straightforward pricing model without per-alert fees or hidden upsells, providing more features at a lower cost than PagerDuty, as detailed in this comparison.
2. Opsgenie: Best for Atlassian Ecosystem Users
Opsgenie is a strong PagerDuty alternative, especially for teams heavily invested in the Atlassian suite (Jira, Confluence). For teams evaluating tools, it is one of the most common Opsgenie alternatives to consider alongside PagerDuty. Its key strength is the deep integration with Jira Service Management, allowing for seamless workflows between alerts and tickets [2]. It also offers flexible scheduling and routing rules within a broader IT service management (ITSM) ecosystem.
3. OnPage: For Critical, High-Stakes Alerting
OnPage is a specialized tool for organizations that require persistent, "loud" alerting to ensure no critical event is missed. Its primary focus is on reliable alert delivery that can override a phone's silent settings and structured escalation paths [3]. This makes it a good fit for IT, healthcare, and other sectors where an immediate response is non-negotiable.
4. Upstat: Simple and Visual On-Call Scheduling
Upstat is a solution focused on making on-call scheduling simple and intuitive. It uses a clean, visual approach to manage rotations and coverage [4]. Key features include a visual timeline for building and viewing schedules, timezone-aware shifts for global teams, flexible rotation patterns, and easy overrides for handling last-minute changes.
How to Choose the Right On-Call Software for Your Team
When evaluating the best oncall software for teams, consider these factors:
- Integration Capabilities: Does it connect with your existing monitoring (e.g., Datadog), chat (e.g., Slack), and ticketing tools (e.g., Jira)?
- Scheduling Flexibility: Can it handle complex rotations, overrides, and time-off requests easily? The best tools simplify shift planning and help avoid coverage gaps [5].
- Ease of Use: Is the platform intuitive for everyone who needs to use it, or does it require extensive training?
- Scope of Features: Do you need just alerting, or a complete incident management platform that includes response automation and post-mortems? The trend is toward platforms offering more than just alerts [6].
- Collaboration: Does the tool bring people together to solve problems, or does it create information silos?
- Pricing: Is the pricing model transparent and scalable, or are there hidden costs for alerts, users, or advanced features?
Get Started with a Modern On-Call Solution
While PagerDuty established the on-call market, modern alternatives like Rootly offer a more integrated, user-friendly, and cost-effective approach. The right platform helps teams move from alert to resolution faster by combining on-call scheduling with a powerful incident management workflow.
Rootly’s core components include flexible schedules, powerful escalation policies, and multi-channel notification rules, all within a single platform built for collaboration.
Explore Rootly, an end-to-end incident management platform, to see how you can transform your on-call operations [1].