As high-growth teams scale, managing system reliability and responding to incidents becomes increasingly complex. Traditional, manual on-call methods can't keep pace with fast-moving companies that need to maintain uptime and protect customer trust. The right on-call software is crucial for ensuring that critical alerts reach the right person immediately, without causing burnout or confusion. This article will compare the best oncall software for teams that are rapidly expanding.
What to Look for in On-Call Software for Teams
The best on-call software for teams offers more than simple alerting. High-growth organizations need tools that are scalable, intelligent, and deeply integrated into their workflows.
Key evaluation criteria include:
- Scalable Scheduling and Rotations: The tool must support complex rotations across different time zones, allow for primary and secondary coverage layers, and make shift handoffs seamless.
- Intelligent Alerting and Escalation: It should intelligently route alerts based on urgency and use automated escalation policies to ensure they are never missed. This prevents alert fatigue and ensures a reliable response.
- Deep Integration Capabilities: The platform must connect with the team's existing tech stack, including monitoring tools like Datadog and Grafana, chat ops platforms like Slack, and ticketing systems like Jira.
- Automation and Workflow Orchestration: The ability to automate repetitive tasks—such as creating incident channels, notifying stakeholders, or pulling in runbooks—is essential for reducing manual effort and speeding up resolution.
- Unified Incident Management: An on-call tool shouldn't be an island. It should be part of a complete incident management platform that covers the entire lifecycle, from detection to retrospective.
Top On-Call Software for Teams in 2026: A Comparative Overview
Each of the top on-call tools has different strengths and is suited for different types of teams. Here's a look at the leading options available today.
1. Rootly
Rootly is a comprehensive incident management platform with a powerful, integrated on-call solution designed for modern engineering teams. Its goal is to ensure every critical signal reaches the right person instantly with zero manual coordination.
Key on-call components include on-call schedules, escalation policies, multi-channel notification rules (voice, SMS, Slack, push), live call routing, and heartbeats for proactive failure detection. Rootly's main advantage is its seamless integration between on-call operations and the broader incident response lifecycle, automating workflows from the initial alert all the way to resolution.
Best for: High-growth engineering teams that want a mature, automated reliability strategy that unifies on-call management and incident response in one platform.
2. PagerDuty
PagerDuty is one of the most established and widely adopted platforms for real-time incident response and alerting. It is known for reliable alerting and has an extensive library of over 700 integrations [7]. While powerful, its pricing can be higher than competitors, and some advanced features are only available as add-ons, which can increase the total cost significantly [6].
Best for: Large enterprises seeking a mature, standalone alerting solution with extensive legacy compatibility.
3. Opsgenie (by Atlassian)
Opsgenie is known for strong on-call scheduling and alerting capabilities. It is now being integrated into Atlassian’s Jira Service Management and Compass products. Crucially, the standalone Opsgenie platform is shutting down in April 2027, and users are required to migrate to another Atlassian product [4]. This makes it a less ideal choice for teams looking for a long-term, stable solution without a forced migration.
Best for: Teams deeply embedded in the Atlassian ecosystem who are already planning to use Jira Service Management for IT operations.
4. Better Stack
Better Stack combines incident management with monitoring and logging, offering a unified solution for observability and response. It is often highlighted for its all-in-one capabilities and focus on providing a strong developer experience [1].
Best for: Teams looking for an integrated monitoring, logging, and on-call solution in a single package.
5. Zenduty
Zenduty is an end-to-end incident response platform that focuses on reducing alert noise using AI. It offers features like custom alert routing and post-incident management, and claims to reduce Mean Time to Resolution (MTTR) significantly for its users [5].
Best for: Teams prioritizing AI-powered alert management to combat alert fatigue.
Comparison Table: Key Features at a Glance
Tool
Core Focus
Key Differentiator
Best For
Rootly
Unified Incident Management & On-Call
Deep workflow automation and seamless integration between on-call and the full incident lifecycle.
Modern engineering teams focused on automation and reliability.
PagerDuty
Standalone Alerting & On-Call
Market incumbency and a vast number of integrations.
Enterprises needing a proven, standalone alerting tool.
Opsgenie
Alerting & On-Call (being deprecated)
Strong scheduling features within the Atlassian ecosystem.
Teams committed to Jira Service Management.
Better Stack
All-in-One Observability
Combines monitoring, logging, and on-call in one platform.
Teams wanting a single tool for observability and response.
Zenduty
AI-Powered Alert Management
Uses AI to reduce alert noise and automate escalations.
Organizations struggling with high volumes of alerts.
How to Choose the Best On-Call Software for Your Team
Follow these steps to select the right tool for your specific needs.
- Evaluate Your Entire Incident Lifecycle: Determine if you just need an alerting tool or a comprehensive platform that manages incidents from detection to resolution and learning. The most effective approach is to connect on-call to the entire incident lifecycle.
- Assess Integration and Automation Needs: Map out your critical tools. A modern on-call solution should not only integrate with them but also automate actions across them to reduce manual work.
- Consider Team Structure and Scalability: Your tool should easily handle complex scheduling needs as your team grows, including multi-layered rotations and time-zone-aware logic.
- Prioritize User Experience: A complicated tool won't be adopted. The best on-call software is intuitive for both administrators setting up schedules and responders acknowledging alerts, especially during stressful situations.
- Analyze the Total Cost of Ownership: Look beyond the sticker price. Consider the cost of missed alerts, manual toil, and the impact of downtime. A unified platform that integrates multiple functions often provides better value than stitching together several point solutions [2].
Conclusion: Unify On-Call and Incident Management for True Reliability
For high-growth teams, the most effective on-call strategy involves more than just a standalone alerting tool. True operational reliability comes from a unified platform where on-call management is seamlessly integrated with incident response workflows.
Rootly is the leading choice for teams that understand this, as it connects schedules, escalations, and alerts directly into a powerful, automated incident management process. See how Rootly stacks up in our incident management platform showdown to understand how a unified platform can transform your on-call operations and enhance your team's reliability.