Many engineering teams find themselves tethered to legacy on-call alerting platforms that simply haven't kept pace with the velocity of modern software development. These older systems often inflict more pain than they prevent, creating a cascade of common frustrations like debilitating alert fatigue, chaotic manual incident coordination, and disjointed, siloed workflows. In many respects, it's like trying to secure a modern cloud environment with an outdated security system—you've simply outgrown the tool's capabilities [6].
Modern on-call tools, however, promise much more than just paging a sleepy engineer at 3 a.m. They deliver a comprehensive, integrated incident management experience that streamlines everything from detection to resolution. This article will explore the clear signs that it's time to upgrade your on-call platform, identify the key features to look for in a modern tool, and compare the best options available today.
Why Legacy Alerting Platforms No Longer Cut It
The tools that were once considered the gold standard for on-call management are now showing their age. For too many teams, these platforms have devolved into expensive pagers that fail to support the full incident response lifecycle. A modern alternative like Rootly is engineered to solve these deep-rooted issues, not just forward alerts. You can see the stark difference in a direct comparison between PagerDuty and Rootly.
1. Alert Fatigue and Lack of Context
Legacy systems are notorious for drowning teams in a relentless flood of low-context alerts. This constant noise breeds burnout and makes it terrifyingly easy for critical alerts to get lost in the shuffle. These platforms often depend on outdated, rule-based engines that are ill-equipped to identify complex, modern threats, leaving teams dangerously exposed [7]. Consequently, your most valuable engineers spend more time manually triaging alerts than actually solving the underlying problems.
2. Siloed Workflows and Poor Collaboration
Older on-call tools were typically built with a single audience in mind: engineering. This design creates frustrating communication barriers during an incident, leaving departments like customer support, legal, or communications stranded and out of the loop. Meaningful collaboration is forced into external tools like Slack, leading to endless context-switching and fragmented information. In stark contrast, modern platforms like Rootly are built for seamless cross-functional collaboration, integrating directly into the tools your teams already live in.
3. Clunky Configuration and User Experience
Let's be honest: the user interfaces on many legacy platforms feel dated, unintuitive, and are a genuine pain to configure. Managing on-call schedules, configuring escalation policies, and handling overrides feels needlessly complex and rigid. This clunky experience adds unnecessary friction to an already stressful process. Modern tools prioritize a guided, human-centric user experience that makes on-call management feel effortless and accessible to everyone.
4. Prohibitive Costs and Lack of Value
Legacy platforms often come with eye-watering price tags, confusing pricing tiers, and unwelcome surprise fees that make budgeting a nightmare. For their high cost, these tools provide shockingly limited value, focusing almost exclusively on basic alerting while neglecting the rest of the incident lifecycle. Rootly provides transparent, predictable pricing that is often a fraction of the cost, all while delivering a complete, end-to-end incident management platform.
Key Features of Modern On-Call Software
When you're ready to replace a legacy system, it’s critical to look beyond simple alerting. A modern tool should empower your team to handle incidents with more speed, consistency, and intelligence. The best solutions are designed to adapt to your team's specific operational needs and integrate deeply with your existing collaboration platforms [2].
End-to-End Incident Management
The best oncall software for teams is more than just an alerting tool—it’s a central pillar of a larger incident management platform. A modern solution must support the entire incident lifecycle, from the first moment of detection through response, stakeholder communication, post-incident reviews, and organizational learning. This holistic approach ensures that every incident becomes a valuable opportunity to improve.
Flexible and Human-Centric Scheduling
Effective on-call scheduling should be fair, flexible, and simple to manage, especially for distributed, global teams. Modern platforms make this possible with features like visual timelines and built-in timezone awareness [3]. Look for capabilities that make scheduling humane:
- Easy Overrides: Quickly reassign shifts for vacations or emergencies with a single click.
- Automatic Gap Detection: Get alerts for any gaps in on-call coverage before they become a problem.
- Fair Rotations: Implement cycle-based round-robin schedules to distribute the on-call burden evenly.
- Time-Zone-Aware Planning: Effortlessly manage schedules for teams spread across the globe.
Powerful Automation and Workflows
Automation is the secret to eliminating manual toil and enforcing a consistent, best-practice response for every incident. Modern tools leverage powerful incident workflows to automate the repetitive tasks that slow your team down, such as:
- Creating dedicated Slack channels and inviting the right responders automatically.
- Paging the correct on-call teams based on the incident's severity and affected service.
- Updating a public status page to keep customers informed.
- Generating post-incident review documents with key data and timelines pre-populated.
Reliability and Multi-Channel Alerting
Above all else, your on-call tool must be unwaveringly reliable. If your alerting system goes down, you're flying blind. Look for platforms built on a multi-cloud architecture to guarantee that alerts are never missed. A modern tool must also provide robust, multi-channel alerting to reach responders wherever they are. Essential notification channels include:
- Voice calls (with Do Not Disturb override)
- SMS messages
- Push notifications
- Slack messages
You can get started with these core components to build a truly resilient on-call practice.
Best On-Call Software for Teams in 2026
1. Rootly: The All-in-One Platform
- Best for: Teams of all sizes seeking a complete, cost-effective incident management solution that unifies on-call and response.
Rootly is far more than just an on-call tool; it's a comprehensive incident management platform designed to replace legacy tools and empower modern engineering teams [4].
Key Strengths:
- All-in-One: Seamlessly combines on-call scheduling, alerting, and incident response in a single, unified platform.
- Modern UI: An intuitive and beautiful interface that's easy for engineers and non-technical stakeholders to use.
- Powerful Automation: Deep, native integrations with Slack, Jira, Datadog, and more to automate your entire incident workflow.
- Transparent Pricing: Clear, predictable pricing at a fraction of the cost of legacy platforms, with no hidden fees.
"We migrated thousands of PagerDuty schedules & services to Rootly with no down time. We saved a tremendous amount of money and unlocked more value."
— Director of Engineering, Wealthsimple via PagerDuty vs. Rootly
2. Grafana OnCall: The Open-Source Choice
- Best for: Teams already heavily invested in the Grafana ecosystem who are comfortable with a free, self-hosted option.
Grafana OnCall is an open-source tool that offers simplified on-call management, alert grouping, and tight integration with the broader Grafana monitoring stack [5].
Important Caveat: The open-source version of Grafana OnCall is currently in maintenance mode and is scheduled to be archived in March 2026. This makes it a risky choice for teams seeking long-term reliability and support.
3. Other Tools in the Market
- Best for: Teams with very specific, niche alerting requirements.
Other players like Opsgenie and Splunk On-Call (formerly VictorOps) certainly exist in the on-call space [1]. While these tools can be effective for alerting, many share the same "legacy" DNA as PagerDuty, focusing narrowly on paging rather than embracing the full incident lifecycle.
How to Seamlessly Migrate to a Modern On-Call Tool
One of the biggest fears holding teams back from switching is the dreaded migration process. The good news is that modern platforms like Rootly are designed to make this transition as painless as possible.
Rootly offers an automated migration process that can pull your existing schedules, escalation policies, and user details directly from legacy systems with just a few clicks. Expert support is also available to guide you through every step. In fact, Rootly's migration team includes former PagerDuty employees who know exactly how to architect a seamless transition with zero downtime.
Conclusion: Step into the Future of Incident Response
Legacy alerting tools are holding your teams back with exorbitant costs, soul-crushing manual work, and siloed processes. They force your best engineers to spend their time on administrative toil instead of building and innovating. In contrast, modern platforms like Rootly provide a comprehensive, automated, and collaborative solution that covers the entire incident lifecycle.
By moving from a simple alerting tool to a true AI-powered incident management platform, you can dramatically improve your team's efficiency and your service's reliability [8]. It’s time to step into the future of incident response and empower your team with the tools they truly deserve.
Ready to see what a modern on-call platform can do for you? Get started with Rootly to learn more.