PagerDuty is a well-known name in on-call management, but an increasing number of teams are exploring alternatives. The reasons for this shift are clear: high costs, tool complexity, and a growing demand for a single, end-to-end incident management software platform instead of just an alerting tool. If your team is considering a move, this article will explain why Rootly is the ideal first step for any organization looking to modernize its incident response process.
Why More Teams Are Looking for PagerDuty Alternatives
The search for PagerDuty alternatives often starts with a few common pain points that many engineering teams experience. As the landscape of DevOps and Site Reliability Engineering (SRE) evolves, tools need to keep pace with modern demands.
- High Costs and Inflexible Plans: PagerDuty's pricing structure can be a significant hurdle. Essential features are often locked behind expensive enterprise tiers, with some plans starting at $21 per user per month but requiring an upgrade to over $41 per user for comprehensive functionality [4]. This forces teams to choose between paying a premium or working without critical capabilities.
- Fragmented Tooling (Tool Sprawl): PagerDuty excels at alerting but often stops there. This requires teams to patch together multiple tools for communication, collaboration, and post-incident analysis. Managing this "tool sprawl" adds complexity and overhead to the DevOps incident management process, making it difficult to maintain a cohesive workflow for SRE tools for incident tracking.
- A Market Ready for Innovation: While PagerDuty has strong brand recognition, its dominance has also paved the way for innovative competitors to emerge [5]. Modern platforms are now offering more comprehensive, integrated, and user-friendly solutions designed for today's engineering challenges.
What’s Included in the Modern SRE Tooling Stack?
So, what should teams look for in a modern incident management platform? The needs of today's SRE and DevOps teams go far beyond simple alerting. Here’s what’s included in the modern SRE tooling stack:
- Unified On-Call and Incident Response: A modern platform should seamlessly connect on-call scheduling and escalations with the entire incident response lifecycle. This eliminates the need to jump between a pager and a separate incident management tool.
- Deep Automation: The ability to automate repetitive tasks is crucial. Powerful, customizable workflows can handle everything from creating Slack channels and Jira tickets to paging the right teams and updating stakeholders, freeing up engineers to focus on resolving the problem.
- Collaboration-Centric Design: Incidents are team efforts. A great tool integrates natively with collaboration hubs like Slack and Microsoft Teams, bringing the entire response workflow into the communication channels where teams already work.
- End-to-End Lifecycle Management: Modern incident management software should cover the entire process—from the initial alert to triage, resolution, and post-incident learning. With downtime costing organizations an average of $9,000 per minute, a tool that manages the full lifecycle is no longer a luxury, but a necessity [7].
Why Rootly is the Best PagerDuty Alternative for Your Team
Rootly is designed to meet all the criteria of a modern incident management platform, making it one of the top incident management tools available today. It addresses the shortcomings of traditional pagers by providing a single, unified solution for reliability.
One Unified Platform, Not Just a Pager
Unlike PagerDuty, which primarily focuses on alerting, Rootly is a complete incident management platform. It combines on-call management with a robust response workflow built for the entire incident lifecycle. With Rootly, you can manage everything from the moment an alert is detected to the final retrospective and follow-up actions. This end-to-end approach simplifies your tooling, reduces complexity, and ensures a consistent response process every time. For more detail, you can explore an overview of incident management in Rootly.
Modern On-Call Management Built for Reliability
Rootly isn't just an add-on; it's a direct, more powerful replacement for PagerDuty's core functionality, making it some of the best oncall software for teams. It includes all the features you expect from a modern on-call solution:
- Flexible scheduling and overrides
- Multi-level escalation policies
- Notifications across multiple channels (SMS, voice, push, Slack, and email)
- Live call routing to connect responders instantly
- Heartbeats for proactive failure detection
These features are seamlessly integrated into the broader incident management workflow. You can get started with Rootly's on-call management to see how it can enhance your team's reliability.
Seamless Migration and Integration
Switching tools can feel daunting, but Rootly makes the transition smooth. You can start by integrating Rootly with your existing PagerDuty setup to enhance its capabilities with powerful automation and collaboration features. When you're ready, you can migrate fully to Rootly On-Call for a complete, unified experience. This flexible approach allows you to adopt a modern workflow at your own pace, with a clear path to replacing PagerDuty entirely. Learn more about the PagerDuty integration and how to make the switch.
Compare On-Call Platforms: How Rootly Stands Out
When you compare oncall platforms, it's important to look beyond basic alerting. A direct alert management software comparison reveals why Rootly is a superior choice.
Rootly vs. PagerDuty
Feature
Rootly
PagerDuty
Scope
Unified On-Call + End-to-End Incident Management
Primarily On-Call & Alerting
Automation
Extensive no-code workflow builder for the entire incident lifecycle
Basic automation, often requiring add-ons or scripts
Collaboration
Native, bot-less experience inside Slack and Microsoft Teams
Relies on integrations that can be clunky
Cost-Effectiveness
Consolidates tools, providing higher value and reducing overhead
Can become expensive as you need more features
Rootly vs. Other PagerDuty and Opsgenie Alternatives
The market for Opsgenie alternatives and PagerDuty replacements includes several other platforms like Zenduty, Xurrent, and Squadcast [2]. While these tools offer valuable features, many still focus on specific parts of the incident lifecycle, such as on-call or status pages.
Rootly's key differentiator is its unified nature. It is the only platform that truly combines best-in-class on-call management with a complete, automated incident response lifecycle in one place. This consolidation eliminates tool sprawl, reduces cognitive load during incidents, and provides a single source of truth for all reliability efforts.
Make the Switch to a Modern Incident Management Solution
Moving on from PagerDuty is more than just switching tools; it's an opportunity to adopt a modern, unified approach to reliability. By consolidating your stack, you can reduce costs, eliminate tool sprawl, and empower your team with powerful automation.
Rootly provides the most logical and effective path forward. Whether you start by integrating with your existing setup or decide to replace PagerDuty outright, Rootly gives you the capabilities you need to build a world-class incident management program.
Ready to see how a unified platform can transform your incident response? Book a demo or start a free trial of Rootly today.