While PagerDuty pioneered on-call alerting, the needs of modern DevOps and Site Reliability Engineering (SRE) teams have evolved far beyond simple notifications. Today's engineering teams require comprehensive incident management software that automates workflows, centralizes collaboration, and promotes continuous learning. Rootly is the modern PagerDuty alternative designed to meet these needs, helping teams improve reliability and reduce toil.
The Shifting Landscape of Incident Management
The practice of incident management has matured from basic alerting into a full-fledged discipline focused on the entire incident lifecycle. Legacy tools often create common pain points like alert fatigue, manual coordination across teams, and a disjointed response process. While PagerDuty enjoys strong brand recognition, a growing number of innovative competitors are emerging to address these shortcomings [1]. This shift highlights the need for integrated DevOps incident management tools that fit seamlessly into modern, chat-driven workflows.
Why Modern Teams Are Seeking PagerDuty Alternatives
1. High Costs and Inflexible Pricing
One of the primary reasons teams search for the best PagerDuty alternatives is cost. PagerDuty's pricing is often complex and can become prohibitively expensive as teams grow or require advanced features. Many teams find that essential functionalities require costly add-ons, which can lead to bills exceeding initial budget projections [2]. This drives the search for solutions that offer transparent, scalable, and better value.
2. A Narrow Focus on Alerting, Not the Full Lifecycle
Traditional on-call tools excel at notifications but often fall short in managing the rest of the incident response process. A complete incident lifecycle includes detection, response coordination, resolution, and post-incident learning. A modern platform must support every stage. Rootly is built to manage this entire process, from the first alert to the final retrospective, ensuring no step is overlooked.
3. Lack of Deep Automation and Collaboration Features
For modern SRE teams, automation is key to reducing manual, repetitive tasks during high-stress incidents. Effective site reliability engineering tools should integrate seamlessly where teams already work, like Slack or Microsoft Teams. Without native and flexible automation, teams are forced to either build and maintain custom scripts or suffer through slow, error-prone manual processes. Investing in a robust toolkit is essential, as outages can cost organizations hundreds of thousands of dollars. An effective incident management strategy is one of the top investments for any reliable engineering team.
A Deeper Look at the Top Incident Management Tools
Rootly: The All-in-One Platform
Rootly addresses the shortcomings of older tools by offering a unified platform designed for modern engineering teams.
- On-Call Management: With flexible scheduling, multi-layered escalation policies, and live call routing, Rootly offers the
best oncall software for teamslooking for a modern solution. You can get started with on-call management quickly and configure schedules that match your team's workflow. - Automation & Workflows: Rootly’s powerful workflow engine automates dozens of tasks, such as creating dedicated Slack channels, paging responders, updating status pages, and generating retrospectives, all without writing a single line of code.
- Retrospectives & Learning: Rootly integrates continuous learning directly into the incident lifecycle. It automates the creation of post-incident reviews and helps teams track action items to prevent future failures.
PagerDuty: The Legacy Incumbent
PagerDuty is a foundational tool for on-call management, and its name is synonymous with alerting. However, its primary focus remains on notifications and escalations. Many teams find its workflow capabilities and user interface less intuitive for modern, chat-centric operations, and it can lack the seamless, automated experience needed to manage the entire incident lifecycle efficiently.
Opsgenie: The Atlassian Alternative (with a Deadline)
Opsgenie has been another popular choice, especially for teams heavily invested in the Atlassian ecosystem. However, a critical change is on the horizon: Atlassian is sunsetting Opsgenie. Sales of the standalone product will cease in June 2025, and the service will shut down completely by April 2027 [3]. This has created an urgent need for teams to find reliable Opsgenie alternatives before the deadline. As teams look for a replacement, Rootly stands out as an ideal and modern platform to migrate to, alongside other options like PagerDuty and Splunk On-Call [4].
Other Contenders in the Market
To effectively compare oncall platforms, it's useful to look at other players in the space.
- Squadcast: Positions itself as a cloud-native, API-first incident management solution designed for developer-centric workflows [5].
- Xurrent IMR / Zenduty: These emerging tools promise competitive pricing and features tailored for SREs and fast-growing teams, including dynamic escalations and incident playbooks [6], [7].
How to Choose the Right Incident Management Platform
To find the right incident management software, teams should evaluate options based on their specific operational needs [8]. Creating a scorecard using the checklist below can help you select the best platform.
- Full Lifecycle Coverage: Does the tool handle everything from the initial alert to the final retrospective?
- Automation Power: Can it automate manual tasks and runbooks without requiring complex setup or custom code?
- Collaboration Hub: Does it integrate deeply with communication tools like Slack or Microsoft Teams where your team already works?
- On-Call Flexibility: Does it support complex schedules, overrides, and multi-layered escalation paths to fit your team's needs?
- Analytics and Insights: Does it help you learn from incidents and track key reliability metrics like Mean Time to Resolution (MTTR)?
- Pricing Model: Is the pricing transparent, scalable, and free of hidden costs for essential features?
Conclusion: Why Rootly Is the Future of Incident Management
The incident management landscape has evolved, and legacy tools focused solely on alerting are no longer enough. Modern engineering teams need a comprehensive platform that unifies on-call management, automation, collaboration, and continuous learning into a single, cohesive workflow.
Rootly delivers on this promise, making it one of the best PagerDuty alternatives for any organization looking to modernize its incident response process and build more reliable systems. By consolidating the entire incident lifecycle into one platform, Rootly empowers teams to resolve issues faster and emerge stronger from every incident.
Ready to see how Rootly can transform your incident management? Schedule a demo or start your free trial today.