Short answer: Splunk On-Call (formerly VictorOps) and Rootly solve two different halves of the same problem. Splunk On-Call is a mature alerting and on-call scheduling tool now owned by Cisco inside Splunk, while Rootly is a modern, Slack-native incident-management platform focused on process and automation. If you mainly need paging and rotations, Splunk On-Call fits. If you mainly need incident workflow and retrospectives, Rootly fits. Most teams want both, running inside Slack, at a price that does not climb with every seat. That is where Pagerly comes in.
| Need | Best of these two | Better option |
| On-call scheduling and paging | Splunk On-Call | Pagerly |
| Incident process and retrospectives | Rootly | Pagerly |
| Slack-native workflow at flat pricing | Neither fully | Pagerly |
Splunk On-Call began life as VictorOps, a well-regarded on-call and alerting product, and was acquired into Splunk, which is now part of Cisco. Its strengths are the fundamentals of paging: on-call schedules, escalation policies, a timeline view of an incident, and multi-channel notifications by phone, SMS, push, and email. It pairs naturally with Splunk's observability data, so teams already sending logs and metrics into Splunk get a tight alerting loop.
The concerns are about direction and cost. Since the Cisco acquisition, the standalone roadmap for Splunk On-Call has looked uncertain to many customers, and that uncertainty alone has pushed teams to evaluate alternatives before a renewal. Pricing is per user per month, so the bill grows as you add responders. And while it alerts well, it is not a Slack-native incident-management product: you still run the actual incident somewhere else. It is best for existing Splunk shops that want alerting close to their observability data.
Rootly takes the opposite starting point. It is a Slack-native incident-management platform built around process: declare an incident with a slash command, and Rootly spins up a channel, assigns roles, tracks a timeline, drives runbooks and workflow automation, and produces structured retrospectives. It has since added on-call scheduling, so it can cover paging too, and it is popular with teams that want to standardize how incidents are run.
The trade-offs are price and scope. Rootly sits at the premium end and is priced per responder or seat, so a large on-call org pays accordingly. Its center of gravity is incident response and the surrounding process, so teams whose primary need is simple, reliable paging can find it heavier than necessary. It is best for organizations investing in incident-response maturity that have the budget for a dedicated platform.
These two barely overlap in philosophy. Splunk On-Call is alert-first: it exists to make sure the right person wakes up when something breaks, and it is strongest when wired into Splunk observability. Rootly is process-first: it assumes the alert already fired and focuses on running the incident cleanly and learning from it afterward. If you only compare them on paging, Splunk On-Call is the more established alerting engine; if you only compare them on incident workflow and retrospectives, Rootly is clearly ahead. The problem is that real teams need both halves, and buying Splunk On-Call for paging plus Rootly for process means two tools, two bills, and two per-seat pricing models. That is a lot of cost and integration overhead to reconstruct what a single modern platform now offers out of the box.
| Feature | Splunk On-Call | Rootly | Pagerly |
| On-call scheduling | Yes | Yes | Yes, in Slack |
| Incident management | Basic | Strong | Strong, in Slack |
| Slack-native workflow | Limited | Yes | Yes, end to end |
| @oncall usergroup sync | No | Limited | Yes, automatic |
| AI post-mortems | No | Partial | Yes |
| Pricing model | Per user | Per responder | Flat per team |
Splunk On-Call was built before Slack became the place teams run operations, and Rootly, while Slack-native, is priced like a premium add-on. Pagerly was built for exactly this moment. It is a Slack-native on-call, paging, and incident platform used by more than 1,000 organizations, including teams at 1Password, Disney+, Spotify, and Loom, and it delivers both halves that Splunk On-Call and Rootly split between them.
Whichever tool you pick, score it on five traits: it should run the full workflow inside Slack, price predictably rather than per seat, keep a Slack group like @oncall synced to the live responder automatically, offer modern AI-assisted incident response, and import your existing schedules so switching takes an afternoon. Splunk On-Call covers paging but not the Slack workflow; Rootly covers the workflow but at premium per-seat pricing. Pagerly is built around all five.
Splunk On-Call and Rootly both price per person, so your cost scales with the size of your on-call org even when your incident volume does not. Running both to get full coverage means paying two per-seat bills. Pagerly charges a flat per-team rate from 19 US dollars per month, with paging added at 4 US dollars per user, so adding engineers to a rotation does not blow up the budget. For a broader breakdown, see the best on-call tools for developers.
Add Pagerly to your Slack workspace, import your schedules and escalation policies from the docs, turn on @oncall usergroup sync, route a few low-severity alerts to validate paging, then cut over fully. Most teams are live the same day.
Is Splunk On-Call the same as VictorOps? Yes. VictorOps was rebranded as Splunk On-Call after the Splunk acquisition, which is now part of Cisco.
Does Rootly do on-call scheduling? Yes, Rootly added on-call scheduling to its incident-management platform, though its core strength remains incident process.
Which is cheaper? Both price per person. Pagerly's flat per-team pricing from 19 US dollars per month is typically cheaper once you have more than a handful of responders. See pricing.
Can I get paging and incident response in one tool? Yes. That is exactly what Pagerly provides, inside Slack.
Between the two, choose Splunk On-Call if paging tied to Splunk observability is your only need, or Rootly if incident process is your priority and budget is not a constraint. But for most teams the honest answer is that you should not have to choose. Pagerly gives you reliable on-call and paging plus modern, AI-assisted incident response, all inside Slack, at flat per-team pricing. Compare Pagerly vs PagerDuty, check the pricing, or read the docs, then add Pagerly to Slack for free.