Best PagerDuty Alternatives in 2025: Top Incident Tools

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Falit Jain
October 3, 2025
5 min read
Best PagerDuty Alternatives in 2025: Top Incident Tools
Table of Content

The Best PagerDuty Alternative in 2025: Why Pagerly is the Smarter, Cheaper, and Faster Choice

When your team is dealing with critical incidents, every second matters. You need the right people notified instantly, clear escalation policies, and an interface that helps your team focus rather than get distracted.

For years, PagerDuty has been the industry standard for on-call scheduling and incident management software. But today, business needs are changing. Companies want tools that are cost-effective, user-friendly, and adaptable to specific requirements — whether you’re a DevOps team in a startup or a large enterprise with global operations.

That’s where Pagerly comes in. With its intuitive design, real-time alerts, seamless integrations, and 80% lower costs, Pagerly has quickly become the best PagerDuty alternative for 2025.

In this detailed guide, we’ll cover:

  • Why companies are moving away from PagerDuty
  • The essential features you should demand from an incident management platform
  • The best open-source alternatives and enterprise tools
  • How Pagerly compares against PagerDuty, Opsgenie, Splunk On-Call, and Grafana OnCall
  • Best practices for smoother incident management workflows
  • Why Pagerly is the ideal solution for both small businesses and large enterprises

Why Companies Search for PagerDuty Alternatives

PagerDuty is powerful. But power comes with complexity and costs. Here are the main reasons teams are rethinking their setup:

1. High Costs

PagerDuty pricing scales quickly as your team grows. For smaller businesses or startups, this becomes unsustainable. Imagine paying enterprise prices when you only need basic on-call scheduling and incident response workflows.

2. Alert Fatigue & User Experience

When every alert looks urgent, engineers start ignoring them. Teams want flexible alerting policies and a clean interface to help them prioritize critical incidents.

3. Specific Needs of Smaller Teams

Not every company needs AI-driven analytics or machine learning-based response automation. Many simply want:

  • Simple on-call scheduling
  • Escalation policies that work
  • Seamless Slack/Microsoft Teams integrations
  • Public status pages for customer transparency

4. Budget Constraints

Startups and growing businesses often operate under tight budgets. Paying thousands of dollars per month just for an incident management tool doesn’t make sense when viable alternatives are available.

5. Complex Onboarding

PagerDuty’s learning curve can slow down teams. Many companies prefer tools that allow smooth operation from day one with minimal training.

Essential Features of a PagerDuty Alternative

Before choosing a tool, let’s define the must-have features for incident management:

  • On-Call Scheduling: Easy drag-and-drop calendars, recurring rotations, and support for global teams.
  • Escalation Policies: Automatic re-routing when the first responder doesn’t acknowledge an alert.
  • Multi-Channel Notifications: Push notifications, phone calls, SMS, Slack, Microsoft Teams, and even email alerts.
  • Status Pages: Both internal dashboards for teams and public pages for customers to improve communication.
  • Seamless Integrations: With tools like Datadog, Grafana, New Relic, Prometheus, AWS CloudWatch, and ServiceNow.
  • Free Plan & Transparent Pricing: No hidden charges, clear upgrade paths.
  • User Experience: An intuitive interface that minimizes errors and reduces stress during incidents.

Popular PagerDuty Alternatives in the Market

Here are the most commonly mentioned alternatives:

Grafana OnCall (Open-Source)

  • Strengths: Open-source, integrates with Grafana monitoring tools.
  • Limitations: Requires heavy configuration, limited enterprise support.

Splunk On-Call (VictorOps)

  • Strengths: Rich feature set, trusted brand.
  • Limitations: Expensive, tailored to enterprises already using Splunk.

Opsgenie (by Atlassian)

  • Strengths: Deep Jira integration, flexible incident workflows.
  • Limitations: Gets expensive, UI isn’t as modern or intuitive.

ServiceNow Incident Management

  • Strengths: Comprehensive ITSM solution for enterprises.
  • Limitations: Overkill for smaller teams, very high cost.

Open-Source Solutions (Cabot, OpenDuty)

  • Strengths: Free to use, highly customizable.
  • Limitations: Lack advanced features, no professional support.

Why Pagerly is the Best PagerDuty Alternative

Here’s why Pagerly is winning over teams:

💸 Save 80% on Costs

Pagerly offers transparent pricing designed for small businesses, DevOps teams, and enterprises.

  • Free plan for small teams
  • Affordable paid plans for scaling businesses
  • Enterprise plan with custom SLAs and advanced features

⚡ Faster Response Times

Pagerly ensures the right person is alerted instantly via:

  • Phone calls (for critical alerts)
  • Push notifications
  • Slack/Microsoft Teams integration
  • SMS & email

📊 Built-In Public Status Pages

Unlike PagerDuty (where status pages are paid add-ons), Pagerly includes status pages. This saves cost and improves customer communication during downtime.

📱 Mobile-First, User-Friendly App

Pagerly’s app is designed with ease of use in mind. On-call engineers can acknowledge, reassign, or escalate incidents from their phones in seconds.

🔄 Seamless Integrations

Pagerly integrates with monitoring tools, ITSM software, and collaboration platforms — ensuring all incidents flow into a single response platform.

🧑‍🤝‍🧑 Ideal for Small & Large Teams

  • Small Teams: Free or low-cost plans with all essential features.
  • Large Enterprises: Enterprise-level features like machine learning insights, customization options, and compliance tools.

Real-World Example: Small Startup vs Large Enterprise

Startup Use Case

A 10-person DevOps team with budget constraints wants:

  • On-call scheduling
  • Phone call alerts for critical issues
  • A public status page
    Pagerly provides this at a fraction of PagerDuty’s cost, ensuring better uptime and transparency without draining the budget.

Enterprise Use Case

A global SaaS company with hundreds of engineers needs:

  • Complex escalation policies
  • Integration with ServiceNow, Jira, and Datadog
  • Advanced reporting and analytics
    Pagerly’s enterprise plan provides robust features, saving costs compared to PagerDuty’s premium tiers.

Pagerly vs PagerDuty vs Opsgenie: Comparison Table

Feature PagerDuty Opsgenie Pagerly ⭐ (Best Alternative)
On-Call Scheduling ✅ Yes ✅ Yes ✅ Yes (simpler UI)
Escalation Policies ✅ Yes ✅ Yes ✅ Yes (flexible, cheaper)
Status Pages 💲 Paid Add-On ❌ No ✅ Built-in
Microsoft Teams Support ✅ Yes ⚠️ Limited ✅ Native & Seamless
Pricing 💲💲💲 High 💲💲 Mid 💲 Save up to 80%
Free Plan ❌ No ✅ Yes ✅ Yes
Mobile App ✅ Yes ✅ Yes ✅ Modern & User-Friendly
Open APIs ✅ Yes ✅ Yes ✅ Yes
Best Fit 🏢 Large Enterprises 👨‍💻 Atlassian Users 🌍 Small Teams → Large Enterprises

Best Practices for Incident Management with Pagerly

  1. Define Escalation Policies Clearly
    • Always set primary and secondary responders.
    • Use phone calls for SEV1 incidents.
  2. Use Status Pages Effectively
    • Public pages reduce support requests.
    • Internal pages keep executives updated.
  3. Avoid Alert Fatigue
    • Configure priority levels (SEV1, SEV2, SEV3).
    • Route alerts to the right team members.
  4. Leverage Integrations
    • Connect Pagerly with Datadog, Grafana, New Relic, Prometheus for real-time monitoring.
    • Sync with Slack or Microsoft Teams for instant collaboration.

FAQs on PagerDuty Alternatives

Q1: Is Pagerly really 80% cheaper than PagerDuty?
Yes. Pagerly’s transparent plans allow small teams and enterprises to save up to 80% on costs while retaining all critical features.

Q2: Does Pagerly support free plans?
Yes. Unlike PagerDuty, Pagerly offers a free plan for small teams.

Q3: Can Pagerly integrate with Microsoft Teams?
Absolutely. Pagerly is natively integrated with Microsoft Teams (and Slack), making it a better fit for collaboration-first organizations.

Q4: Is Pagerly suitable for large enterprises?
Yes. Pagerly offers an enterprise plan with advanced features, machine learning, and customization.

Final Verdict: The Best PagerDuty Alternative

PagerDuty has been the standard for years, but its high costs, complexity, and lack of built-in features like status pages leave many teams searching for a better option.

Pagerly is that option. It delivers:

  • 80% cost savings
  • Faster response times
  • Built-in status pages
  • Intuitive mobile-first design
  • Seamless integrations with Slack, Microsoft Teams, and monitoring tools

For small teams, DevOps engineers, and large enterprises alike, Pagerly is the best PagerDuty alternative in 2025.

👉 Ready to see how Pagerly transforms incident management?
Start your free trial today and experience better uptime, lower costs, and smoother operations.

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