What is the best on call management software?
The best on call management software connects monitoring tools to scheduled engineers through automated phone, SMS, and push alerts. It routes incoming operational issues to the right responder and escalates unacknowledged pages to backup personnel.
This list compiles software vendors that provide dedicated scheduling and alert routing platforms. We evaluated each vendor by reviewing published product features, verified subscription rates, mobile capabilities, and rotation options from official documentation. You receive verified pricing numbers, plan inclusions, and core strengths for six leading tools. Compare each service to match your budget and rotation requirements.
How we ranked them
- Published entry price per user per month on an annual plan
- Availability of multi-channel phone and SMS notifications
- Self-service mobile schedule overrides and shift swaps
- Direct integration with engineering chat tools
1. SolarWinds Incident Response
SolarWinds Incident Response organizes alert delivery and on-call schedules for teams. The software provides round-robin policies, schedule cloning, and multi-channel notifications. The Pro plan starts at $15 per user per month billed annually. This plan includes role-based access control, schedules, escalations, automation rules, and the mobile app for iOS and Android. The plan supplies 100 free combined SMS and voice notifications per user for the United States, India, and Brazil. Additional alerts in those regions cost $0.10 each. The Premium plan costs $24 per user per month billed annually and adds runbooks, status pages, and unlimited SMS notifications worldwide. The platform excels at reducing alert repetition through deduplication. It also routes incidents to engineers with clear escalation paths.
https://www.squadcast.com/pricing
2. ilert
ilert manages rotations, shifts, and incident notifications for distributed groups. The platform supports follow-the-sun schedules and syncs on-call calendars with Google and Outlook. The Free plan costs $0 for up to 5 users. It includes one status page, push alerts, and 100 SMS or voice notifications. The Pro plan costs $19 per user per month with a three-user minimum. This tier provides unlimited SMS and voice alerts, single sign-on, and 250 AI credits each month. The Scale plan adds incident channels and conference bridges. Teams can add inbound call routing for $10 per user per month. The software excels at shift management by letting staff members swap shifts and set overrides directly within the mobile application.
3. Rootly
Rootly provides on-call routing and incident coordination inside common communication platforms. It sends alerts and assigns responders directly in Slack and Microsoft Teams. The standalone On-Call plan costs $20 per user per month. This subscription includes paging in Slack and Teams, holiday schedules, paid time off tracking, and shadowing setups. It also supports mobile shift swaps and overrides. The Incident Response plan costs an additional $20 per user per month to provide workflows, timelines, and retrospective documents. An AI SRE tier offers autonomous investigation and remediation steps. Rootly excels at speed of adoption because teams configure rotations and manage urgent pages without leaving their daily team chat channels.
4. incident.io
incident.io runs alerting workflows and incident collaboration natively in chat environments. The platform routes alerts, groups similar signals, and manages responder schedules. The standalone On-Call plan costs $20 per user per month. It contains flexible schedules, shadow rotations, holiday calendars, cover requests, and alert grouping. If you prefer a combined bundle, the Basic incident plan is free forever with single-team on-call. The Team response plan costs $15 per user per month, and adding multi-team on-call costs $10 per user per month. The Pro response plan costs $25 per user per month, with on-call available for $20 per user per month. The tool excels at coordination by keeping alerts and schedule overrides inside Slack or Microsoft Teams.
5. PagerDuty
PagerDuty organizes critical alerts, schedules responders, and routes incident updates across organizations. The platform models services to match team ownership and supports live phone call routing. The Free incident management plan costs $0 per year for up to 5 users. It provides one on-call schedule and one escalation policy. The Professional plan costs $21 per user per month billed annually, or $25 billed monthly. It adds enhanced chat functions and post-incident reviews. The Starter PD Reliability Platform plan costs $2,800 per year for 10 seats, 5,000 Signal Intelligence Events, and 1,000 AI actions. PagerDuty excels at mobile incident management. Responders can acknowledge alerts, review timelines, book overrides, and join conference bridges with a single touch from iOS and Android devices.
https://www.pagerduty.com/pricing
6. Better Stack
Better Stack combines on-call scheduling, uptime monitoring, and status pages into one system. It syncs on-call calendars with Google and Outlook while logging events into Slack and Microsoft Teams. The Free plan costs $0 per month and covers 10 monitors, one status page, and Slack alerts. The Responder plan costs $29 per license per month billed annually, or $34 billed monthly. It includes on-call scheduling, unlimited phone calls, and unlimited SMS alerts. Team members without responder licenses access telemetry for $0 per month. Advanced chat workflows cost an extra $9 per responder license per month. The software excels at rapid shift adjustments, allowing users to request cover or create overrides with a single click.
https://betterstack.com/pricing
The OrgOrg team wrote this list, by the criteria above.
How do you choose on-call software?
Select your software by assessing your incident communication patterns and team size. First, examine where your engineers communicate during active outages. Choose Slack-centric options like Rootly or incident.io if your organization works entirely inside chat channels. Choose dedicated operational platforms like PagerDuty or SolarWinds Incident Response if you require distinct service directories and worldwide voice escalation rules.
Second, calculate your total monthly expenses. Account for base seat licenses, minimum user counts, and notification limits. For example, SolarWinds Incident Response charges $15 per user monthly on Pro plans, whereas ilert requires a three-user minimum on its $19 Pro tier. Inspect international phone alert fees before you buy. Finally, verify that team members can swap shifts and configure temporary overrides from their mobile devices.
What OrgOrg On-Call does
OrgOrg's On-Call app schedules the rotation with a primary and a secondary, escalates after a wait you set, and pages by SMS and voice call through Twilio. OrgOrg has apps for iOS, Android, and the desktop, a Chrome extension, a Gmail add-on, and a command line. When an organization reaches its monthly limit of text and voice pages, Slack and web notifications still go out. Every app of OrgOrg is free for a team of up to 5 members, and then $10 per member per month covers the whole suite. On-Call has no event deduplication across monitoring tools: each alert that reaches it pages on its own.
Read next on OrgOrg: On-Call, Status, IT Asset Management, a page of the site.