PagerDuty vs Opsgenie vs OnPage (2025): Which On-Call & Alerting Tool Is Right for Your Team?

Disclosure: This comparison is based on my experience working closely with on-call workflows, incident alerting practices, and the teams who rely on these tools. While I work at OnPage, this guide is intended to help IT teams understand practical differences among PagerDuty, Opsgenie, and OnPage so they can choose the solution that best fits their needs.

Why These Three Tools?

PagerDuty, Opsgenie, and OnPage are three of the most widely evaluated tools in the incident alerting and on-call management space. While there is overlap among them, each tool is built around a different philosophy:

• PagerDuty is known for its enterprise-scale service-based model.

• Opsgenie is tightly aligned with Atlassian workflows, especially Jira.

• OnPage focuses on delivering reliable, attention-demanding alerts and structured escalation for IT teams that support critical incidents.

These differences matter, especially for IT teams responsible for uptime, after-hours coverage, and operational reliability.

Tool	Best For	Alerting Approach	On-Call & Escalation	Slack / Teams Fit	Pricing Fit
OnPage	IT teams responsible for critical incident response	Attention-critical alerts that override silent mode	Structured, role-based escalation paths	Works alongside chat for visibility, not alert delivery	Mid-market + Enterprise
Opsgenie (Atlassian)	Teams operating within the Atlassian ecosystem	Configurable notifications tied to Jira workflows	Flexible scheduling & escalation	Strong Slack integration	Mid-market
PagerDuty	Large enterprises with many services	Service-based alerting across distributed systems	Highly configurable, service-owner model	Robust but complex collaboration flows	Enterprise

Core Differences at a Glance

PagerDuty

Designed for highly distributed environments with dozens or hundreds of services. Offers deep integrations and single pane of glass view into incidents and dependencies — but with associated complexity and cost.

Opsgenie

A natural choice for teams already using Jira or Confluence. It fits cleanly into Atlassian workflows and is often adopted because it “keeps everything in one ecosystem.”

OnPage

Optimized for reliable, attention-demanding alerting and clear escalation, especially in environments where missed alerts carry real operational risk. Best suited for teams where after-hours reliability, bi-directional integrations and alert persistence matter.

PagerDuty

Overview

PagerDuty is widely adopted across large enterprises with complex service architectures and multi-team ownership models. It excels at integrating alerts from distributed systems and mapping them to the right service owners.

Alerting & Escalation

• Service-based ownership model

• Excellent for complex distributed systems

Integrations & APIs

One of the largest integration catalogs in this space. Strong for organizations using many different observability and deployment platforms.

Slack / Teams Fit

Powerful collaboration workflows, although setup and maintenance can become heavy.

Pricing

Typically priced per user or per alert. Known to scale quickly at enterprise levels.

Best For

Large organizations with complex service architectures and distributed engineering teams.

Who It’s Not For

Smaller and mid-sized teams or organizations that want a lightweight, low-maintenance on-call solution.

Opsgenie (Atlassian)

Overview

Opsgenie aligns naturally with teams using Atlassian products. Its deep Jira integration makes it a popular choice for organizations that want incident alerting embedded directly within ticketing workflows.

Alerting & Escalation

• Strong scheduling and escalation features

• Ideal for workflows tied to Jira Service Management

Integrations & APIs

Excellent across Atlassian tools. Broader integrations available, though not as extensive as PagerDuty.

Slack / Teams Fit

Strong Slack workflows, especially for Jira-centric incident operations.

Pricing

Expensive. Since Opsgenie’s deprecation and transition into JSM, many teams have also reported that pricing has become less predictable and, in some cases, difficult to justify for their needs.

Best For

Teams committed to the Atlassian ecosystem who want alerting connected closely to Jira and Confluence.

Who It’s Not For

Teams not using Atlassian products or those needing more flexibility in non-Jira workflows.

OnPage

Overview

OnPage focuses on delivering reliable, persistent, attention-critical alerts that reach the right on-call person even when devices are silenced or teams are off-hours. It is designed for IT teams responsible for critical incident response and after-hours incidents, including sysadmins, infrastructure teams, cloud engineers, MSP operators, and operations staff.

Alerting & Escalation

• Alerts override silent mode and stay persistent until acknowledged

• Structured, role-based escalation that reduces ambiguity

• Audit trails that make visibility clear during and after incidents

Integrations & APIs

Connects to almost every monitoring, ITSM, chat collaboration,  infrastructure, and automation tools out there in the market. APIs enable custom workflow extensions.

Slack / Teams Fit

OnPage works alongside collaboration tools, like Microsoft Teams and Slack, ensuring that chat remains for coordination while alerting remains authoritative and attention-demanding.

Pricing

Mid-market licensing model. Predictable structure for coverage teams with varying shift sizes.

Best For

IT teams responsible for critical incidents who need attention-critical alerting and structured escalation — especially when after-hours reliability is important.

Who It’s Not For

Teams requiring a single centralized “pane of glass” for service-level monitoring.

Feature-by-Feature Comparison

Alert Types & Reliability

• PagerDuty: Broad service-level alerts, high configurability

• Opsgenie: Strong notifications tied to Jira workflows

• OnPage: Distinct alert modes with silent-switch override and persistent ringing until acknowledged

Scheduling & Escalation

• PagerDuty: Ideal for complex enterprise escalation paths

• Opsgenie: Flexible, integrated tightly with JSM workflows

• OnPage: Clear, role-based escalation designed for reliability and simplicity

Integrations

• PagerDuty: Large integration ecosystem

• Opsgenie: Deep Atlassian focus

• OnPage: Large integration ecosystem + APIs for custom environments

Slack / Teams Workflow Fit

• PagerDuty: Strong but complex

• Opsgenie: Excellent Slack fit within Atlassian environments

• OnPage: Bi-directional inteegration into Microsoft Teams and Slack

Ease of Use

• PagerDuty: Powerful, but complex

• Opsgenie: Easy for Jira teams

• OnPage: Simple, focused, operationally reliable, short learning curve

Cost & Scalability

• PagerDuty: Enterprise-level pricing

• Opsgenie: Mid-market

• OnPage: Predictable mid-market pricing

Which Tool Is Best for Your Team?

Choose PagerDuty if:

• You have a large complex engineering organization

• Many distributed services

• Need enterprise-grade orchestration and integrations

Choose Opsgenie if:

• You use Jira Service Management

• You want alerting directly connected to Atlassian workflows

Choose OnPage if:

• You need attention-critical alerting

• After-hours reliability matters

• You want structured escalation and oncall scheduling flexibility without heavy operational overhead

• Your team includes sysadmins, infrastructure engineers, cloud/on-prem, MSP, or digital operations roles

Common Pitfalls When Comparing These Tools

One common mistake teams make is choosing an incident alerting or on-call tool based largely on popularity or online rankings rather than how well it fits their actual workflows. Tools that are frequently recommended on forums or review sites often reflect the needs of much larger organizations, which can lead smaller or more specialized teams to adopt platforms that are more complex or costly than necessary.

Another pitfall is underestimating how pricing and operational overhead scale over time. Some platforms appear reasonable during initial evaluations but become significantly more expensive as teams grow, add integrations, or expand on-call coverage. This can be especially painful when pricing models are tied to users, services, or alert volume.

Teams also frequently assume that notifications delivered through collaboration tools like Slack or Microsoft Teams are sufficient for critical alerting. While chat platforms are effective for coordination, they are not designed to guarantee attention during high-urgency or after-hours incidents. Treating chat notifications as a substitute for dedicated alerting can result in missed or delayed responses.

Finally, many evaluations fail to test real-world failure scenarios, particularly outside of normal business hours. Without validating how alerts behave when phones are silenced, responders are offline, or escalation is required, teams may discover gaps only after an incident occurs. Thorough testing of after-hours and edge cases is essential to selecting the right tool.

Final Thoughts

Each platform solves a different version of the same problem, and the best choice depends on your environment, your workflows, and the severity of your incidents.

While we build OnPage, our goal with this guide is to give teams a clear-eyed view of how these tools differ—because fit matters more than popularity.

If you’re considering OnPage and want to see how it would work in your own environment, we’re happy to help you evaluate it in a practical, low-pressure way. We can set up a demo instance configured around your existing integrations, help you build on-call schedules and escalation policies, and walk through real workflows using best-practice recommendations. There’s no obligation to continue if it doesn’t feel like the right fit—we’re comfortable with that, and would much rather you choose the tool that truly works best for your use case. You can contact us here: https://www.onpage.com/contact-us/

For a deeper evaluation framework, visit our OnPage University guide: How to Evaluate Incident Alerting & On-Call Software.