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 |
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.
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.”
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 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.
Service-based ownership model
Excellent for complex distributed systems
One of the largest integration catalogs in this space. Strong for organizations using many different observability and deployment platforms.
Powerful collaboration workflows, although setup and maintenance can become heavy.
Typically priced per user or per alert. Known to scale quickly at enterprise levels.
Large organizations with complex service architectures and distributed engineering teams.
Smaller and mid-sized teams or organizations that want a lightweight, low-maintenance on-call solution.
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.
Strong scheduling and escalation features
Ideal for workflows tied to Jira Service Management
Excellent across Atlassian tools. Broader integrations available, though not as extensive as PagerDuty.
Strong Slack workflows, especially for Jira-centric incident operations.
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.
Teams committed to the Atlassian ecosystem who want alerting connected closely to Jira and Confluence.
Teams not using Atlassian products or those needing more flexibility in non-Jira workflows.
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.
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
Connects to almost every monitoring, ITSM, chat collaboration, infrastructure, and automation tools out there in the market. APIs enable custom workflow extensions.
OnPage works alongside collaboration tools, like Microsoft Teams and Slack, ensuring that chat remains for coordination while alerting remains authoritative and attention-demanding.
Mid-market licensing model. Predictable structure for coverage teams with varying shift sizes.
IT teams responsible for critical incidents who need attention-critical alerting and structured escalation — especially when after-hours reliability is important.
Teams requiring a single centralized “pane of glass” for service-level monitoring.
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
PagerDuty: Ideal for complex enterprise escalation paths
Opsgenie: Flexible, integrated tightly with JSM workflows
OnPage: Clear, role-based escalation designed for reliability and simplicity
PagerDuty: Large integration ecosystem
Opsgenie: Deep Atlassian focus
OnPage: Large integration ecosystem + APIs for custom environments
PagerDuty: Strong but complex
Opsgenie: Excellent Slack fit within Atlassian environments
OnPage: Bi-directional inteegration into Microsoft Teams and Slack
PagerDuty: Powerful, but complex
Opsgenie: Easy for Jira teams
OnPage: Simple, focused, operationally reliable, short learning curve
PagerDuty: Enterprise-level pricing
Opsgenie: Mid-market
OnPage: Predictable mid-market pricing
You have a large complex engineering organization
Many distributed services
Need enterprise-grade orchestration and integrations
You use Jira Service Management
You want alerting directly connected to Atlassian workflows
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
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.
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.
Disclosure: This comparison is written by our product marketing team that works closely with IT…
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