SRE and DevOps teams are the backbone of system uptime and reliability. But managing On-Call schedules, alerts, and communication during incidents can quickly turn resolution efforts into burnout. This blog explores the top On-Call management tools in 2024, designed to streamline Incident Response and keep your team ready for action.

What are On-Call Management Tools?

On-Call Management Tools are software applications designed to help software engineers, SREs, and DevOps teams manage and optimize their On-Call shifts. These tools enable teams to automate their On-Call processes, track their On-Call time, escalate incidents, and communicate with stakeholders. 

These tools can help teams to work more efficiently and effectively, ensuring that they can respond quickly to incidents and maintain their systems' reliability and availability. With the best On-Call alerting management tools available in the market, you can ensure a smoother and calmer On-Call experience.

Benefits of On-Call Management Tools for SREs and DevOps

On-Call management software can supercharge your Incident Response team. A few benefits include:

Faster Incident Resolution 

By automating tasks like alert routing and escalation policies, the right person gets notified immediately for critical issues, leading to quicker diagnosis and resolution.

Reduced Team Stress & Burnout

On-Call tools help avoid frantic scrambling during incidents. They ensure clear communication and workload distribution, preventing burnout and fostering a calmer On-Call experience.

Improved Collaboration & Visibility

Real-time features like war rooms and shared incident threads keep everyone informed and working together seamlessly, leading to faster problem-solving.

Enhanced Automation & Efficiency

Many tools integrate with existing monitoring platforms, allowing for automated response workflows based on predefined rules, freeing up valuable time for more complex tasks.

Data-Driven Insights

Capture valuable data from incidents to identify trends and implement preventative measures, ultimately reducing future occurrences and improving overall system reliability.

With this in mind, let’s now list a few of the best On-Call management tools that you can consider in 2024. While some are comparatively new in the On-Call field, they’re worth checking out.

Top On-Call Management Tools 2024 

1. AlertOps

AlertOps is a major Incident Management and response platform designed specifically for ITOps, NOC, and DevOps teams. It focuses on providing a comprehensive solution for streamlining incident workflows.

On-Call Features

• Flexible scheduling & rotations to manage shifts across time zones, and set contact methods for users and groups.
• Define multi-layered escalation policies with notification.
• Integrates with various monitoring, alerting, ITSM, and collaboration tools.
• Create schedules and export your calendar via Webcal or iCal.
• Mobile app for both iOS and Android.
• Customize notification intervals, team escalations, routing based on time and data sources.

However, AlertOps notifications may sometimes be delayed, affecting alert urgency. New users might find the interface confusing, (users have called it terrible: convoluted, hard to navigate and difficult to understand) hindering effective navigation. Moreover, occasional unnecessary alerts can disrupt Incident Management workflows, causing inefficiencies.

Another drawback is the mobile app's lack of clarity regarding who is currently On-Call, particularly if it's the user itself. Improving this aspect could involve adding a widget for the home screen to remind users of their on-call status or sending notifications about upcoming On-Call shifts. Shift override is also non-intuitive.

A user on the Apple store claimed, “This app needs serious improvements to be more user friendly.” 

Additionally, changing schedules can be cumbersome, especially when adding new team members or adjusting shifts. The process often involves creating a new schedule, which may not be intuitive for users. 

AlertOps is a fairly good alerting and On-Call management tool if you have limited workflows, and are looking for a tool with multiple integrations, mobile Incident Management, and moderate reporting & analytics with a good support team. However, some of the essential and best features are supported only in premium and enterprise plans.

2. Incident.io 

Incident.io offers robust Incident Management software equipped with advanced workflow automation, transparency features, and post-incident insights, facilitating seamless and collaborative Incident Management for teams. 

On-Call Features

• Centralizes alerts from various monitoring tools and flexible scheduling.
• Smart routing ensures alerts reach the right On-Call personnel based on severity, team, or service.
• Real-time On-Call visibility eliminates confusion during handoffs.
• "Cover Me" functionality facilitates On-Call swaps and prevents burnout.
• Slack integration enables real-time communication and incident channels.
• Mobile app provides On-Call access and Incident Management on the go.

However, notification options in incident.io are limited and you'll need a separate subscription for escalation systems like PagerDuty and Opsgenie. The integration of Incident.io with Slack is seamless and ideal for specifically those organizations that are Slack heavy. However, for some organizations, this tight coupling may pose challenges. It also has a very low integration limit when starting with the starter plan. While incident.io offers basic alerting, some of the most beneficial features are included in the pro plan. The price difference between the basic and pro plans can be significant.

Incident.io is good at Incident Response, but it lacks features for proactive alerting and anomaly detection that some other tools offer. 

3. Splunk On-Call

Splunk On-Call, previously known as VictorOps, is an Incident Management platform with On-Call features designed for SRE and DevOps teams. It acts as a central hub for managing On-Call schedules, routing alerts, and facilitating collaboration during incidents.

‍On-Call Features

• Automates On-Call scheduling, including rotations and overrides.
• Time-sensitive actions like escalations, war room activation, and post-incident reviews can be automated.
• Filtering and prioritizing alerts based on criteria you define. 
• Integrations with monitoring, business, DevOps, and security tools.
• Includes post incident analysis with dashboard and reporting with machine learning capabilities. 
• Offers a mobile application for both iOS and Android devices. 

A few drawbacks of Splunk On-Call is its limited ability to generate Incident tracking reports by date, coupled with minimal user management licensing. Configuration options for alerts and escalations lack granularity as compared to more feature-rich competitors. The cluttered interface can also pose usability challenges. 

Additionally, Splunk's enterprise-focused approach means that lower-tier plans lack essential functions, necessitating subscription to higher-tier plans even for basic features like email and push notifications alerts, or smart incident merging. It also does not have dedicated alert correlation and continuous learning features.

Splunk has not disclosed its pricing options, so one will have to reach out to them to understand the costs involved, which might be on the higher side.

4. Squadcast 

We can talk about our top On-Call management tool, Squadcastwhich serves as an excellent alternative to the other On-Call management tools. It bundles On-Call, Incident Response, and Reliability Workflows into a single platform for robust Incident Management solutions. You’ll probably cover most of your Incident Management needs from On-Call to Root Cause Analysis.

‍On-Call Features

• Manage your On-Call rotations easily with the ability to create custom rotations or easily override schedules when needed.
• Define the chain of command and escalation policies for incidents and inform the subject matter experts during critical incident resolution.
• Visualize all your services in one dashboard, and classify and provision your services
• Establish and track Service Level Objectives and Error Budgets for better planning and commitments.
• Transparency is at the core of SRE principles, and Squadcast's Status Pages help keep all stakeholders updated.
• Intelligently group alerts to reduce resolution time, avoid false alarms, and notify the right people on multiple channels with APTA, Snooze Incidents, IAG, Routing Rules, and Delayed Notifications.

Squadcast allows your On-Call team to manage their schedules on the go with a highly intuitive and seamless mobile app available for both Android & IOS. It supports all intelligent groupings of alerts and also caters to flapping or transient alerts to reduce alert noise (also during scheduled maintenance). For On-Call teams working on critical incident resolution, the alert correlation plays a very big role.

It also supports custom integrations and with 200 plus native integrations (monitoring, ticketing, ITSM and ChatOps tools), your On-Call teams get started with Squadcast in no time. Its Slack integration helps you resolve all incidents literally in Slack. So, for organizations using Slack dependent On-Call tools, this could be a better and more comprehensive option. 

Multiple team management is a breeze where you can give Role-Based Access Control, create custom roles, and Squads for focused resolution. Outgoing webhooks help you create specific Workflow actions. And with bidirectional integrations with popular ticketing tools like JIRA and ServiceNow, your support teams also win big time!

As a reliability automation platform, Squadcast does more than just help you with scheduling and On-Call rotations. The tool keeps evolving based on customer requirements. In a recent development we’re also going to release Live On-Call Routing which was one of the most requested features. To figure how extensive the platform can be, you can sign up for a 14-day free trial and experience all Enterprise level features yourself.

5. XMatters

Xmatters is a service reliability platform designed to empower DevOps, SRE, and operations teams. It focuses on streamlining workflows and communication during incidents. The tool automates incident assignments by directing them to the appropriate individuals or teams according to predefined workflows.

‍On Call Features

• Route alerts to the right team member based on set rules.
• Create and manage schedules with custom rotations.
• View alerts, manage shifts, and take action on incidents using the mobile app.
• Automated On-Call scheduling and escalations. 
• On-Call reports to see who is the exact On-Call person across all groups.
• Provides reporting and analytics tools to help you gain insights into on-call activity and incident response times.

There are several drawbacks to consider when using xMatters as an On-Call management platform. 

Firstly, the process for implementing automation tasks can be complex, with limited training resources available to help users in learning these features effectively. Additionally, there is a need for more calendar integration options, as relying on separate calendar systems can lead to inefficiencies and confusion. It also lacks Live On-Call Routing.

Users have reported issues and delays when setting Short Messages (SMs) as their notification medium, often resorting to email for more accurate and timely notifications. So, the notification flexibility for users is a limitation. 

Another inconvenience is the inability to close multiple alerts simultaneously, which can be a tedious process. Swapping "On-Call" shifts with colleagues can also be challenging to grasp initially, suggesting a need for clearer instructions or interface improvements. 

The mobile features of xMatters are limited. Customer support responsiveness in handling significant issues is another area for improvement. User management processes hamper its usability. 

XMatters can help acknowledge and resolve product related alerts by automation and save your time and effort. The free tier is a great way for smaller teams to start implementing On-Call management in your team.

Conclusion

You're likely aware that downtime comes at a steep cost—but have you considered just how steep?

In short, it's incredibly pricey. According to a survey by Information Technology Intelligence Consulting (ITIC), the minimum cost of IT downtime is estimated to be $5,000 per minute. Moreover, about 44% of respondents placed costs at a staggering $16,700 per server per minute, equating to $1 million per hour.

However, there's a way to mitigate these expenses. 

By implementing a robust incident management tool and an efficient alerting system, you can significantly reduce these figures. Give Squadcast a try for free today and start safeguarding your operations against costly downtime.

Squadcast is an Incident Management tool that’s purpose-built for SRE. Get rid of unwanted alerts, receive relevant notifications and integrate with popular ChatOps tools. Work in collaboration using virtual incident war rooms and use automation to eliminate toil.