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, ensuring you have the best call center solutions for your operations.
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 management processes, track their On-Call response time, escalate incidents, and communicate with stakeholders. Call center agents play a crucial role in delivering high-quality customer service, and these tools are designed to enhance their efficiency and satisfaction.
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. Advanced software solutions can also significantly enhance call center performance by providing real-time guidance and greater visibility.
With the best On-Call alerting management tools available in the market, you can ensure a smoother and calmer On-Call experience.
On-Call management software can supercharge your Incident Response team. A few benefits include:
What is On-Call Management and Scheduling Software?
On-call management and scheduling software helps organizations manage and optimize their on-call processes, ensuring that the right personnel are available to respond to critical situations at the right time. This software is particularly useful for businesses that require 24/7 coverage, such as healthcare, IT, and customer service operations. By automating on-call scheduling, organizations can improve response times, reduce errors, and enhance overall service quality. This ensures that customer service operations run smoothly and efficiently, ultimately leading to higher customer satisfaction.
Key Features of On-Call Management and Scheduling Software
On-call management and scheduling software typically includes a range of features that enable organizations to effectively manage their on-call processes. Some key features include:
Automated Scheduling: Allows administrators to create and manage on-call schedules with ease, taking into account factors such as employee availability, skill sets, and time zones. This automation reduces the administrative burden and ensures that shifts are always covered.
Real-Time Notifications: Enables organizations to quickly notify on-call personnel of critical situations, ensuring prompt response times. This feature is crucial for maintaining high service quality and minimizing downtime.
Multiple Communication Channels: Supports various communication channels, such as phone, email, and SMS, to ensure that on-call personnel receive notifications in a timely and reliable manner. This flexibility ensures that alerts are never missed, regardless of the preferred communication method.
On-Call Shift Management: Allows administrators to manage on-call shifts, including scheduling, swapping, and canceling shifts. This feature helps maintain a balanced workload and prevents burnout among on-call personnel.
Reporting and Analytics: Provides insights into on-call performance, enabling organizations to identify areas for improvement and optimize their on-call processes. This data-driven approach helps in making informed decisions and improving overall efficiency.
Benefits of Using On-Call Management and Scheduling Software
The use of on-call management and scheduling software can bring numerous benefits to organizations, including:
Faster Incident Resolution: By automating tasks like alert routing and escalation policies with the right call center software, the right person gets notified immediately for critical issues, leading to quicker diagnosis and resolution.
Reduced Team Stress, Burnout & Customer Satisfaction: On-Call tools and the best call center software 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 & Customer Service Operations: Real-time features like war rooms, shared incident threads, and contact center software keep everyone informed and working together seamlessly, leading to faster problem-solving.
Enhanced Automation & Efficiency: Many tools, including call center software, 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 customer 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 5 On-Call Management and Scheduling Software Solutions
1. AlertOps
AlertOps is a major Incident Management and response platform designed specifically for ITOps, NOC, and DevOps teams. As with evaluating features offered by call center software providers, it focuses on providing a comprehensive solution for streamlining incident workflows.
On-Call Features
Flexible on-call 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.
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
G2 Review
“The recurring. I haven’t had to edit schedules and escalations in a very long time. It’s also very easy to set yourself as OOO during your on-call schedule and have someone cover. One of the simplest and easy to use tools we have used. We use this with ConnectWise and it’s nice to have it integrate pretty easily with who is assigned the alert, etc.”
AlertOps Pricing
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 while enhancing customer relationship management through optimized call center efficiency and improved customer service quality.
On-Call Features
Centralizes alerts from various and flexible scheduling.
Smart routing ensures alerts reach the right On-Call personnel based on severity, team, or service.
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.
G2 Review
“Incident.io is extremely easy to use. The platform is easy to set up and integrates well with several tools. Making it a critical part of our incident handling and communication process. It helps both during an incident and the post-incident/post-mortem process by allowing users with little training to manage incidents like pros.”
Incident.io Pricing
3. Splunk On-Call Scheduling
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, thereby optimizing customer interactions through efficient incident management.
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.
G2 Review
“What I like is accurate alerts, on time response, capability to set up alerts of various dimensions. What I dislike about Splunk On-Call is that it’s not always real-time. Includes lag during high traffic”
4. Squadcast
We can talk about our top On-Call management tool, Squadcast, which 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. As a comprehensive contact center solution, Squadcast enhances customer service operations by integrating various communication channels, optimizing call handling, and improving agent productivity. 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.
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.
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.
G2 Review
“Squadcast, in comparison to similar providers I’ve used in the past, far outshines their competition. It’s easy to set up how our technicians are alerted and when issues need to be escalated. Some clients require 24/7 monitoring and we were able to create separate incident handling to make sure our on-call technicians were only interrupted outside of standard after hours coverage for those clients for critical issues. We have different levels set up for during office hours and outside those hours, so non-critical issues aren’t sent to on-call, thus saving us time and money.”
Xmatters is a service reliability platform designed to empower DevOps, SRE, and operations teams, integrating crucial features of call center software to enhance service reliability. 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.
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.
G2 Review
“Event alerting is awesome. Automatically escalate to the right people, schedule with ease. In terms of intuitiveness and flexibility of xMatters when it comes to customizing on-call schedules, rotations, and escalations, for me, as an IT professional, setting it up isn’t that big of a deal, but I understand that some people struggle with it because when you get wrapped up into it. You can get lost”
XMatters Pricing
Pricing and Cost Comparison
The pricing and cost of on-call management and scheduling software can vary widely depending on the vendor, features, and number of users. Here is a rough estimate of the pricing for each of the top 5 on-call management and scheduling software solutions:
Squadcast: $9-$21 per user per month
AlertOps: $5-$23 per user per month
Incident.io: Starts at $16 per user per month
Splunk On-Call: Not Disclosed
xMatters: $9-$39 per user per month
It’s essential to note that these prices are estimates and may vary depending on the specific needs of your organization. It’s recommended to contact each vendor for a customized quote and to evaluate the features and pricing of each solution before making a decision.
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, on-call for incident response 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.
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