9 Best Automated Incident Response Tools (2026)

Managing incidents manually isn’t realistic when their number keeps growing.

That’s where automated incident response tools come in. They handle routine tasks so you can focus on actual problem-solving.

In this blog, I’ve put together a list of the 9 best automated incident response tools for you.

I looked at each one based on four key areas of the incident response process. This will help you see how they handle everything from start to finish.

For each tool, you’ll find four bullet points explaining why it’s a good choice. These points match the criteria I used for evaluation.

If you want a quick overview, there’s a summary table with pricing and best-fit scenarios. And if you want to see the finer details, we’ve covered that too in our feature checklist.

But if you are new to automated incident response, I recommend reading our blog post Automated Incident Response for DevOps, SREs, and IT Teams.

Let’s dive in!

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My Criteria for Automated Incident Response Tools

When picking tools for this list, I focused on their automation features across the entire incident response lifecycle. A strong tool should handle tasks for you at every stage, not just one.

Here are the four key areas I evaluated the tools on:

1. Triage: How the tool automates the initial sorting of alerts. This includes setting severity based on alert content, grouping related alerts to reduce noise, and routing alerts to the right team automatically.
2. Response: What the tool does to kick off the response process. This covers automatically creating war rooms, adding the right responders to incidents, generating tickets in project management tools, and running diagnostic scripts.
3. Communication: How the tool keeps everyone informed throughout the incident. This means automatically updating internal and public status pages and sending regular updates to key stakeholders without manual work.
4. Post-Incident Actions: What the tool automates after the incident is resolved. This involves creating complete incident timelines, generating post-mortem documents with all the relevant data, and scheduling follow-up meetings with the response team.

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9 Best Automated Incident Response Tools

*For pricing, I chose business/standard/Pro plans because they typically include the full range of automated incident response features that most teams need.

Tool	Best for	Price
Spike	Teams of all sizes seeking affordable, powerful automation	$14/user/month
PagerDuty	Large enterprises with budget for advanced automation add-ons	$49/user/month with advanced automation add-ons like AIOps costing $799/month
Incident.io	Teams managing incidents within Slack or Teams	$25/user/month, with an additional $20/user/month for on-call
Squadcast	Reliability engineering teams, especially SolarWinds users	$19/user/month
Zenduty	Teams needing ITSM integration workflows	$16/user/month
Splunk OnCall	Teams already using the Splunk ecosystem	$15/user/month
xMatters	Large enterprises requiring highly customizable workflows	$39/user/month
Datadog OnCall	Teams already invested in Datadog ecosystem	$36/user/month
AlertOps	Mid-sized teams needing SLA-driven workflows	$22/user/month

1. Spike

Spike is a modern incident management tool with powerful, built-in automation features.

It is designed to help teams handle incidents faster without the high costs.

Why Choose Spike

• You can automatically triage incidents using “if-then” Alert Rules. These rules can set severity based on keywords, assign incidents to the right team, and even auto-acknowledge or resolve recurring alerts.
• Powerful Playbooks automate your entire response. You can create a Slack channel, add responders, create Jira or Linear tickets, and trigger outbound webhooks to run diagnostic scripts, all in one flow.
• With Playbooks, you can automatically create, update, and resolve incidents on your public and private status pages. This keeps stakeholders informed without any manual effort.
• Spike automatically generates a complete incident timeline, logging every alert, message, and action. You can also use Playbooks to trigger webhooks that create post-mortem documents in your preferred tool.

To help you get started, Spike offers ready-to-use Alert Rule templates

Price: $14/user/month

Best for:

Teams of all sizes who want a powerful, user-friendly, and affordable tool for automated incident response.

Hear what Muhammad Hani, Head of Engineering at Thndr, said about Spike

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2. PagerDuty

PagerDuty is a long-standing tool in the incident management space, known for its extensive feature set aimed at large organizations.

It offers basic incident response automation through Event Rules, but more advanced capabilities are often reserved for higher-priced plans.

Why Choose PagerDuty

• You can automatically set incident priority and route alerts to different escalation policies using Event Rules. It also supports alert suppression to help manage noise.
• Response Plays can automatically create war rooms with video conferencing, add responders, and create tickets in Jira or Linear. But these require complex workflow setups rather than simple one-click actions.
• Status pages are available with subscriber limits. The platform can automate status updates through Response Plays with “human-in-the-loop” approval before posting updates to give you control over external communication.
• PagerDuty provides very detailed incident timelines, with separate logs for alerts, status updates, and automation actions. It also offers automatic post-mortem creation to streamline the review process.

Price: $49/user/month with advanced automation add-ons like AIOps costing $799/month

Best for:

Large enterprises that have the budget for add-ons and require a tool with deep automation capabilities.

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3. Incident.io

Incident.io is a chat-native platform built for teams that manage incidents primarily within Slack or Microsoft Teams.

It offers strong workflow automation that lets you handle the entire incident lifecycle from your chat tool.

Why Choose Incident.io

• You can automatically set incident severity based on alert rules and hold alerts in a “triage” state to reduce noise before declaring an incident. However, auto-acknowledgment is not available.
• Workflows allow you to automate the response process by creating dedicated Slack channels, spinning up war rooms, and assigning roles without leaving your chat app.
• You can automatically update status pages using Workflows, keeping stakeholders informed. However, the number of status pages is limited on most plans, with unlimited pages only available on the Enterprise tier.
• The platform has a dedicated “Improve” section to manage post-incident tasks. You can create post-mortem templates, automate follow-up actions in your issue tracker, and schedule debrief meetings.

Price: $25/user/month, with an additional $20/user/month for on-call.

Best for:

Teams that want to manage incidents entirely within Slack or Teams and prefer a chat-centric workflow for their incident response automation.

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4. Squadcast

Squadcast is an incident response platform built for reliability engineering teams. It offers automation through Workflows and Runbooks to help streamline common tasks.

Recently acquired by SolarWinds, it is now more deeply integrated into the SolarWinds ecosystem.

Why Choose Squadcast

• You can automatically set incident priority using Workflows. For example, you can create a rule that assigns a P1 priority when an incident is created from a specific alert source.
• Workflows allow you to automate response actions, such as attaching runbooks, adding communication channel links, and creating Jira tickets automatically when an incident is triggered.
• You can create public and private status pages and use Workflows to automatically update them or send email notifications to stakeholders, keeping everyone informed.
• The platform provides a single, unified incident timeline and a one-click button on the dashboard to create a postmortem after an incident is resolved.

Price: $19/user/month.

Best for:

Reliability engineering teams and organizations already using SolarWinds products who can benefit from the tight integration with its monitoring and ITOM suite.

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5. Zenduty

Zenduty is a good fit for teams that need structured incident response automation and connect well with broader IT service management processes.

It offers Workflows to automate parts of your incident response, but some automation features are limited or require workarounds.

Why Choose Zenduty

• You can automate incident triage by using Workflows to set priority or acknowledge an incident as soon as it’s created. However, the workflow trigger is limited to “Incident Created,” which restricts more complex automation.
• Zenduty allows you to automatically create Jira tickets using Outgoing Rules, but it does not offer a straightforward way to automate the creation of war rooms. This task requires a more complex webhook setup rather than a simple workflow step.
• The platform lacks a native status page feature, so automating communication requires integrating with a third-party tool like Statuspage.io at an extra cost. You can, however, use Workflows to automatically send email updates to stakeholders.
• Zenduty provides a unified timeline that logs all actions, including workflow runs. It allows you to create custom postmortem templates and use AI to assist in writing postmortem reports, streamlining the post-incident process.

Price: Starts at $16/user/month

Best for:

Teams looking for structured workflows that integrate with ITSM processes and are willing to use third-party tools for functions like status pages.

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6. Splunk OnCall

Splunk OnCall (formerly VictorOps) is an enterprise incident response platform that combines Splunk’s powerful data analytics with its automation workflows.

Why Choose Splunk OnCall

• You can automate alert triage using an Alert Rules Engine and machine learning-based routing. This helps suppress alert noise and direct incidents to the right expert based on historical data.
• The platform can automate parts of the response by enriching alerts with information from runbooks and dashboards. It also integrates with tools like Jira to automatically create tickets from incidents.
• Splunk OnCall can automate communication by integrating with third-party status page tools like StatusHub. This allows it to automatically create, update, and resolve incidents on a status page based on the alert status.
• It automatically generates a complete timeline and post-incident reports for every incident. The platform also provides context by showing similar historical incidents to aid in post-incident analysis.

Price: Starts at $15/user/month.

Best for:

Teams already invested in the Splunk ecosystem who want to combine deep data analytics with their automated incident response process.

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7. xMatters

xMatters, now part of Everbridge, is an enterprise-grade service reliability platform.

It is designed to automate complex incident response workflows for large organizations with advanced needs.

Why Choose xMatters

• You can automate incident triage using “Signal Intelligence” to filter alerts and apply pre-set rules to automatically assign severity or priority to an incident.
• Workflows can automatically trigger response actions like creating conference bridges or Slack channels. The platform also has deep integrations to automatically create and update tickets in ITSM tools like ServiceNow.
• You can create playbooks to automatically send status updates to your team’s chat channels. This keeps everyone informed about the incident’s progress.
• xMatters logs a full timeline for every incident. It also provides detailed reports on team performance, which makes post-incident reviews easier.

Price: $39/user/month.

Best for:

Large enterprise organizations that require a highly customizable incident response solution with advanced workflow automation and deep ITSM integrations.

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8. Datadog OnCall

Datadog OnCall is an incident response tool built directly into the Datadog observability platform.

It brings monitoring, alerting, and incident response together in one place for teams already using Datadog.

Why Choose Datadog OnCall

• You can automate triage by routing alerts to the right teams based on tags from your Datadog monitors. Alerts automatically include metrics, logs, and traces, giving responders full context for quick triage.
• Workflow Automation lets you automatically trigger actions when an incident is declared. You can create a Slack channel, page a team, or create a Jira ticket—all in one automated flow.
• You can set up workflows to automatically post incident updates to Slack channels or a dedicated Datadog status page. This keeps stakeholders informed without manual effort.
• The platform automatically generates a postmortem with one click, using AI to summarize the incident and timeline. All incident data, logs, and timelines are captured within Datadog for easy review.

Price: $36/user/month

Best for:

Teams already invested in the Datadog ecosystem who want a seamless connection between their observability data and automated incident response workflows.

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9. AlertOps

AlertOps is an incident response automation platform known for its deep customizations and strong SLA-based workflows.

Why Choose AlertOps

• You can automatically triage alerts by setting rules to assign priority, route them to the correct teams, and suppress noise.
• Workflows can automate your response by creating dedicated communication channels in Slack or Teams, assigning responders, and automatically creating tickets in your ITSM tools like Jira or ServiceNow.
• You can set up workflows to automatically post updates to status pages or send notifications to stakeholders via email or SMS. This keeps everyone informed without manual effort.
• The platform automatically generates a detailed incident timeline and provides post-mortem reports. You can also create post-mortem templates to standardize the review process.

Price: $22/user/month

Best for:

Mid-sized teams that need customized, SLA-driven alerting and incident response workflows.

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What About OpsGenie?

You might be wondering why OpsGenie, a popular name in the incident management space, is missing from this list.

For years, OpsGenie has been a reliable tool for many teams. However, Atlassian is shutting it down. New sales for OpsGenie ended on June 4, 2025, and the service will be completely turned off on April 5, 2027.

I’ve covered more about it in these blog posts:

• OpsGenie Shutdown: What You Need to Know and Your Next Steps
• OpsGenie Alternatives: Your 12-Point Evaluation Checklist
• 6 Better OpsGenie Alternatives You Can Switch To

With OpsGenie shutting down, businesses are switching to Spike with 50% off. Learn more →

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Automated Incident Response Checklist: How Each Tool Stacks Up

Although we’ve covered the automation capabilities of each tool in depth, there are some finer details that can make a real difference. This checklist breaks down those for you.

*Requires third-party integration

Feature	Spike	PagerDuty	Incident.io	Squadcast	Zenduty	Splunk OnCall	xMatters	Datadog OnCall	AlertOps
Automatic incident suppression	✅	✅	✅	✅	✅	✅	✅	✅	✅
Auto-trigger incidents from incoming emails	✅	✅	❌	✅	✅	✅	✅	✅	✅
Trigger external webhooks automatically	✅	✅	✅	✅	✅	✅	✅	✅	✅
Auto-resolve incidents when system is healthy	✅	✅	✅	✅	✅	✅	✅	✅	✅
Route alerts based on time of day	✅	✅	✅	✅	✅	✅	✅	✅	✅
Out-of-office routing for on-call responders	✅	✅	✅	✅	✅	✅	✅	✅	✅
Auto-update status page incidents	✅	✅	✅	✅	❌*	❌*	❌*	✅	✅
Ready-to-use Alert Rule templates	✅	❌	❌	❌	❌	❌	❌	❌	❌
Automatic postmortem creation	❌	✅	✅	✅	✅	✅	✅	✅	✅
Auto-acknowledge incidents	✅	❌	❌	❌	✅	❌	❌	❌	❌

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Final Thoughts

Looking at the checklist in the previous section, Spike comes out on top. It’s the only tool that offers ready-to-use Alert Rule templates and one of just two platforms with auto-acknowledgment capabilities.

While enterprise tools like PagerDuty and xMatters have their place, they often come with complexity and high costs. Teams already using Datadog or Splunk will find value in their respective platforms.

For most teams, Spike delivers the best balance of powerful automation features and affordability. It gives you advanced capabilities like Playbooks and Alert Rules without breaking the budget.

Ready to see how Spike can automate your incident response?

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FAQs

What is automated incident response?

Automated incident response uses predefined workflows to handle parts of the incident response process for you. For example, you can automate setting an alert’s severity, creating a Jira ticket, or updating a status page. This handles repetitive tasks, making your response faster.

Why is automated incident response important?

When an incident happens, you need to act fast. Routine tasks like creating tickets and setting up Slack channels eat up valuable time and delay your response. Automated incident response solves this by handling the routine work so you can focus on fixing the actual problem.

What are the benefits of automated incident response tools?

• Faster Response Times: Automation kicks in instantly, turning tasks that take minutes into seconds
• A More Consistent Process: Automation follows the same steps every time, so nothing gets missed
• Fewer Human Errors: Automation prevents common mistakes like adding the wrong person or setting the wrong severity level
• Better Team Focus: Your engineers can spend their time fixing the actual problem instead of doing manual tasks