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What is PagerDuty?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
PagerDuty is a cloud-based incident management platform founded in 2009. It was built to solve a specific problem: when something breaks at 2 AM, who gets called, through which channel, and in what order? It answers that question through on-call schedules<\/a>, escalation policies<\/a>, and multi-channel alerting. When an incident is resolved, it captures the full timeline for post-incident review.<\/p>\n\n\n\n SRE, DevOps, and IT operations teams use PagerDuty to connect their monitoring stack to their response<\/a> workflow. It integrates with 750+ tools including Datadog, AWS CloudWatch, Prometheus, ServiceNow, and Slack. The platform targets large engineering organizations running complex, high-volume operations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Key point:<\/strong> PagerDuty is an enterprise-grade incident management platform. It is not a monitoring tool. It receives alerts from monitoring tools and handles everything that happens after detection.<\/p>\n\n\n\n PagerDuty sits between your monitoring stack and your engineering team. It does not detect problems itself. It receives alerts from tools like Datadog, Prometheus, AWS CloudWatch, or Grafana, then routes them to the right person.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Here is how a typical alert flows through PagerDuty:<\/p>\n\n\n\n On-call schedules and escalation policies work together. The schedule tells PagerDuty who is on call. The escalation policy tells it what to do if that person does not respond.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Key point:<\/strong> PagerDuty works by receiving alerts from monitoring tools, matching them to a service, and notifying the on-call engineer through a configured escalation policy. The process is fully automated once the schedules and policies are in place.<\/p>\n\n\n\n When an alert fires, PagerDuty creates an incident record automatically. It captures the start time, the affected service, the triggering alerts, and the assigned responder. Teams can update the incident status, add notes, and track resolution progress in a central place. For teams using Jira or ServiceNow, PagerDuty can create and sync tickets automatically as part of the response workflow.<\/p>\n\n\n\n PagerDuty’s on-call scheduling handles rotations, overrides, and shift handoffs<\/a>. You can build weekly rotations, follow-the-sun schedules<\/a>, and custom coverage for different teams. When an engineer swaps a shift, overrides route alerts to the covering person automatically for that window.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The scheduling interface covers everything most teams need. That said, setting up complex schedules across multiple teams for the first time does take some configuration work to get right.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Escalation policies define what happens when an alert is not acknowledged. You set the order of responders and the timeout between steps. If step one goes unanswered, PagerDuty moves to step two automatically.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Each engineer sets their own notification preferences at the account level: phone, SMS, email, push, or Slack. PagerDuty delivers alerts across all these channels. One limitation worth noting: alert delivery is controlled entirely by the individual, not the team. When you build an escalation policy, you can specify who gets alerted at each step but not how. A manager cannot override a team member’s notification preferences for critical incidents.<\/p>\n\n\n\n PagerDuty’s automation features handle repetitive tasks automatically. When a specific alert fires, it can run scripts, restart services, or collect system information without manual intervention. This reduces the initial workload during an incident. However, runbook automation is sold as a separate add-on and is not included in any base plan.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Key point:<\/strong> PagerDuty’s feature set is deep, but several capabilities that sound standard are sold separately: runbook automation, status pages, and AIOps. The base plan covers alerting, on-call scheduling, and incident tracking. Everything beyond that adds to the bill.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Free plan<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n The Free plan is capped at 5 users. It includes 100 international phone and SMS notifications per month, one on-call schedule, one escalation policy, and access to 750+ integrations. Phone call alerts are not available on the Free plan. For most professional teams, the 5-user cap makes this plan impractical beyond initial evaluation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Professional ($25\/user\/month)<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n The Professional plan is where most teams start. It includes Slack and Microsoft Teams integration, SSO, post-incident reviews, and 2 predefined incident roles. You also get an external status page capped at 250 subscribers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The limitations surface quickly. You get only 2 teams and 3 predefined incident types. Workflow automation is restricted to a single major incident workflow template with limited triggers. Most teams outgrow the Professional plan within a year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Business ($49\/user\/month)<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n The Business plan adds custom fields, up to 3 custom incident types, and multi-year historical data access. Advanced admin features and ITSM integrations are included. The status page subscriber cap increases to 500.<\/p>\n\n\n\n AIOps, live call routing, and stakeholder licenses are not included at this tier. All three are sold separately.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Enterprise (custom pricing)<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Enterprise includes advanced incident workflows with conditionals and loops. You also get 10 custom incident roles and up to 100 custom incident types. Bi-directional ServiceNow sync is included. Premium status pages, stakeholder licenses, and live call routing are bundled at this tier instead of being sold separately. AIOps is the only add-on that remains a paid extra, even on Enterprise.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\n\n\n\nHow PagerDuty works<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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\n\n\n\nPagerDuty key features<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Incident response<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
On-call scheduling<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
![\"On-call](\"https:\/\/blog.spike.sh\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/05\/pd-oncall.webp\")
Escalation policies<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
![\"Escalation](\"https:\/\/blog.spike.sh\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/05\/pd-escalation-1024x705.png\")
Automation<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
\n\n\n\nPagerDuty Pricing<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Plan<\/th> Monthly price<\/th> Annual price<\/th> User cap<\/th> Best for<\/th><\/tr><\/thead> Free<\/td> $0<\/td> $0<\/td> 5 users<\/td> Evaluation only<\/td><\/tr> Professional<\/td> $25\/user\/month<\/td> $21\/user\/month<\/td> Unlimited<\/td> Small teams<\/td><\/tr> Business<\/td> $49\/user\/month<\/td> $41\/user\/month<\/td> Unlimited<\/td> Growing organizations<\/td><\/tr> Enterprise<\/td> Custom<\/td> Custom<\/td> Unlimited<\/td> Large enterprises<\/td><\/tr><\/tbody><\/table><\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n PagerDuty add-on costs<\/h3>\n\n\n\n