What is pagerduty?

PagerDuty is a cloud‑based platform that helps companies manage and respond to incidents, like system outages or critical bugs. It connects monitoring tools (e.g., servers, apps) with the right people, sending alerts via phone, SMS, email, or mobile app so teams can fix problems quickly.

Let's break it down

  • Monitoring integration: PagerDuty receives alerts from tools such as Datadog, New Relic, or custom scripts.
  • Incident creation: When an alert meets certain rules, PagerDuty creates an “incident” - a ticket that tracks the problem.
  • On‑call schedules: Teams define who is on call and when, using rotating schedules or escalation policies.
  • Alert routing: The incident is sent to the on‑call person; if they don’t acknowledge it, it escalates to the next person or team.
  • Response & resolution: The responder works on the issue, updates the incident status, and closes it when fixed.
  • Post‑mortem & analytics: After resolution, PagerDuty provides reports and data to help improve future responses.

Why does it matter?

  • Reduces downtime: Faster alerts mean problems are fixed sooner, keeping services available for users.
  • Clear responsibility: On‑call schedules and escalation rules ensure someone always knows they’re responsible.
  • Less noise: Smart routing filters out low‑priority alerts, so teams aren’t overwhelmed.
  • Continuous improvement: Metrics and post‑mortems help teams learn from past incidents and prevent repeats.

Where is it used?

PagerDuty is used in any organization that runs digital services 24/7, such as:

  • Cloud providers and SaaS companies
  • E‑commerce platforms
  • Financial services and banks
  • Gaming and streaming services
  • Large enterprises with internal IT operations
  • DevOps and Site Reliability Engineering (SRE) teams

Good things about it

  • Easy integration with hundreds of monitoring and ticketing tools.
  • Flexible on‑call scheduling and escalation policies.
  • Mobile app and multiple notification channels (call, SMS, push).
  • Powerful analytics, dashboards, and post‑mortem templates.
  • Scalable for small startups to massive enterprises.
  • Strong community and extensive documentation.

Not-so-good things

  • Can become expensive as you add more users or advanced features.
  • Complex rule and schedule setup may require a learning curve for new teams.
  • Over‑reliance on alerts can lead to “alert fatigue” if not tuned properly.
  • Some users find the UI cluttered when managing many services and incidents.
  • Integration testing may be needed to ensure alerts are correctly routed, adding initial overhead.