Observability platforms want to do it all—from data collection to incident response. Their pitch is appealing: one platform to eliminate context switching and reduce overhead. But when critical systems fail—and they will fail—, add-on incident management modules won’t save you. You need an end-to-end system built specifically for high-stakes incident management.

The Limitations of Monitoring Add-Ons

Tacking incident management onto a monitoring tool is like relying on a smoke alarm to put out a fire. While it might tell you there’s a problem, it won’t stop the damage. Add-on modules from vendors like Datadog and Grafana are lacking in a few key areas:

• Basic Response Capabilities: Datadog’s incident response scratches the surface of basic capabilities, like on-call, escalation, and retrospectives, but lacks the orchestration and proven workflows needed for complex, time-sensitive incidents.
• Narrow Signal Integration: Relying on a single observability vendor creates dangerous blind spots. You might see a metric spike but miss the underlying change in deployments or configuration, customer impact, or how this incident relates to issues you’ve faced in the past. Without diverse signal sources, teams miss crucial context that could speed up resolution.
• Cost Structure: While consolidated tooling promises efficiency, the reality often includes unexpected cost escalation, opaque pricing, and vendor lock-in that impacts long-term flexibility.
• Product Focus: Incident management requires dedicated development and innovation. When it’s treated as an add-on module or side project, your operational resilience suffers.

The Case for a Purpose-Built Incident Management Platform 

Unlike some observability vendors, PagerDuty doesn’t bolt on incident management as an afterthought. When the unexpected strikes, the difference between chaos and control lies in having a dedicated incident management platform that takes your operations seriously, ensuring that your business remains resilient, costs stay in check, and your customer experience isn’t compromised. We partner with like-minded organizations that make operational resilience a top priority.

There’s a reason two-thirds of Fortune 100 companies trust PagerDuty with their critical operations. Our platform delivers:

• Purpose-built incident management that scales with your needs: Incident management isn’t our side project—it’s our core mission. Our platform handles the complete incident lifecycle, from initial detection through resolution and learning. Built-in workflows and custom incident types automatically orchestrate response across teams, while our advanced Slack and Microsoft Teams integrations provide a unified experience that keeps responders focused on resolution, not coordination. Integrated post-incident reviews ensure that every event becomes a learning opportunity to enhance future resilience.
• Intelligent automation and continuous platform innovation: AI-powered automation is woven into every stage of incident management. Our platform can adapt its approach—fully automated for well-understood issues, fully human-powered with AI assistance for new and novel issues, and hybrid for partially understood cases. Our ongoing innovation in incident management, with features like automated diagnostics, intelligent alert suppression, and our upcoming autonomous AI agents, is designed to help teams resolve incidents faster and more effectively.
• Enterprise-grade reliability and flexibility: With 700+ partner integrations, we want all our customers to seamlessly integrate whatever tools they want to use. And with best-in-class, 99.9% web availability SLAs, we make sure we’re up when you go down so you’re covered on your worst days.

Best of Both Worlds: Seamless Integration for Maximum Visibility

Successful digital operations aren’t about choosing between great monitoring and great incident management—they’re about having both working seamlessly together.

Modern operations demand a rich observability ecosystem partnered with robust incident management to power continuous operations and high availability of critical services. Organizations that maintain flexibility across vendors and tools can adapt quickly as new monitoring needs emerge, from security monitoring to LLMOps and beyond. PagerDuty serves as your centralized hub, making it seamless to integrate new tools and swap vendors as your needs evolve. This dynamic approach ensures you never miss critical signals and can continuously enhance your monitoring capabilities without being constrained by a single vendor’s ecosystem.

PagerDuty was built from the ground up to handle high-stakes operations. It integrates seamlessly with Datadog, Grafana, and 700+ other tools to provide a bird’s eye view across your ecosystem, paired with the intelligence to filter signals from noise, driving action in critical moments.

Start a free trial today and experience the difference purpose-built incident management makes when integrated with your existing observability tools.