Introduction
In the rapidly evolving digital era, enterprises increasingly rely on monitoring and incident management tools—these are essential foundations for ensuring business continuity and service stability. However, as monitoring systems scale, the flood of alerts and event notifications presents unprecedented operational challenges for IT teams.
Core Question: How do you ensure every alert is captured promptly, delivered accurately, and responded to efficiently?
Are You Facing These Challenges?
When your organization encounters the following situations, it’s time to consider adopting or upgrading your On-call tools:Comprehensive Tracking & Resolution
Ensure every incident is tracked, handled, and resolved to prevent escalation and avoid greater asset losses
Establishing On-call Mechanisms
Build clear On-call personnel rotation schedules, including primary/backup systems, to share responsibilities reasonably and avoid alert overflow
Improving Response Efficiency
When SRE or developers spend over 25% of their time on daily On-call work, tools are needed to reduce noise and improve efficiency
Establishing Quantitative Metrics
Build quantitative metrics for incident handling time and personnel workload, driving continuous improvement in service stability through data
Procurement Guide Overview
This guide provides comprehensive On-call tool procurement recommendations. We’ll analyze key points IT managers should focus on when seeking efficient collaborative incident management solutions for development and operations teams, from three core dimensions: Product Features, Service Quality, and Pricing Strategy. We’ll also provide detailed comparison analysis between Flashduty and PagerDuty, two leading On-call vendors, to help you make an informed choice.
Product Feature Comparison
Integration Capabilities
As a process handling center, incident management systems need strong data ingestion and outbound capabilities for seamless integration with various systems.| Core Capability | Key Evaluation Questions | Flashduty vs PagerDuty |
|---|---|---|
| Alert Integration | Does it support your common alerting systems? Custom alert integrations? Email integration? Change integrations? | Both support. PagerDuty supports most overseas monitoring tools; Flashduty On-call supports mainstream domestic and international monitoring tools, plus PagerDuty protocol compatibility |
| Webhooks | Does it support incident operation outbound Webhooks? Subscription by event type or source? | Both support |
| Open APIs | Does it offer rich Open APIs for customers to operate data entities via API? | Both support, both provide rich APIs with detailed documentation |
Incident Handling Capabilities
Incident handling is the core functionality, primarily evaluating feature richness and flexibility.- Alert Routing
- Information Enhancement
- Noise Reduction
- Incident Assignment
- Incident Handling
- Incident Analytics
| Feature | Evaluation Points | Comparison |
|---|---|---|
| Routing Capability | Dedicated integrations? Shared integrations with flexible routing rules? | Both support. Flashduty allows setting routing rules directly on the integration page with version management and rollback; PagerDuty requires complex Event Orchestration or Workflows |
Platform Capabilities
Platform fundamentals cover member management, on-call response, and notification capabilities.Schedule Management
Schedule Management
| Feature | Requirements | Comparison |
|---|---|---|
| Rotation Cycle | Rotate by day, week, or custom period | ✅ Both support |
| Time Restriction | Restrict on-call time within rotation cycle | ✅ Both support |
| Date Skipping | Skip specific dates (different rules for workdays/non-workdays) | ✅ Flashduty exclusive |
| Period Rules | Different rotation rules for different time periods | ✅ Both support, Flashduty can set cycle end time |
| Override | Set temporary overrides | ✅ Both support |
| On-call Roles | Set primary/backup roles | ✅ Flashduty exclusive |
| Multi-person On-call | Multiple people on-call rotating together | ✅ Flashduty exclusive |
| Fair Rotation | Avoid fixed personnel on-call at specific times | ✅ Flashduty exclusive (solves the problem of someone always on-call Sunday with 7-person daily rotation) |
| Rotation Notifications | Set rotation notifications including advance notice | ✅ Both support, Flashduty On-call supports more notification methods |
| Calendar Export | Schedule calendar export | ✅ PagerDuty supports |
Notification Channels
Notification Channels
| Method | Localization Support | Comparison |
|---|---|---|
| Voice/SMS (Mainland China) | Mainland China voice and SMS support | ✅ Both support, but PagerDuty has low and unstable delivery rates |
| Fixed Caller ID | Fixed display number | ✅ Both support |
| Email Notification | Email notification support | ✅ Both support |
| China IM | Mainstream domestic IM app integration | ✅ Flashduty On-call supports Feishu/Lark, Dingtalk, WeCom app integration |
| International IM | Mainstream international IM app integration | ✅ Both support Slack, Microsoft Teams; Flashduty additionally supports Zoom, Telegram bots |
| Mobile | Mobile app support | ✅ Both support, Flashduty independently adapts to mainstream Chinese Android system-level push for higher delivery rates |
| Custom Templates | Custom notification templates | ✅ Flashduty exclusive, supports rich template syntax |
Security & Audit
Security & Audit
| Feature | Description | Comparison |
|---|---|---|
| Single Sign-On | SSO protocol support | Flashduty: SAML, OIDC, CAS, LDAP; PagerDuty: SAML, OAuth2 |
| Operation Audit | Complete operation audit logs | ✅ Both support |
| Private Deployment | On-premises deployment | ✅ Flashduty On-call supports (pricing differs from SaaS) |
Pricing Comparison
Pricing is a critical factor in enterprise decisions—you need to choose the most cost-effective option that meets your requirements.
| Dimension | Flashduty | PagerDuty |
|---|---|---|
| Pricing Page | flashcat.cloud/flashduty/price | pagerduty.com/pricing |
| Billing Model | Seat fee + excess communication fees | Seat fee + Add-Ons |
| Edition Pricing | Professional ¥199/user/month, full features including AIops | Business $41/user/month, AIops and other features require separate Add-Ons |
| Active Users | ✅ Only charges for active users (members who view or handle incidents that month; receiving notifications only doesn’t count as active) | ❌ All users must pay |
| Free Trial | Professional 14 days free, can request extension | Business 14 days free |
Service Quality Comparison
Quality service support is essential for successful product implementation.
| Service Item | Flashduty | PagerDuty |
|---|---|---|
| Email Support | ✅ | ✅ |
| Dedicated Support | ✅ Dedicated IM service group, instant response | ❌ Requires separate purchase |
| Expert Remote | ✅ Remote meetings to solve problems, one-on-one expert guidance | ❌ Requires separate purchase |
| Service Hours | Standard: 5×8; Professional: 7×8 | Not specified |
| Status Page | ✅ status.flashcat.cloud | ✅ status.pagerduty.com |
| Product Roadmap | ✅ Transparent product planning | ❌ No public roadmap |
Service Advantage: Flashduty On-call provides more user-friendly support, with dedicated IM groups and remote expert assistance enhancing user experience.
Summary and Recommendations
Core Advantages Comparison
Flashduty Highlights
- Better Pricing Strategy: Active user billing, full features including AIops
- Localization Advantages: Complete Mainland China IM, voice/SMS support
- Feature Innovation Leadership: Exclusive features like inhibition, storm warning, dynamic assignment
- Thoughtful Service Experience: Dedicated IM groups, remote expert support
PagerDuty Traditional Strengths
- Internationalization: Years of deep cultivation in overseas markets
- Feature Maturity: Mature traditional features like postmortems, calendar export
- Enterprise Recognition: High visibility among large multinational enterprises