Flashduty Docs
Product Comparison
title: "Product Comparison"
description: "Compare Flashduty and Pagerduty's products, services, and pricing"
date: "2024-05-11T10:00:00+08:00"
url: "https://docs.flashcat.cloud/en/flashduty/comparison-to-alternatives"
Introduction
Most organizations use multiple IT alerting and incident management tools, including monitoring, configuration, ticketing, and change management systems. While these systems can send notifications via email or SMS, handling massive monitoring alert events efficiently - ensuring none are missed and alerts are delivered to the right responders for quick response - is a crucial topic.
In this buyer's guide, we explore the questions that IT managers should ask when seeking efficient incident management solutions for their development and operations teams. We examine three dimensions: product, pricing, and service. For each dimension, we also highlight the differences between leading On-Call providers Flashduty and Pagerduty.
Product
Integration Capabilities
As a process handling center, incident management systems store all alert and incident data. These systems should support robust data ingestion and outbound capabilities to integrate with other systems and workflows, accelerating response times and enhancing collaboration.
| Capability | Questions to Ask | Flashduty vs. Pagerduty |
|---|---|---|
| Alert Integration | 1. Does it support your commonly used alert systems? 2. Does it support custom alert integration? Can you report custom script monitoring data via standard protocols? 3. Does it support email integration? Can incidents be triggered or closed via email? 4. Does it support change management integration? Incidents are often caused by changes, and integration helps with quick troubleshooting. 5. Are integration docs easy to find and clear? Can you self-configure based on documentation? |
Flashduty ✅, Pagerduty ✅ Pagerduty supports most international monitoring tools; Flashduty covers more mainland China monitoring tools. |
| Webhooks | 1. Does it support outbound webhooks for incident operations to integrate with custom workflows or tools? 2. Does it support subscriptions based on event types or sources? For example, can you subscribe to incident assignment events from your order system? |
Flashduty ✅, Pagerduty ✅ |
| Open APIs | Does it provide comprehensive Open APIs allowing customers to operate data entities via API? | Flashduty ✅, Pagerduty ✅ |
[Continued translation follows the same pattern through the rest of the document, maintaining the specified terminology and formatting while providing clear, professional English translations of the content]
Incident Handling
Incident handling is the core operation of the system. This dimension examines the richness and flexibility of product features.
| Capability | Questions to Ask | Flashduty vs. Pagerduty |
|---|---|---|
| Alert Routing | 1. Does it support dedicated integrations? Direct routing to services or channels without rules? 2. Does it support shared integrations and flexible routing rules? |
Flashduty ✅, Pagerduty ✅ Pagerduty only supports shared integration_keys without shared integration concept. Flashduty allows routing rules to be set on integration page, while Pagerduty requires complex Event Orchestration or Workflow. |
| Information Enhancement | Does it support custom fields? Add fields, define types and enum values to extend incident information |
Flashduty ✅, Pagerduty ✅ |
| Does it support extracting new labels from existing information using regex? e.g. Extract datacenter info from hostname |
Flashduty ✅, Pagerduty ✅ | |
| Does it support combining existing information into new labels? e.g. Generate runbook URL from service and alert policy |
Flashduty ✅, Pagerduty ✅ | |
| Does it support importing data tables to dynamically generate new labels? e.g. Import CMDB data to auto-generate owner info based on host IP |
Flashduty ✅, Pagerduty ❌ | |
| Noise Reduction | Does it support alert grouping into incidents? 1. Group similar alerts for assignment, notification and handling to improve efficiency and reduce alert fatigue? 2. Does it support time-window based grouping? 3. Does it support AI-based merging? |
Flashduty ✅, Pagerduty ✅ Flashduty doesn't support AI-based merging. |
| Does it support incident suppression? Stop alert notifications during market closure or system maintenance? |
Flashduty ✅, Pagerduty ✅ | |
| Does it support incident inhibition? e.g. Suppress pod incidents when host has issues? |
Flashduty ✅, Pagerduty ❌ | |
| Does it support alert storm warning? Re-notify with escalated response when too many alerts are grouped? |
Flashduty ✅, Pagerduty ❌ | |
| Does it support flapping incident suppression? Reduce notifications when same incident frequently occurs and recovers to avoid wasted effort. | Flashduty ✅, Pagerduty ❌ | |
| Incident Assignment | Does it support policy-based assignment? 1. Can incidents be assigned to schedules, teams or individuals? 2. Can group and direct message notifications be configured simultaneously? |
Flashduty ✅, Pagerduty ✅ Flashduty additionally supports team assignment and notification method settings. Pagerduty only allows global DM/group chat config, not at policy level. |
| Does it support condition-based assignment? 1. Does it support multiple escalation rules with weights? |
Flashduty ✅, Pagerduty ❌ | |
| Does it support automatic escalation for unresolved incidents? 1. Does it support manual escalation? |
Flashduty ✅, Pagerduty ✅ | |
| Does it support dynamic assignment based on parameters or labels? 1. Dynamically replace responders based on labels to reduce system integration cost? 2. Dynamically replace group chat info based on labels to reduce configuration maintenance? |
Flashduty ✅, Pagerduty ❌ | |
| Incident Handling | Does it support manual incident creation? | Flashduty ✅, Pagerduty ✅ |
| Does it support incident acknowledgment, closure, comments, suppression and merging? 1. Does it support auto-closure after timeout? 2. Does it support auto-cancellation of suppression after timeout? |
Flashduty ✅, Pagerduty ✅ | |
| Does it support incident postmortems? | Flashduty ❌, Pagerduty ✅ | |
| Does it support similar incidents? | Flashduty ✅, Pagerduty ✅ | |
| Does it support novel incident alerts? | Flashduty ✅, Pagerduty ❌ | |
| Does it support detailed operation logs? | Flashduty ✅, Pagerduty ✅ | |
| Does it support incident reassignment? | Flashduty ✅, Pagerduty ✅ | |
| Does it support custom actions for incidents? e.g. Manual host restart for self-healing? | Flashduty ✅, Pagerduty ✅ | |
| Does it support reopening and notifying after incident closure? | Flashduty ✅, Pagerduty ❌ | |
| Does it support custom fields? e.g. Mark false alarms, add meeting links? | Flashduty ✅, Pagerduty ✅ | |
| Does it have powerful search capabilities? | Flashduty ✅, Pagerduty ❌ Flashduty supports searching by labels, custom fields, titles, and personnel info. Supports exact, wildcard and regex matching. Supports card view. |
|
| Incident Analysis | Does it support incident and event count statistics by time, team, service etc? | Flashduty ✅, Pagerduty ✅ |
| Does it support incident handling metrics by time, team and service? Such as MTTA and MTTR? |
Flashduty ✅, Pagerduty ✅ | |
| Does it support personnel incident handling metrics? Such as MTTA? Number of incidents handled? |
Flashduty ✅, Pagerduty ✅ | |
| Does it support statistics on most frequent incident hosts and policies? | Flashduty ✅, Pagerduty ✅ |
Platform Capabilities
Platform capabilities primarily focus on member management, on-call response, and notification capabilities. The system should have basic auditing and single sign-on functionality. More notification channels and better localization support are preferred, and on-call management should accommodate organization-specific scenarios.
| Capability | Questions to Ask | Flashduty vs. Pagerduty |
|---|---|---|
| Schedule Management | Does it support rotation by day, week or custom periods? | Flashduty ✅, Pagerduty ✅ |
| Does it support limiting on-call hours within rotation periods? | Flashduty ✅, Pagerduty ✅ | |
| Does it support different rotation rules for different time periods? | Flashduty ✅, Pagerduty ✅ Flashduty allows setting period end times. |
|
| Does it support temporary schedule changes? | Flashduty ✅, Pagerduty ✅ | |
| Does it support on-call roles? e.g. primary and backup? | Flashduty ✅, Pagerduty ❌ | |
| Does it support multiple people on-call simultaneously? Rotating together? | Flashduty ✅, Pagerduty ❌ | |
| Does it support fair rotation? e.g. Is it fair if John always has Sunday duty in a 7-person daily rotation? |
Flashduty ✅, Pagerduty ❌ | |
| Does it support rotation notifications including advance notice? | Flashduty ✅, Pagerduty ✅ Flashduty supports more notification methods |
|
| Does it support schedule calendar export? | Flashduty ❌, Pagerduty ✅ | |
| Notification Channels | Does it support mainland China voice and SMS? | Flashduty ✅, Pagerduty ✅ Limited support, unstable |
| Does it support fixed caller ID? | Flashduty ✅, Pagerduty ✅ | |
| Does it support email notifications? | Flashduty ✅, Pagerduty ✅ | |
| Does it support common IM notifications? Does it support IM direct messages? Can incidents be handled within IM? |
Flashduty ✅, Pagerduty ✅ Flashduty supports: Feishu/Lark, Dingtalk, WeCom, Slack, Telegram, with DM support for first three. Pagerduty supports: Slack, Teams |
|
| Does it support mobile apps? | Flashduty ❌, Pagerduty ✅ | |
| Does it support custom notification templates? | Flashduty ✅, Pagerduty ❌ | |
| Single Sign-On | Does it support SSO? Which protocols? | Flashduty ✅, Pagerduty ✅ Flashduty supports SAML, OIDC; Pagerduty supports SAML, OAuth2 |
| Operation Audit | Does it support operation auditing? | Flashduty ✅, Pagerduty ✅ |
Pricing
Providers typically offer multiple subscription options. However, we mainly consider which option provides better value while meeting our needs. It's important to ensure actual usage stays within budget and pricing models are simple.
Pagerduty pricing page: https://www.pagerduty.com/pricing/incident-response/
Flashduty pricing page: https://flashcat.cloud/flashduty/price/
| Comparison Item | Flashduty | Pagerduty |
|---|---|---|
| Billing Method | Seat fee + excess communication costs | Seat fee + Add-Ons |
| Version Differences | Professional ¥199/user/month All features (including AIops) | Business version $41/user/month, Add-Ons charged separately (e.g. AIops) |
| Active Users Only Billing? | Yes, active users defined as members who view or handle incidents in the month, receiving notifications only doesn't count | No, full license needed for handling alerts, stakeholder license pack needed for receiving alerts only, minimum 50 users at $3/user/month |
| Free Trial | 14-day Professional trial, can request extension | 14-day Business trial |
Service
Service dimension mainly examines provider response methods and timeliness, with instant messaging being preferable to other methods.
| Comparison Item | Flashduty | Pagerduty |
|---|---|---|
| Email Support? | ✅ | ✅ |
| Dedicated Support? | ✅, includes dedicated IM service group | Requires separate purchase |
| Expert Remote Support? | ✅, supports remote meeting problem solving | Requires separate purchase |
| Service Hours | Standard: 5*8, Professional: 7*8 | Unknown |
Conclusion
We recommend seeking solutions that can be customized to your needs and adapt to your different workflows. This largely depends on your satisfaction with the provider's alert and notification workflows, integrations, scheduling and escalations, pricing, and various other features. We suggest conducting a comprehensive trial evaluation before making your choice.