PagerDuty vs OneUptime: which to choose

PagerDuty vs OneUptime: which fits your on-call and status page needs

If you want on-call scheduling, escalation, incident management and status pages in one product that you run yourself, OneUptime is the open-source candidate to evaluate against PagerDuty. PagerDuty fits teams that want a mature hosted incident platform and are willing to keep paying per user and for add-ons. OneUptime fits teams that want the same workflow categories inside their own infrastructure, with the Apache License 2.0 Community Edition covering on-call, status pages and incident handling.

PagerDuty is the stronger choice when your incident process already depends on many PagerDuty integrations, when your team has no capacity to operate a service that must work during outages, or when a vendor-managed SLA matters more to your procurement team than data location. OneUptime is the stronger choice when data location and self-hosting are requirements, when you want monitoring, status pages and on-call under one roof, and when you have a platform team that can run Docker Compose or the Helm chart the project recommends for production. Check the feature list against your own workflows before deciding, because the Enterprise Edition adds SCIM provisioning, audit logs and data residency features that are priced through sales.

The decision turns on four questions. First, where must incident and paging data live, and does that include notification providers? Second, how many integrations, such as Prometheus alerts, Grafana, chat tools and ticketing, depend on the current PagerDuty setup, and can each one be re-pointed and tested? Third, do you need public and private status pages with subscriber notifications and custom domains now, or only later? Fourth, who on your team will patch, back up and upgrade the system, and what happens to paging if it fails? Confirm the current OneUptime release and each notification channel in a test environment before you commit.

Which option fits which team scenario

This table matches common team situations to the better fit between PagerDuty and OneUptime, with the reason tied to a documented capability or an operating condition. Scenarios are illustrative, so compare them against your own responder count, data rules and existing tooling before deciding.

Scenario	Better fit	Reason
Illustrative: one product, a small on-call group and mainly SMS or phone paging	OneUptime, if you also want status pages and monitoring in one place; PagerDuty if you only need paging and a vendor-run service	OneUptime's Community Edition includes on-call schedules, escalation policies and alerts by SMS, phone call, push, email and Slack, so the core paging need is covered in one self-hosted product.
Regulated team that must keep incident data inside its own region	OneUptime, self-hosted in your own EU or regional infrastructure	OneUptime runs on your own servers via Docker Compose or Helm, so incident records stay where you host them. Confirm which data residency controls you need from the Enterprise Edition and how notification providers handle messages.
Team that already runs Prometheus and Grafana for metrics	Depends on alerting scope: keep Prometheus and Grafana for metrics, and use OneUptime if you want one tool for on-call and status pages	Prometheus can receive OTLP metrics, and OneUptime ingests telemetry through OpenTelemetry-based agents, so both can coexist. Check which alert routing you will keep in Alertmanager and which moves to OneUptime.
Team that needs a public status page with subscriber notifications	OneUptime	The Community Edition includes branded public and private status pages with incident history, scheduled maintenance and subscriber notifications, linked to the same incident records used for paging.
Illustrative: team with heavy AIOps, runbook automation or post-incident analytics needs	PagerDuty, or confirm specific OneUptime features before choosing OneUptime	OneUptime's documented scope covers incident declaration, communication, resolution and post-mortems. Ask the vendor to confirm whether AIOps-style event correlation and automated runbook actions meet your requirements.
Team with strict SSO and identity requirements	Either, after checking your identity tooling	OneUptime's Community Edition supports SAML and OIDC single sign-on. SCIM provisioning and audit logs sit in the Enterprise Edition, so confirm whether your access review depends on them.
Team that can cover licensing and support costs for a commercial edition	OneUptime Enterprise Edition, or PagerDuty for a fully vendor-supported service	OneUptime's Enterprise Edition adds SCIM, audit logs, compliance dashboards, priority support and data residency, priced through sales. Request a written quote that lists each module before comparing totals.

What OneUptime covers in one product, and where teams should check depth

OneUptime bundles on-call, incident handling, status pages and monitoring into one self-hosted product, which removes several vendor boundaries at once. The depth of each component still varies, so the cards below name the condition under which each one matters and what to test before committing.

On-call schedules and escalation policies

OneUptime includes on-call schedules and escalation policies, with alerts sent by SMS, phone call, push, email and Slack. This replaces the core of PagerDuty's paging path. It matters most when a team's primary need is getting the right person paged within a defined time window. Check how rotations handle overrides, time zones and multi-team layers, and test escalation with real phone and SMS providers before cutting over. Confirm the carrier and voice routes you need are supported in your region.

Incident management through post-mortems

OneUptime covers the incident lifecycle, from declaring and assigning an incident through communication, resolution and post-mortems. This matters when responders need one place to track ownership and updates during an outage. Compare it against the incident workflows your teams use in PagerDuty today, including severity rules, responder roles, and any Slack or Jira automation. Confirm how post-mortem templates and timelines are exported, since these records often must be kept for audit.

Public and private status pages

The Community Edition includes branded public and private status pages, incident history, scheduled maintenance and subscriber notifications. This matters if your team currently pays for status pages as a PagerDuty add-on or platform feature. Check that custom domains, subscriber lists and private pages for internal audiences meet your requirements. Confirm how subscriber data is stored and where notification emails are sent from, especially for customer-facing communication.

Synthetic and infrastructure monitoring

OneUptime monitors websites, APIs, IPs, ports, SSL, DNS and synthetic checks, and ingests logs and telemetry through OpenTelemetry-based agents for servers, Kubernetes, Docker and databases. This matters when alerts should originate from the same tool that pages the team. Check whether the check types, intervals and probe locations match your monitoring coverage, and whether your existing Prometheus or APM signals can be routed in without duplicate alerts.

PagerDuty integrations and automation depth

Points to verify before choosing: the breadth of PagerDuty-specific integrations, event orchestration rules, and AIOps features such as alert grouping and noise reduction that your team relies on. These are the areas where replacing a mature paging platform most often leaves gaps. If your alerting depends on many third-party integrations or on automated runbooks, map each one to an OneUptime equivalent or a custom webhook, and confirm the current feature set against the release you plan to deploy.

Capability comparison from supplied facts

This table compares PagerDuty and OneUptime across on-call, incident handling, status pages, notifications, telemetry, single sign-on and hosting. Where OneUptime facts are confirmed, the cell says so; where PagerDuty details depend on your contract, the cell tells you what to confirm before deciding.

Capability	PagerDuty (commercial SaaS)	OneUptime (self-hosted, Community Edition)
On-call schedules and escalation policies	Core product capability; confirm which schedule and escalation features your plan includes	Included, with on-call schedules and escalation policies in the Community Edition
Incident management	Core product capability covering incident response workflows; confirm post-incident tooling and automation tiers in your contract	Covers declaring and assigning incidents, communication, resolution and post-mortems
Status pages	Sold as an add-on or with platform plans only; confirm packaging and custom domain terms	Branded public and private status pages with incident history, scheduled maintenance and subscriber notifications
SMS, phone call, push, email and Slack alerts	Confirm the full notification channel list and any regional or carrier limits for your plan	SMS, phone call, push, email and Slack alerts are listed; test each channel with your carrier before relying on it
Monitoring and telemetry ingestion	Confirm which monitoring and event integrations are included, as coverage depends on your plan and add-ons	Monitors websites, APIs, IPs, ports, SSL, DNS and synthetic checks; ingests logs and telemetry via OpenTelemetry-based agents
Single sign-on and provisioning	Confirm SSO and provisioning options for your plan tier	SAML and OIDC single sign-on in Community; SCIM provisioning, audit logs and compliance dashboards are in the Enterprise Edition
Hosting options	Vendor-hosted SaaS; confirm regional hosting and data residency terms in your contract	Self-hosted with Docker Compose on one Debian, Ubuntu or RHEL server, or a Helm chart the project recommends for production; data residency is listed under the Enterprise Edition
Licensing	Commercial subscription; confirm licensing terms and add-on pricing with your account team	Apache License 2.0 for Community Edition, with the ee/ directory under the OneUptime Enterprise License

Notification delivery and who runs the messaging path

OneUptime lists SMS, phone call, push, email and Slack as alert channels for its on-call schedules and escalation policies, but the channels are only as good as the provider behind them. OneUptime does not deliver an SMS or a phone call by itself. Your team must choose a telephony or messaging provider, configure it, and pay its per-message and per-call charges. That choice also settles where responder phone numbers, message content and delivery logs are processed, so it belongs in your data location review alongside the hosting decision. Ask each candidate provider which regions process the traffic, how long delivery records are kept, and whether sub-processors are involved. Under PagerDuty, the carrier relationships, delivery infrastructure and their costs sit inside the vendor's per-user pricing, and you do not manage them directly.

Self-hosting moves the whole messaging path into your operating responsibility. Your team runs the OneUptime services, its database, backups, upgrades and TLS termination on the server it deploys to, with Docker Compose or the Helm chart the project recommends for production. A paging outage can come from any of these: a failed upgrade, an expired certificate, a database that cannot be restored, or a worker that stops sending. Assign an owner for each, define how you will detect a failed notification job, and rehearse a restore before you depend on the system. Also confirm with the OneUptime project which Community Edition features you need and how upgrades are announced, since release-level changes can affect notification behavior.

Before cutover, test delivery to every responder's device, not only to the on-call lead's phone. Send a test SMS, voice call, push notification and email to each person on each rotation, and confirm the message arrives on the expected device and carrier. Then run escalation timing tests: trigger an alert, let the first responder fail to acknowledge, and measure how long each step takes to reach the next person in the policy. Check the acknowledgement path, the repeat settings and what happens when a responder is on a schedule override. Run these tests in parallel with PagerDuty for at least one full rotation so you can compare the two timelines, and record every gap as a blocker or an accepted risk before you turn PagerDuty off.

Where incident data lives and who can access it

Incident data holds on-call rosters, escalation contacts, customer-facing incident history and post-mortems, so where it is stored and who can reach it matters as much as features. The cards below cover the hosting model, the deployment options for OneUptime, the identity controls in each edition, and where DeployOpen's work stops relative to an assessor's.

PagerDuty is a hosted service

PagerDuty runs as a vendor-hosted SaaS platform, so incident records, on-call schedules and responder contact details sit in the vendor's environment under its regional and contractual terms. Your team controls configuration and access through the vendor's admin consoles, not the underlying infrastructure. Before comparing, confirm with PagerDuty which region your account is in, where incident history is stored, and what your contract says about subprocessors and data deletion on exit.

OneUptime's Docker Compose deployment

OneUptime can run with Docker Compose on a single Debian, Ubuntu or RHEL server. This suits a pilot or a small team, but a single host is also a single point of failure for paging. Your platform team owns the host, the database volumes, backups and patching. Ask whether a single-server layout meets your availability and recovery targets before you choose it for on-call.

Helm chart for production clusters

For production, the project recommends its Helm chart, which places OneUptime into a Kubernetes cluster you operate. Data location then follows your cluster, storage classes and network policy, which is an advantage for residency reviews and a responsibility for your Kubernetes team. Confirm with your architects which cluster, region and storage backend will host incident data, and who holds the database credentials.

Single sign-on in Community Edition

The Community Edition includes SAML and OIDC single sign-on, so your existing identity provider can authenticate responders without a paid tier. Access rules, group mapping and offboarding still need an owner. Test that a departing engineer loses access to on-call schedules and escalation contacts when the identity provider disables their account, because SSO alone does not remove local accounts created before it was enabled.

Enterprise adds SCIM and audit logs

SCIM provisioning, audit logs, compliance dashboards, instance health dashboards, priority support and data residency sit in the Enterprise Edition, which is priced through sales. Without SCIM, user lifecycle changes are manual, and without audit logs you may not be able to show who changed an escalation policy during an incident. Ask OneUptime for the Enterprise feature list in writing and map each item to a control your assessor will test.

Controls and evidence for assessors

DeployOpen plans, configures and documents the controls and evidence that an assessment will look at, including access reviews, backup records and change logs for a self-hosted OneUptime instance. DeployOpen does not issue audit reports, attestations or certifications, and independent auditors decide whether a control is effective. Confirm each mapping with your assessor before relying on it, and agree the evidence list in writing before implementation starts.

What each option costs over time, by component

PagerDuty bills in two layers. Per-user licenses cover the people who respond to incidents or manage schedules, and platform plans bundle capabilities such as automation and AIOps at higher tiers. Add-ons, including status pages, are sold on top, so the annual total can rise as headcount, rotations or features grow. Confirm the current rate card and renewal terms directly with PagerDuty, because they change and vary by contract.

Per-user seats: Cost scales with the number of users who need a paid role, so rotation size and contractors affect the total. Ask which roles are billable and whether stakeholders or read-only users are free.
Platform tier: Features such as advanced automation sit in higher tiers. Ask which capabilities your runbooks depend on and which tier each one requires.
Paid add-ons: Status pages are sold as an add-on or only with platform plans. Ask whether the add-on is priced per page, per subscriber or per seat.
Recurring versus one-time: Subscriptions, seat growth and add-on renewals recur. Exporting data, rebuilding integrations, retraining staff and running parallel paging are one-time costs that sit outside the vendor invoice.
Contract changes: Term length, true-up rules for added seats and notice periods decide how quickly costs move. Ask for a written quote that shows list price, discount and renewal uplift separately.

Before signing a renewal, ask for a line-by-line quote that separates seats, tier, add-ons and support so you can model growth against each component.

Community and Enterprise licensing, and what it means for your team

The first decision is which code you will run. OneUptime's Community Edition is licensed under the Apache License 2.0, except the ee/ directory, which uses the OneUptime Enterprise License. Community covers the on-call schedules, escalation policies, incident management and status pages that most teams compare against PagerDuty, along with SAML and OIDC single sign-on. The Enterprise Edition adds SCIM provisioning, audit logs, compliance and instance health dashboards, priority support and data residency, and it is priced through sales. Before you commit, map each feature you need to either the Community list or the Enterprise list, then check the license file in every directory you deploy. Ask your sales contact in writing which features require the Enterprise License.

Internal use and modification are the questions counsel must answer. The Apache License 2.0 generally permits running and modifying software for your own purposes, but the Enterprise License governs everything in ee/, and its terms may differ on internal use, changes and redistribution. Confirm whether your planned use is internal only, whether you will patch the code, and whether you intend to offer status pages or monitoring to customers or partners, since that changes which terms apply. Record the exact version you deploy. The current release is 14.0.70, published on October 18, 2026, according to the OneUptime releases page, so the license review should be tied to that tag and repeated at each upgrade.

Get the license terms reviewed by counsel during the pilot, before production cutover. Give counsel the list of features you need, the directory each one lives in, the version tag you plan to deploy and your intended internal use. Ask for written answers on modification, redistribution, and any terms tied to data residency or support that you would rely on. Because Enterprise pricing is set through sales, the cost of that edition is a quote item: ask what is included, what recurs each year, and what happens to your deployment if you later need a feature you have not licensed. Re-check the license files at each upgrade, since the license terms may change in a later release.

How a move from PagerDuty to OneUptime proceeds

The sequence moves on-call schedules, escalation policies, integrations and status pages from PagerDuty to a OneUptime instance in your infrastructure, and ends with paging verified by real responders before PagerDuty is switched off. Each step names what you provide and what DeployOpen handles under a written scope.

Inventory services, schedules, escalations and integrations
Your team lists every PagerDuty service, schedule, escalation policy, user, contact method and integration, including the monitoring tools that send events in and any Slack or ticketing hooks that receive them. You provide read access or an export of the account and the owners who can confirm intent for each item. DeployOpen maps each item to its OneUptime equivalent, marks what has no direct match, and records the gaps for a decision. The step is done when every PagerDuty object has a named target or an agreed reason to drop it.
Deploy OneUptime in your infrastructure
DeployOpen installs OneUptime in your cloud account, data center or air-gapped network using the method agreed in scope. OneUptime documents Docker Compose on a single Debian, Ubuntu or RHEL server, and a Helm chart that the project recommends for production, so the choice depends on your platform standards and availability needs. Your team provides hosting, DNS, TLS certificates, SMTP and the SMS or voice provider accounts that the alerts will use. The step closes when the instance runs, admin access works through your single sign-on setup, and backup is configured.
Rebuild schedules and escalation policies
DeployOpen recreates each on-call rotation, override and escalation policy in OneUptime, using the inventory from the first step as the specification. Your service owners review each rotation for coverage gaps, time zones and handoff rules, and confirm which contact methods each responder uses, including SMS, phone call, push, email and Slack. Items that OneUptime does not model the same way are flagged for a written decision. The step is done when a reviewer signs off each schedule against the inventory and no escalation step points at an empty or unassigned target.
Reconnect monitoring sources and run telemetry in parallel
Your team identifies each monitor and event source that pages PagerDuty, such as alert managers, cloud alarms and synthetic checks, and points it to OneUptime where a matching monitor or integration exists. Where applications already emit OpenTelemetry, the same telemetry can be sent to both platforms during the transition, so you can compare alert behavior before cutover. DeployOpen configures the monitors, agents and routing rules and documents any source that still needs a custom integration. The step is done when each source produces an incident in OneUptime from a test event and the mapping is written down.
Test paging end to end with real responders
Scheduled test incidents are raised from each monitored source and must reach the intended responder through every contact method in their escalation path. Real on-call engineers acknowledge, escalate and resolve the test incidents, and the results are logged with timestamps, delivery status and any missed notifications. DeployOpen works through the failure cases, such as an unreachable phone number, an unanswered escalation step or a disabled integration, and tunes the policies. Your team confirms the test window and responders in advance. The step closes when every planned path has been exercised and the failures found have been fixed and retested.
Run status pages and incident communication in parallel
OneUptime's Community Edition includes branded public and private status pages, incident history, scheduled maintenance and subscriber notifications, so these can be set up alongside PagerDuty's status page feature during a transition. Your communications lead provides the component list, subscriber groups, custom domain plan and approval workflow for customer-facing updates. DeployOpen builds the pages, links them to the incident workflow and runs a rehearsal of a live incident. The step is done when an incident published in OneUptime appears correctly on the status page and reaches subscribers as expected.
Cut over and retire PagerDuty integrations
After the parallel period and sign-off from the on-call owners, monitoring sources are switched so OneUptime becomes the only paging path, and PagerDuty integrations are disabled one by one with rollback steps written for each. Your team confirms the PagerDuty contract end date, retains the exported incident history under your records policy and removes responders from the old account. DeployOpen documents the final configuration, runbooks and access model in your environment. The step is done when no active source sends to PagerDuty, a post-cutover test incident pages the correct responder, and the handover documents are accepted.

Questions buyers ask before choosing OneUptime over PagerDuty

What does a migration from PagerDuty to OneUptime cost?

The cost depends on the work involved, and no price figure is supplied for this comparison. OneUptime's Community Edition is licensed under the Apache License 2.0, so the software itself carries no license fee, but you still pay for the server or cluster, backups, the team's operating time and any outside implementation work. The main drivers are the number of services, schedules and escalation policies to rebuild, how many monitors and integrations must be re-pointed, and whether you need high availability. Ask any implementation partner for a written, fixed-scope quote that lists each deliverable, and ask PagerDuty for your current contract terms, including any add-ons you use today.

How long does a PagerDuty to OneUptime move take?

No duration figure is supplied for this move, so treat any timeline as something to confirm in writing. The schedule is shaped by how many teams, rotations and escalation paths you run, how many integrations send alerts into PagerDuty today, and how much parallel paging you want before cutting over. A practical plan runs a period where both systems receive the same alerts so responders can confirm that SMS, phone, push, email and Slack notifications reach the right people. Ask for milestones tied to that parallel test rather than a single go-live date.

What does our team need to provide during the migration?

Your team supplies the knowledge that no export file contains: who owns each service, which alerts are actionable, which escalation rules reflect real practice, and which integrations are critical. You will also need administrators for the hosting environment, access to your monitoring sources, and a named approver for cutover decisions. Plan time from on-call engineers to review rebuilt schedules, since a rotation that looks correct on paper can still miss a holiday or a time zone. Confirm these responsibilities in the scope document before work starts.

Can our own engineers migrate to OneUptime without outside help?

Yes, a capable internal team can deploy OneUptime, because the project documents Docker Compose on a single Debian, Ubuntu or RHEL server and a Helm chart that the project recommends for production. The harder parts are sustained operation: patching, backups, monitoring the monitor, and testing that paging still works during an outage. Assess whether your team has spare capacity for those tasks, and whether you want a fixed-scope engagement to cover hardening, documentation and handover. DeployOpen plans, implements, hardens, backs up, upgrades and documents self-hosted platforms in your infrastructure, and ongoing support is available as a retainer.

Does OneUptime replace every PagerDuty feature we use?

Not necessarily, so map your current usage feature by feature before deciding. OneUptime covers incident management from declaring and assigning incidents through communication, resolution and post-mortems, on-call schedules and escalation policies, status pages with subscriber notifications, and monitoring of websites, APIs, ports, SSL, DNS and synthetic checks. Confirm with the OneUptime project any PagerDuty capability you depend on, such as specific event orchestration rules, mobile app behavior, vendor-specific integrations or advanced analytics, and check each against the OneUptime GitHub repository. Document any gap and decide whether it is accepted, built or covered by another tool.

How do OneUptime Community and Enterprise differ for compliance needs?

The Community Edition includes SAML and OIDC single sign-on, branded status pages and the core on-call and incident features, under the Apache License 2.0 except the ee/ directory. The Enterprise Edition adds SCIM provisioning, audit logs, compliance and instance health dashboards, priority support and data residency, and is priced through sales. If an auditor will ask for user lifecycle automation or audit trails, check whether those needs require Enterprise. DeployOpen prepares systems, controls and evidence for compliance assessments, but independent auditors and certification bodies issue any audit report or certification.

What should we ask for in a quote for this migration?

Ask for a written scope that names each deliverable: the target architecture, the deployment method, the list of services, schedules and escalation policies to rebuild, the integrations to re-point, the parallel paging test, the cutover plan and the handover documentation. Request the assumptions behind the effort, including the number of teams and integrations, and a clear statement of what is excluded. Also ask how backups, upgrades and security testing are priced, whether support is a separate retainer, and what happens if scope changes. DeployOpen does not publish a price list, and a quote follows from the written scope.

How DeployOpen helps you evaluate, implement and run OneUptime

DeployOpen plans, implements, integrates, hardens and documents self-hosted open-source platforms inside your own infrastructure. For PagerDuty vs OneUptime, we start from the on-call, escalation, status page and notification requirements you actually have, then decide with you whether OneUptime fits or whether a narrower paging tool is the better match.

How we scope

Engagements are fixed-scope, with the scope, deliverables and timeline agreed in writing before work starts.
We inventory current PagerDuty services, schedules, escalation policies, integrations and status page subscribers to define what migrates.
The written scope states which notification channels, such as SMS, phone, push, email and Slack, must be tested end to end.

How we build

We deploy OneUptime in your environment using Docker Compose or the Helm chart the project recommends for production, as your architecture requires.
We configure SAML or OIDC single sign-on, on-call schedules and escalation policies, and connect monitors and OpenTelemetry-based agents.
We test paging paths with controlled alerts, confirming who is reached, in what order, and through which channel.

How we hand over

You receive documentation covering deployment, configuration, escalation logic, backup procedures and upgrade steps for your team.
We walk your on-call engineers and incident managers through declaring, assigning and resolving an incident in OneUptime.
Where you need evidence for an assessment, we prepare the configuration and records, while independent auditors issue any attestation.

How we support

Ongoing support, upgrades and continuous testing are available as retainers after handover.
We review each OneUptime release, such as the 14.0.70 release published on October 18, 2026, before you upgrade your instance.
Quotes follow from the written scope, and we ask you to confirm Enterprise Edition needs such as SCIM or data residency before we price them.

PagerDuty vs OneUptime