Top 10 Incident Management Software for Quicker Response and Business Resilience

You can’t predict if a fire will break out in your facility, yet fire drills remain critical to preparedness. Now, consider cyberattacks—a certainty in today’s landscape, with one occurring every 39 seconds. While you can’t control when your organization might be targeted, you can control how prepared you are to respond.

A robust incident response plan, regular simulations, and versatile incident management software are no longer optional—they are essential to staying resilient in the face of inevitable threats. Incident management tools enable quick preventive and corrective actions, helping organizations minimize disruption and mitigate risks effectively.

If you’re evaluating your organization’s incident management software, this blog post is for you! We’ll assess our top 10 tools and discuss their features, pros, cons, and costs to help you make an informed decision.

What is an Incident Management Software?

Incident Management Software is a technological solution for identifying, analyzing, reporting, and responding to incidents such as service disruptions, power outages, or unplanned disasters. It also enables IT teams to investigate the root causes to minimize similar incidents in the future.

Incident management tools are widely used across sectors like IT, cybersecurity, healthcare, and finance. They require quick responses to events to minimize downtime, protect sensitive information, and ensure continued business operations.

Top 10 Incident Management Software

Most IMS monitor your environment and send an automated alert when an incident is detected. The automation features help with triage, analysis, and resolution to minimize human workload and error.

1. ServiceNow

ServiceNow is an IT service management platform with robust incident management capabilities to minimize service disruptions and ensure prompt restoration. The tool detects incidents using automated workflows and is powered by AI and machine learning capabilities to prioritize and resolve issues. It also features omni-channel notifications and incident response playbooks for quick and guided action to reduce mean time to resolution (MTTR).

G2 rating: 4.3/5

Key Features

• Features a mobile app to enable incident triage and resolution anytime, anywhere
• Provides a single-pane view of incidents for better context and proactive response
• Offers 24-hour support and virtual agents for any assistance
• Has in-built visual task boards to make it easy for the teams to communicate and collaborate
•  Maintains a centralized repository of incident records, including all change requests

Pros

•  Customers appreciate its integration abilities with a range of tools and systems
• The platform is highly customizable as per the organization’s needs
• The portal’s comprehensive FAQs’ library and other supporting material make self-service easy

Cons

•  It can be expensive for smaller businesses
• The tool can have an initial learning curve for people with non-technical background

Pricing

The essentials plan, suitable for up to 500 employees, starts from $10 per user per month.

2. Opsgenie

Opsgenie, a part of Atlassian’s suite of tools, is an Incident Management Software that makes it easier for Dev and Ops teams to accelerate incident resolution. It communicates about service disruptions or outages through multi-channel and context-rich alerts, making it easier for teams to collaborate during an incident. The on-call schedule management ensures that team members take turns when managing urgent issues and someone is always available if an incident occurs.

G2 rating: 4.2/5

Key Features

• Features incident response templates to create playbooks for different scenarios
• Manages alert lifecycle from when the alert was created and who was notified to whether or not the action was initiated
• Re-routes critical incident alerts when the on-call employee does not respond in 5 minutes
• Enables teams to create a virtual war room where they can collaborate in real-time during critical incidents
• Provides user and team operational efficiency analytics with reports on mean time to acknowledge and mean time to resolve

Pros

• The tool is easy to set up and implement
• Customers appreciate the flexible notification options, including email, SMS, phone calls, etc.
• Comes at a great price compared to similar software

Cons

• Setting up the on-call schedules as per needs can often be confusing and time-consuming
• The tool’s documentation is not detailed enough to help understand the platform

Pricing

You can start with a free plan for up to 5 users. The essentials plan starts at $9.45 per user per month, and the enterprise plan costs $31.90 per user per month.

3. Zendesk

Zendesk is an efficient incident management platform that offers a knowledge management database and AI virtual assistant to resolve issues. It supports numerous integrations, facilitating ticket filing and effortless organization. The software focuses on restoring operations, effective communication, and root cause analysis. It ensures prompt issue detection and simplifies incident tracking through a robust ticketing system and intuitive interface.

G2 rating: 4.3/5

Key Features

• Seamless integration with multiple channels of communication for diverse user needs
• Features a live dashboard for real-time updates on incident tickets and other information
• Offers self-service options and FAQ tools to enable users to solve common issues themselves
• Provides customizable dashboards to monitor performance and trends and enhance productivity
• Provides mobile-friendly access to enable agents to manage incidents on the go

Pros

• Helps track time taken by agents on each ticket
• Integrates with several tools such as JIRA and Sales Force and also with AI tools
• Suitable for global companies and are also subject to cross-border compliance

Cons

• The platform experiences slow loading time that can hinder productivity and cause delays
• The reporting is fundamental and lacks advanced analytics

Pricing

Zendesk has a suite plan starts at $55 per agent per month.

4. Better Stack

Better Stack is an observability and incident management tool that continuously monitors your infrastructure and notifies you of suspicious events. It customizes incident escalations and sets up on-call rotations to inform appropriate people based on severity, impact, and employee availability. The platform also provides an incident audit timeline with comprehensive details such as the reason for the incident, who got notified, and what the actions were.

G2 rating: 4.8/5

Key Features

• Provides screenshots and error logs to give you detailed context of what went wrong
• Features smart incident merging that allows you to acknowledge similar incidents at the same time
• Sends notifications and alerts when the database backups are not running
• Comes with built-in monitoring tools that do not even require manual installation
• Allows you to configure a status page on your sub-domain to keep the customers informed

Pros

• The tool can run in minutes and has a super-intuitive UI
• Offers a free plan with a generous number of features
• The customer support team is highly responsive

Cons

• Requires frequent log-in to the site to maintain monitors
• The customization on status pages is limited

 Pricing

Paid plan starts at $29 per month for 1 responder license.

5. SolarWinds Service Desk

SolarWinds Service Desk is an IT Service Management (ITSM) solution with powerful incident management capabilities. It leverages automation to reduce redundant tasks, simplify ticket creation, route tickets to the right teams, and ensure quick issue resolution. The platform also includes an AI-powered knowledge base, enabling end-users to find solutions and minimize the need to raise a ticket.

G2 rating: 4.3/5

Key Features

• Provides customizable screens to agents to view and prioritize incidents
•  Enables real-time collaboration on incident tickets for faster resolution
• Powers IT teams to create playbook-style rules for managing incidents and enhancing efficiency
• Helps employees visualize the entire incident lifecycle for a deeper understanding
• Makes it more accessible to follow and adopt ITIL framework guidelines

Pros

•  Affordable as compared to competitors
• Tracks software and hardware installations and has robust IT asset management features
•  Includes customer satisfaction surveys after incident resolution for feedback and improvements

Cons

•  When seeking help, users are often directed to their knowledge base instead of assigning a live representative
• Third-party integrations are limited

Pricing

The essentials plan starts at $39 per technician per month.

6. Big Panda

Big Panda is an AI-augmented incident management tool that centralizes security event management after collecting information from various sources for comprehensive and actionable insights. It supports both on-premise and cloud-based setups and integrates with different monitoring and observability tools. The tool sends actionable alerts for enhanced situational awareness across teams and offers a visual incident timeline for root cause analysis.

G2 rating: 4.5/5

Key Features

• Provides a quick summary of all ongoing incidents on the active IT incident feed
• Enables IT teams to view recent changes that could have caused the incident and roll them back if required
• Features real-time view of entire IT stack to enable timely resolution of any troubleshooting issues
• Helps correlate events to understand the underlying cause
• Has a reporting and analytics dashboard to understand system and resource performance

Pros

• The AI-powered event correlation enhances efficiency by cutting down alert fatigue
• The recently launched smart search helps you look for incidents that are specific to a service or application and even based on dates
•  Minimizes alert duplication to reduce noise.

Cons

• Support for low- or medium-priority issues takes 3-5 days to respond, which can be frustrating.
• Most product reviews on G2 are from 2022 or earlier, raising concerns about the current relevance and reliability of the feedback.

Pricing

Costs $6000 per year for a user.

7. Splunk On-call

Splunk On-call is yet another observability and automated incident management solution that aims to reduce manual tasks associated with incident handling. It has intelligent alert routing, meta-data-rich notifications, and time-sensitive escalations to contain the spread and minimize downtime. The platform leverages AI capabilities and integrates with a range of tools to make it easy to resolve faster.

G2 rating: 4.6/5

Key Features

• Smoothly manages on-call scheduling to ensure tasks are assigned based on employee rotation and availability
• Supports mobile functionality to enable the teams to work on incidents on the go
• Maintains audit trails for incident correlation and root cause analysis
• Automates issue escalation and creation of virtual war rooms to expedite response
• Provides comprehensive reports on metrics such as mean time to acknowledge and mean time to respond

Pros

• Since it’s part of the Splunk toolset, you get access to some other products as well
• The system can handle increased demand or capability without requiring extended downtime
• Well-suited for enterprise-scale businesses

Cons

• Scheduling shifts for multiple users and teams can be complicated if they haven’t been defined beforehand
• The licensing for user management is limited, which could hinder scalability or flexibility in managing users

Pricing

The observability stack starts at $15 per host per month and $75 per host monthly for end-to-end coverage.

8. xMatters

xMatters is an incident management software that ensures your services are always up and running by continuously monitoring the environment and notifying you of events. It also provides point-i