Best incident management software

When your IT team experiences a flood of unexpected requests, all reporting the same issue, incident management software can enable your agents to respond quickly to minimize the impact. The right system can also help you learn more from the data, identify patterns, and collaborate effectively on solutions so you can stay ahead of future problems.

Our guide will help you choose the right incident management software for your business. We compare the top incident management software platforms and break down pricing, features, and benefits. Keep reading so you react to service requests faster and create a problem-solving process to minimize repeat issues.

More in this guide:

• What is incident management software?
• Incident management tools comparison chart
• The 15 best incident management software
• Features of incident management tools
• Benefits of incident management software
• How to choose the right incident management solution
• Frequently asked questions
• Try incident management software for free

Incident management software is a critical IT tool designed to help teams efficiently handle and resolve unplanned disruptions in IT services. It automates the logging, tracking, prioritization, and resolution of incidents, enhancing response times and reducing manual efforts. Additionally, it supports collaboration across teams, offers tools for root cause analysis, and provides insights to continuously improve IT service management.

From pricing to features, see how incident management software solutions compare.

Let’s take a deeper dive into incident management software options. Below, we provide an overview of each product, plus information on key features, pricing options, and free trials.

1. Zendesk

With incident management software from Zendesk, you can mitigate the impact of service disruptions. Zendesk offers fast and easy implementation with out-of-the-box functionality, so you can deploy workflow automations without enlisting skilled developers. The intuitive ticketing system empowers agents to jump right in without lengthy training periods, resulting in a faster time to value.

Zendesk transforms the way your internal support team members work by allowing them to collaborate on incidents, escalate issues based on predefined policies, identify fixes, and track incident causes and solutions. Generative AI enables effective self-service options, letting users interact with AI agents to diagnose issues and resolve complex requests. Our AI agents come pre-trained on IT ticket data so they can start working on day one.

Our incident management software also detects issues across your entire system and automatically sends immediate alerts on modern channels—like Microsoft Teams and Slack—as well as live chat and email so you can provide timely support. Users can report issues themselves, but routine monitoring can automatically discover incidents.

Meanwhile, the Zendesk Agent Workspace gives IT support agents a unified view of trouble tickets, along with the details and context of each issue. AI is built into the workspace so agents get real-time assistance with their tasks. With over 1,500 integrations in the Zendesk Marketplace, you can extend functionality and tailor your software to adapt to business needs and growth, providing a lower total cost of ownership than one-dimensional products.

Pricing: Plans start at $19 per agent/month, billed annually. A 14-day free trial is available.

Explore more Zendesk pricing plans.

2. Jira Service Management

Part of the Atlassian product family, Jira Service Management’s incident management software offers incident swarming and on-call alerting capabilities. That means the software assigns ownership to an agent to handle the escalated incident from end to end instead of placing it into a queue.

Standard packages include self-service, ticket management, configurable workflows, and reporting and analytics. Businesses must opt for Jira's Premium or Enterprise plans to access more incident management features, such as advanced alert integrations and incident investigations.

Pricing: Plans start at $650 per year for up to three agents. A free plan and a seven-day free trial are available.

Recommended reading: Learn how to integrate Jira with Zendesk and see how Zendesk vs. Jira compare.

3. New Relic

New Relic offers incident management software with tools that help businesses handle issues that affect the performance of systems and applications. Its system features a live feed that displays an overview of ticket status, event log, activity, and related issues.

New Relic provides contextual alerts so teams know the issue and take the appropriate action. Its system filters low-priority issues that don’t affect customers or business operations to reduce alert fatigue. Businesses can also configure alerts on the interface with a badge to help agents prioritize escalated incidents.

Pricing: Plans start at $49 per core user/month for up to five users. A free plan is available.

4. BigPanda

BigPanda’s incident management platform helps IT teams detect, respond to, and resolve problems as they occur. Its Incident 360 Console provides a real-time view of all issues in a single view. IT agents can manage, analyze, and collaborate with other departments to find root causes and take necessary actions.

BigPanda is customizable, allowing businesses to create filtered views. The live feed provides an overview of the active incidents, showing when the last update occurred and each incident’s priority level. It also has a searchable field so agents can find an incident without manually scanning the feed.

Pricing: Contact BigPanda for pricing.

5. Corporater

Corporater’s incident management tools help businesses track and manage issues as they arise. Its workspace displays an overview of the issues across the business, allowing teams to monitor them. It provides automated real-time alerts and standard workflow automations to handle repetitive tasks.

Corporater also offers customizable dashboards, allowing teams to personalize their workspace and showcase important metrics and relevant information. Its reporting tools enable businesses to create compliance reports with branded visual elements such as graphs and charts.

Pricing: Contact Corporater for pricing.

6. SolarWinds Service Desk

SolarWinds Service Desk features incident management software that helps internal IT teams manage day-to-day problems and resolve incidents. The solution allows teams from every department to track tickets submitted from channels like email, phone, customer self-service portals, live chat, or mobile apps.

Its software features self-service articles, incident lifecycle visualization, and issue escalation. In addition to managing incidents, IT teams can use SolarWinds to monitor compliance risks, control inventory, and manage digital assets.

Pricing: Plans start at $39 per technician/month, billed annually. A 30-day free trial is available.

Recommended reading: Learn how SolarWinds Service Desk integrates with Zendesk.

7. Spiceworks

Spiceworks offers free incident management software with its cloud-based help desk system. It uses an ad-based revenue model so users can access the software for free rather than paying licensing fees. That means Spiceworks users must contend with banner ads native to the Spiceworks interface.

Users may configure their cloud-based software with custom alerts and automated escalation processes. It also includes reporting, a mobile app, remote support session capabilities, and access to the Spiceworks IT community forum.

Pricing: Free

8. Freshservice

Freshservice is an IT service management solution from Freshworks that helps teams track, prioritize, and resolve trouble tickets. The incident management tools include incident logging, analysis, custom alerts, and a multichannel support interface. These channels include email, a self-service portal, voice, and chatbots.

However, some users feel Freshservice lacks advanced capabilities that other software provides, such as viewing ticket queues by assigned agents and separate ticket tabs within the browser. The software also has limited customization options that prevent businesses from tailoring the platform to their liking.

Pricing: Plans start at $19 per agent/month, billed annually. A 14-day free trial is available.

Recommended reading: Learn how Zendesk vs. Freshservice compare.

9. ClickUp

ClickUp is more akin to a project management tool. Businesses can also use it to plan, track, and manage different types of work, but it may not have the same incident management functionality as other, more purpose-built solutions.

With ClickUp, your team can monitor and assign tasks, set custom alerts, escalate issues, and view task activity in real time. Its dashboard provides a high-level overview of workflows, enabling teams to stay organized and track incidents to resolution. ClickUp offers a customizable board view for a more visual experience. This view allows you to group incidents by status, priority, and assigned agent.

Pricing: Plans start at $7 per user/month, billed annually. A free plan is available.

10. ServiceNow IT Service Management

The ServiceNow IT Service Management (ITSM) system is a cloud-based platform that helps teams manage incidents, tasks, and processes. Its incident management platform for IT service teams includes incident logging, notification and escalation, incident classification, root cause analysis, and incident resolution.

ServiceNow features a single-pane agent view so agents can manage issues from one place. The software enables major incident management through embedded workflows to handle high-impact issues. In addition to incident management, ServiceNow can work as a service desk with asset management, reporting, remote support, virtual agents, and ticket management.

Pricing: Contact ServiceNow for pricing.

Recommended reading: Learn how ServiceNow integrates with Zendesk and how Zendesk vs. ServiceNow compare.

11. ManageEngine ServiceDesk Plus

ManageEngine ServiceDesk Plus software provides an incident management system featuring IT incident tracking tools that help teams resolve outages and incidents. It supports reporting and analytics, workflow customizations, native integrations, and ITSM workflow tools.

ManageEngine’s starting plan includes multichannel support, incident life cycle tracking, and defined escalation paths. These paths include automated technician assignment, which routes incidents to the right agent to handle the request. Businesses can automate rules for lower-priority tickets based on their selected criteria.

Pricing: Contact ManageEngine for pricing. A 30-day free trial is available.

12. NinjaOne

NinjaOne is incident management software for IT, network security teams, and managed service providers (MSPs). With NinjaOne, you can monitor your IT infrastructure and create custom alerts for cloud infrastructures, network devices, Windows servers, and Mac and Windows laptops.

Within those applications, you can monitor information, including user logs, running processes, disk usage, encryption status, and memory. Additionally, NinjaOne allows IT teams to access end-user devices remotely.

Pricing: Contact NinjaOne for pricing.

13. Uptime by Better Stack

Uptime by Better Stack (formerly Better Uptime) is software for infrastructure monitoring and incident management. Its features include multichannel alerting, website monitoring, incident timelines, merging, post-mortems, error logs, and historical reporting. Uptime has an interface with customizable features, like notifications and prioritization options.

Its automated multi-location checks vet and confirm an incident before sending alerts to prevent false issues. Once confirmed, the system alerts the right agent via push notifications or channels, including SMS, email, or integrated communication tools.

Pricing: Plans start at $25 per month, billed annually. A free plan is available.

14. Splunk On-Call

Splunk On-Call, formerly VictorOps, is a traditional incident management tool for incident responses and management. On-Call integrates with other tools to add to incident management capabilities like log analysis, real-time user monitoring, and infrastructure monitoring. The software offers desktop and mobile apps and customization options for each.

Splunk features automated notifications and alerts that help teams manage time-sensitive or escalated issues. Additional automations include on-call scheduling, rule-based routing, and triage that assigns the issue to the right agent to address it.

Pricing: Plans start at $5 per user/month, billed annually. A 14-day free trial is available.

15. PagerDuty

PagerDuty is an incident management platform that combines incident management features, machine learning, and data science techniques. Activity tracking and reporting allow PagerDuty users to resolve issues before a ticket can be generated.

Some of its incident management features include process automation, unlimited notifications, and escalation policies. PagerDuty also features native apps and can integrate with many third-party apps and application programming interfaces (APIs).

Pricing: Plans start at $21 per user/month, billed annually. A free plan and a 14-day free trial are available.

Recommended reading: Learn how PagerDuty integrates with Zendesk.

The right incident management software should have features that foster fast and effective responses. Here are a few features you should look for in incident management tools.

AI

AI can make your IT service teams more effective while reducing operational costs. For example, chatbots can handle requests to help IT teams manage larger support volumes. Zendesk AI agents analyze issues employees or customers report and lead them to a resolution, all without a member of your IT team ever having to get involved.

AI can also help agents respond to issues faster. Zendesk AI proactively suggests responses in real time and allows agents to approve or modify them.

Immediate alerting

Your incident software needs the capability to send immediate alerts to the right person or incident response team to manage trouble tickets effectively. Some monitoring tools can detect potential issues before they escalate and alert product engineering teams to assess them. This includes situations like products responding slower than usual or unexpected increases or decreases in service volume rate.

Integrations

A siloed incident management system can hinder your efficiency. Integrating it with other tools enhances its operability. For example, the incident response software can integrate with your IT inventory to help manage devices. It can also integrate with remote support tools to allow technicians to troubleshoot issues directly within the incident response system.

Workflow automations

Effective incident management software systems take the guesswork out of generating, routing, and prioritizing incidents by enabling teams to automate the incident management process. For example, intelligent routing can automatically deliver the ticket to the right agent immediately based on intent (what an incident is about), sentiment (how the user is feeling), and language.

You can manage incidents more effectively by automating processes like incident identification, logging, categorization, prioritization and escalation, alerts and notifications, and responses. If you’re considering an incident management tool, ensure it allows you to configure custom rules to handle incident workflows and automations in the best way for your company.

Incident assignment

The severity of an incident determines who addresses the issue, the approach they take, and how it’s communicated to the affected user. When an incident request is created, it must be assigned a severity level. For example, you could group incidents into five severity levels based on the characteristics of the incident:

• Level 1: Effects core business functions or critical systems
• Level 2: Significantly impacts business operations or a major system
• Level 3: Disrupts some business functionality or impacts a critical department
• Level 4: Minor inconvenience to a limited number of users or departments
• Level 5: Requires investigation but has minimal or no impact on operations

While each business may have different severity ratings, it’s important to communicate your scoring system clearly throughout the organization.

Incident reporting and tracking

Issues can come from internal (employees or monitoring tools) and external (customers) sources. Incident tracking software consolidates these requests into a centralized hub where they can be logged and tracked. Think of incident management tools as an IT help desk with a specialized application.

Every stakeholder should be able to track the issue easily. This means the issue tracking software should tell you where it originated, its current status, and who’s handling it. The centralized incident log should also enable service agents to send and receive notifications across various channels so they don’t need separate tools to manage email, SMS, social media, live chat, or voice.

Incidents can occur without notice. With the right system, you can prepare your business for unpredictable situations. Here are some benefits that incident management software can provide.

Enhances operational efficiency

Incident management software often improves operational efficiency. For example, the software can streamline workflows by automating incident alerts, ticket tagging and routing, and even responses to incidents. This ultimately enables you to manage higher ticket volumes with less headcount, saving time and money.

Additionally, the software empowers teams with data-driven insights, allowing them to make smarter decisions faster. IT teams can use these reports to proactively allocate resources to prevent recurring problems, prioritize upgrades to address bottlenecks, and measure the effectiveness of implemented solutions.

Improves the service experience

Incident management software enhances the service experience by expediting issue resolution. IT teams can leverage AI and automated workflows to decrease first reply times and improve first contact resolution, resulting in a more positive experience for everyone involved.

Increases collaboration between departments

Incident management software makes collaboration between departments easy. Collaboration tools enable your team to loop in management or agents with specific expertise. This lets agents consider the situation from all sides, share knowledge, and work together toward a solution. Typical collaboration tools include:

• Integrations with messaging apps like Slack or Microsoft Teams
• Organizational platforms like Trello or Asana
• Ticket collaboration tools like Side Conversations

Collaboration tools facilitate communication internally, externally, with teammates, or across departments.

Minimizes future incidents from occurring

Many IT teams are used to being reactive, dealing with issues as they arise, and adapting to the situation. Incident management software allows businesses to provide proactive service. It can help your team identify trends, determine root causes, and track solutions for improvement opportunities.

When you understand a root cause, you can create processes to execute immediately for faster resolution. You can also make improvements to products, services, and processes, preventing future incidents from occurring.

Improves security

Protecting customer and employee data is paramount, especially during an incident. An incident response program can provide a 24/7 centralized monitoring system and on-call staffing to respond to security alerts, events, or incidents. Incident management software features data encryption, role-based access controls, and authentication options to keep sensitive information safe.

Ideally, you won’t use your incident response software to solve major issues too often. But even when carrying out everyday tasks, it has to function as expected—otherwise, you risk extended outages that can erode business operations.

To help you make the right decision for your business, here are a few things to consider when choosing incident management software.

Make sure it’s easy to use

An incident management solution with an intuitive interface makes it easy for agents to use. When IT support teams use complicated tools, it reduces job satisfaction and productivity. It can also potentially increase costs because it requires more resources to manage.

Consider the time to value

Time to value refers to how quickly your business can begin seeing value from a product or service. Many IT tools and applications take a lot of time and effort to implement, resulting in a slow time to value.

With software like Zendesk, you will get up and running in minutes, not months. Implementation is seamless, and we offer many out-of-the-box capabilities, so you can start generating a return on your investment from day one and see a fast time to value.

Ensure it integrates with your tech stack

Incident management software should seamlessly integrate with your existing tech stack to streamline data sharing and operational processes. Isolated data hinders effective responses, but a fully integrated system allows agents to address issues with full context. Incident alerts can include crucial details, along with a history of previous actions taken on them.

Look for a low total cost of ownership

Businesses often focus on the cost of a software license instead of evaluating the total cost of ownership. In addition to licensing costs, other fees, like implementation and ongoing administrative and maintenance costs, can add up. Because of this, businesses sometimes opt for free incident management software but quickly outgrow the limited features and capabilities. The right incident management software will create cost efficiencies that a cut-rate solution may not.