PagerDuty vs PocketNOC for Orion on-call rotations
Last updated: 2026-06-15
PagerDuty routes the page and manages the incident response workflow. PocketNOC shows the on-call engineer what is actually broken in SolarWinds Orion. They solve different problems and most on-call teams benefit from both.
Summary
PagerDuty is an incident management platform. It receives alert events from your monitoring tools, determines who is on call, pages them with Do Not Disturb override and escalation policies, and tracks the response workflow from first alert to resolution. PocketNOC is a mobile viewer for SolarWinds Orion data: it shows node health, active alerts, performance charts, interface counters, and application monitors on a phone, pulling directly from the SWIS API on your Orion server. For a team running Orion, PagerDuty handles the "who gets woken up" question. PocketNOC handles the "what is actually broken" question once they are awake.
When PocketNOC fits
- Your team runs SolarWinds Orion (NPM, SAM, NTA, NCM, IPAM, or DPA) and you need phone-native access to the monitoring data Orion already holds.
- An alert has fired and you need to investigate: see the affected node, review the CPU and memory chart leading up to the failure, check whether related nodes or interfaces are also impacted, and scan recent alert history for that device.
- You want to acknowledge an Orion alert and write a note directly from the phone, writing back via SWIS without opening the web console.
- Your Orion server uses a self-signed certificate. PocketNOC handles this via Trust On First Use on the first connection, with no changes to your internal certificate authority.
- Monitoring data must stay inside your network. PocketNOC connects from the device to your Orion server over your existing network path, VPN, or a secure tunnel. No monitoring data passes through WeaveHub servers.
When PagerDuty fits
- Your team needs guaranteed page delivery with Do Not Disturb override, configurable re-paging intervals, and escalation to the next engineer if the primary does not acknowledge within a set window.
- You run on-call rotations across multiple engineers and need a rotation calendar, schedule overrides, and a clear record of who was on call when.
- Your monitoring stack spans more than Orion: Datadog, AWS CloudWatch, Prometheus, or custom webhook sources. PagerDuty receives events from all of them through a single routing layer.
- You need incident response coordination for high-severity events: stakeholder status pages, postmortem templates, multi-responder runbooks, and integrations with Slack, Jira, and ServiceNow.
- Your organization tracks SLAs and SLOs and needs incident response time data aggregated across tools and teams.
Side-by-side
| PocketNOC | PagerDuty | |
|---|---|---|
| Primary purpose | Mobile viewer for Orion data | Incident routing and response platform |
| Talks to Orion | Yes, reads node health, alerts, and performance via SWIS API from the device | Receives outbound alert events from Orion via a script posting to the Events API |
| On-call rotation engine | No | Yes (rotation calendar, escalation policies, schedule overrides) |
| DND override paging | No (standard push notifications) | Yes (vendor-managed audio bypass on iOS and Android) |
| Mobile app focus | Node health, alerts, charts, interface state, ack/resolve Orion alerts | Ack/resolve/reassign PagerDuty incidents, view schedules, run response actions |
| Multi-source alerting | Orion only | Any source with a webhook, email, or native integration |
| Monitoring data view | Node health, CPU/memory/response time charts, interfaces, app monitors, volumes | Incident timeline and alert payload text; no Orion node data |
| Incident coordination | No | Yes (runbooks, status pages, postmortems, multi-responder) |
| Data routing | Device to Orion server direct. Nothing leaves your network | Alert events routed through PagerDuty cloud |
| Self-signed cert support | Yes (TOFU on first connect) | N/A (receives outbound POST from Orion) |
| Free tier | Demo mode with sample data | Up to 5 users |
| Paid cost | $99.99/year or $9.99/month per device (pricing) | Professional: $21/user/mo (annual) or $29/user/mo (monthly); Business: $41/user/mo (annual) or $49/user/mo (monthly) |
PagerDuty pricing sourced from multiple third-party trackers (June 2026). Direct access to pagerduty.com/pricing was unavailable on draft date 2026-06-15; verify before citing in external materials.
Real-world workflow notes
The most common pattern for SolarWinds Orion teams that also run PagerDuty: configure an Orion alert action that writes a JSON event file and runs the PagerDuty integration script. When Orion's alert engine fires, the script POSTs the event to the PagerDuty Events API. PagerDuty routes the page to whoever is on call, rings with DND override, and escalates if the engineer does not acknowledge within the configured window. That gets the right person awake. What it does not do is show them what Orion knows about the failure.
The PagerDuty mobile app is purpose-built for managing the PagerDuty incident: acknowledging it, reassigning it, looping in additional responders, and closing it when the work is done. It shows the alert payload text that Orion sent. It does not show node uptime history, the CPU chart from the 20 minutes before the failure, related interface errors, or what other devices on the same subnet are doing. That context lives in Orion. PocketNOC puts it on the phone. The on-call engineer opens PocketNOC to investigate the Orion data, acknowledges the Orion alert from inside PocketNOC, then returns to the PagerDuty app to close the incident. The two apps occupy different screens in the same workflow.
For a similar comparison with a dedicated paging tool, see PocketNOC vs OnPage. For comparison with a full observability platform, see PocketNOC vs Grafana Cloud.
FAQ
Is PocketNOC a replacement for PagerDuty?
No. PagerDuty is an incident management platform: it receives alert events from your monitoring tools, decides who is on call, pages them with Do Not Disturb override, and tracks the response workflow through to resolution. PocketNOC is a mobile viewer for SolarWinds Orion data. The two tools address different parts of the same on-call workflow and are not substitutes for each other.
Does PagerDuty replace SolarWinds Orion?
No. PagerDuty receives alert events from Orion and routes them to the right person. It does not collect network performance data, run device discovery, or store polling results. SolarWinds Orion is the monitoring engine. PagerDuty is the notification and response layer on top of it.
How does PagerDuty connect to SolarWinds Orion?
Through a script-based integration running on the Orion server. When Orion fires an alert, an alert action writes a JSON event file to a local queue folder, then executes a script that POSTs to the PagerDuty Events API v1. When the Orion alert clears, a resolve event is sent automatically. PagerDuty never reads from the SWIS API: the data flow is outbound from Orion to PagerDuty. (Source: PagerDuty SolarWinds Orion Integration Guide, pagerduty.com/docs/guides/solarwinds-integration-guide/.)
Does PagerDuty have a mobile app for viewing Orion data?
PagerDuty has a native iOS (17+) and Android (12+) app for managing PagerDuty incidents. You can acknowledge, resolve, and reassign incidents, view on-call schedules, and run custom response actions from the phone. The app shows the alert payload text that Orion sent to PagerDuty. It does not show Orion node health, performance charts, interface counters, or SWIS data of any kind. PocketNOC provides that Orion-native monitoring view on the phone.
Can I use PagerDuty and PocketNOC together?
Yes, and the two apps do not overlap in function. Orion fires an alert, the alert action POSTs to PagerDuty, PagerDuty pages the on-call engineer with DND override. The engineer opens PocketNOC to see the Orion node data: health summary, performance chart, related alerts, interface errors. They acknowledge the Orion alert from inside PocketNOC and manage the PagerDuty incident response from the PagerDuty app. Both apps run simultaneously on the same phone.
What does PagerDuty cost?
PagerDuty offers a free tier for up to 5 users. The Professional plan is $21 per user per month on an annual contract, or $29 per user per month billed monthly. The Business plan is $41 per user per month (annual) or $49 per user per month (monthly). Enterprise pricing is on request. (Source: hyperping.com/blog/best-pagerduty-alternatives, June 2026. Direct access to pagerduty.com/pricing was unavailable on draft date 2026-06-15; verify before citing.)
What does PocketNOC cost?
Free tier is demo mode with sample data. Pro is $99.99 per year or $9.99 per month per device (pricing), billed through the App Store or Google Play.
Conclusion
PagerDuty and PocketNOC sit at different points in the same on-call workflow: PagerDuty ensures the right engineer gets woken up and that the incident response is tracked from first page to resolution. PocketNOC is what that engineer opens on the phone to see what is actually broken in their SolarWinds Orion environment.