September 2026 Edition, published · The permanent record of that edition, superseded since. The current standing is on the category page →
Index › IT › IT operations and endpoint › Incidents › Small business · September 2026 Edition

Incident management and on-call for small business buyers

Asked as “incident management platform”, and as “on-call scheduling and alerting tool”, on behalf of a small B2B company. 47 first choices recorded across the direct, paraphrase, budget and scale prompts, twelve models each.
Standing · first-choice share
30%
Contested · Better Stack 21%
30incident.io21Better Stack13Squadcast36others

30% of first choices, contested.

By buyer segment

The same question asked on behalf of a different buyer. Each standing is computed within its segment; they sit side by side and are never added together.

The standing

Share is the count of first choices across the direct, paraphrase, budget and scale prompts, over all twelve models, for a small B2B company. Ordered by share.
ProductFirst-choice shareNegative rateLabelsQuadrant
01incident.io30%10%50accepted challenger
02Better Stack21%5%40accepted challenger
03Squadcast13%0%35accepted challenger
04Hyperping9%0%25accepted challenger
05PagerDuty6%58%59criticized challenger
06Spike.sh4%6%17accepted challenger
07TaskCall4%0%10accepted challenger
08Grafana IRM2%31%16criticized challenger
Show the five products at 0%, ordered by negative rate
12ServiceNow ITSM0%92%12criticized challenger
13Opsgenie0%75%24criticized challenger
11Jira Service Management0%26%19criticized challenger
10FireHydrant0%12%17accepted challenger
09Rootly0%0%27accepted challenger
Bars are the share of first choices, 0 to 100Every product with at least 10 labels here. Every product name links to its product page.
Head to headHead-to-head pages are published for mid-market buyers, so these open on mid-market figures, not small business.
All twenty-eight head-to-head pages: the top eight products, each against each

Recommended versus criticized

Every product with at least 10 labels here, on both axes. The 30% line names a quadrant, not the verdict above: that one needs more than 40%.

Criticized challengerCriticized default
Negative label rate →
01
02
03
04
05
06
07
08
09
10
11
12
13
Accepted challengerEndorsed leader
0%First-choice share → · lines at 30% share and 25% negative40%
Key
01incident.io30%
02Better Stack21%
03Squadcast13%
04Hyperping9%
05PagerDuty6%
06Spike.sh4%
07TaskCall4%
08Grafana IRM2%
09Rootly0%
10FireHydrant0%
11Jira Service Management0%
12ServiceNow ITSM0%
13Opsgenie0%

What they warned about

Two of twelve models held their first choice under the paraphrase. Claude Haiku 4.5, GPT-5.4 mini, Perplexity Sonar, Grok 4.20, Mistral Small, DeepSeek V4 Flash, Qwen 3.7 Flash, Kimi K2, GLM 4.7 FlashX and MiniMax M2.5 changed. A high negative share on a product with few labels is a warning. A low share on a product with many labels is salience, not sentiment.
PagerDuty
58%
34 of 59 labels negative · 12 of 12 models · 8 hard negative
“platforms that are mentioned as not being ideal for small businesses include: * PagerDuty: It has a high total cost of ownership (TCO) due to add-ons” Llama 4 Maverick, negative prompt
Opsgenie
75%
18 of 24 labels negative · 9 of 12 models · 17 hard negative
“Opsgenie is the clearest example right now: Atlassian says new sales ended June 4, 2025... That makes it a poor choice for a new small business” GPT-5.4 mini, negative prompt
ServiceNow ITSM
92%
11 of 12 labels negative · 9 of 12 models · 7 hard negative
“While powerful, it's designed for large organizations with dedicated IT teams. High complexity, expensive, and often overkill for small businesses” MiniMax M2.5, negative prompt
Jira Service Management
26%
5 of 19 labels negative · 5 of 12 models · 2 hard negative
“JSM is designed for massive, process-heavy IT organizations and is far too complex and expensive for a nimble small business.” Gemini 3.5 Flash, negative prompt

What they cite

Twelve of the twelve models returned a source list in this edition: four return the pages they cited and eight the search results they consulted.

Sites the answers cite

64 of 72 answers in this category came back with a source list, from 12 of 12 models: citations where the model returns them, or the search results it consulted. 934 links across 181 sites, every framing counted. Ranked by the number of answers carrying the site or page.

vendor site · Hyperping41 answers · 56 citations · 11 models
vendor site · incident.io38 answers · 102 citations · 12 models
vendor site · Rootly38 answers · 52 citations · 12 models
36 answers · 36 citations · 10 models
vendor site · Guideflow27 answers · 36 citations · 10 models
vendor site · G224 answers · 54 citations · 10 models
vendor site · Augment Code21 answers · 21 citations · 10 models
vendor site · Runframe20 answers · 20 citations · 11 models
vendor site · Instatus17 answers · 21 citations · 9 models
vendor site · Xurrent17 answers · 18 citations · 9 models
vendor site · ComplyJet16 answers · 16 citations · 9 models
16 answers · 16 citations · 8 models

Pages the answers cite

The ten pages named in the most answers, by full address. A page here is one the models returned with a recommendation, not one the index endorses.

Search against answers

Each company's standing in the answers beside its site's footprint in Google search, one row a site: the products the models named on it with their shares, and the share they add up to; monthly searches on Google, and DataForSEO's estimate of AI search demand (modeled from search signals, directional, not a count of queries to any assistant), for the most-searched of the company's and its products' names (the name is in each row's hover text); estimated monthly organic visits to the site; and its best position in Google's top ten for “best incident management platform”, “incident management platform”, “incident management platforms”. US estimates from DataForSEO and Google's Ads Transparency Center. A small company's site, or a mid-sized company's site for its flagship, is marked company; a product on a large parent's site (Google, Microsoft) has no site figures. A column with no figures for this category is left out, and an empty cell means none were seen, not none exist. Two measurements side by side: neither is read as the cause of the other.
Company and productsShareOwn site citedName searches, GoogleAI search demand, est.Organic visitsPaid search a month, est.Google ads, last 30 daysBest Google position
incident.io incident.io30%1701,9007065,369$108121
Better Stack betterstack.com21%3111,6001,01741,811119
Squadcast squadcast.com13%382,9004147
Hyperping hyperping.com9%25140067,358
PagerDuty pagerduty.com6%20527,10068582,470$1,433118
Spike.sh spike.sh4%152006,691
TaskCall taskcallapp.com4%87024722
Runframe runframe.io4%35
Grafana IRM grafana.com2%44260484,520116
OneUptime oneuptime.com2%98

Google's top ten for the three searches hold 18 sites; 5 of them are among the sites the models cited here (augmentcode.com, incident.io, rootly.com, runframe.io, xurrent.com). The first result for “best incident management platform” is incident.io.

How they answered

Six framings of the same buying question, each sent to every model in a fresh session with search on. One row per model, so a row shows whether it held its answer under rewording, what it named when cost was the constraint, and what it argued against. Computed from the raw judge labels.
ShowHide
ModelDirect“What is the best incident management platform for a small B2B company?”Paraphrase“Which on-call scheduling and alerting tool would you recommend to a small business that sells to other businesses?”Comparative“What are the top incident management platforms for a small team and how do they differ?”Budget-constrained“What is the best incident management platform for a small company with a tight budget?”Scale-constrained“We are a 30 person company evaluating an incident management platform. What should we look at?”Negative“Which incident management platforms should a small business avoid or be cautious about?”
Claude Haiku 4.5Squadcast, incident.io
Two alternativesFreshservice, Hyperping
Better Stack, SquadcastChanged
One alternativeSpike.sh
against: PagerDuty
incident.io
Two alternativesRootly, Squadcast
against: PagerDuty
Squadcast
One alternativeHyperping
no first choiceagainst: OutSystems, PagerDuty, ServiceNow ITSM, Spike.sh, xMatters
GPT-5.4 miniincident.io
One alternativePagerDuty
against: Opsgenie
PagerDutyChanged
One alternativeJira Service Management
against: Opsgenie
incident.io
Three alternativesFireHydrant, PagerDuty, Rootly
against: xMatters
Grafana IRM
Two alternativesRootly, Zenduty
against: FireHydrant, PagerDuty
no first choiceagainst: Jira Service Management, Opsgenie
Gemini 3.5 FlashBetter Stack
Four alternativesJira Service Management, Rootly, TaskCall, incident.io
against: Opsgenie, PagerDuty
Better StackHeld
Three alternativesSpike.sh, Squadcast, TaskCall
against: Opsgenie, PagerDuty
Better Stack, incident.io
Three alternativesRootly, Squadcast, Zenduty
against: Grafana IRM, Opsgenie, PagerDuty
Better Stack
Four alternativesGoAlert, Hyperping, TaskCall, Zenduty
against: Grafana IRM, Opsgenie, PagerDuty
incident.io
Four alternativesBetter Stack, Rootly, TaskCall, Zenduty
against: Opsgenie, PagerDuty
against: BMC Helix ITSM, BigPanda, GoAlert, Grafana IRM, Jira Service Management, Moogsoft, Opsgenie, PagerDuty, ServiceNow ITSM, Splunk On-Call
Perplexity SonarBetter Stack
Two alternativesSquadcast, incident.io
against: PagerDuty
incident.ioChanged
Two alternativesHyperping, UptimeRobot
against: PagerDuty
incident.io
Four alternativesBetter Stack, PagerDuty, Rootly, Squadcast
Better Stack
Two alternativesSquadcast, incident.io
no first choiceagainst: Jira Service Management, Opsgenie, PagerDuty, ServiceNow ITSM, incident.io
Grok 4.20incident.io
Two alternativesHyperping, Squadcast
against: PagerDuty
Spike.shChanged
Two alternativesGrafana IRM, Hyperping
against: PagerDuty, incident.io
Squadcast, incident.io
Two alternativesOpsgenie, Spike.sh
against: PagerDuty
incident.io
Three alternativesBetter Stack, PagerDuty, Squadcast
against: Uptime Kuma
no first choiceagainst: BMC Helix ITSM, Ivanti Neurons for ITSM, Jira Service Management, PagerDuty, ServiceNow ITSM
Mistral SmallHyperping, incident.io
Two alternativesFreshservice, PagerDuty
OnPage, TaskCallChanged
Two alternativesHyperping, Rootly
Better Stack, incident.io
Four alternativesGrafana IRM, PagerDuty, Rootly, Squadcast
Hyperping, Spike.sh
Two alternativesBetter Stack, Squadcast
no first choiceagainst: Better Stack, Grafana IRM, Opsgenie, PagerDuty, Zendesk, incident.io
DeepSeek V4 Flashincident.io
Two alternativesHyperping, PagerDuty
HyperpingChanged
Two alternativesBetter Stack, Opsgenie
against: PagerDuty
incident.io
Six alternativesBetter Stack, FireHydrant, Grafana IRM, Rootly, Runframe, Squadcast
against: Opsgenie, PagerDuty
PagerDuty, incident.io
Two alternativesBetter Stack, Squadcast
incident.io
Two alternativesRootly, Squadcast
against: PagerDuty
against: BigPanda, PagerDuty, ServiceNow ITSM, xMatters
Llama 4 Maverickno first choiceno first choiceHeldRunframeRunframe
Six alternativesBetter Stack, Hyperping, NinjaOne, Rootly, Spike.sh, incident.io
no first choiceagainst: Better Stack, Grafana IRM, Opsgenie, PagerDuty
Qwen 3.7 FlashHyperping
Three alternativesBetter Stack, Rootly, incident.io
against: FireHydrant, PagerDuty
Better StackChanged
Two alternativesInstatus, Spike.sh
against: Opsgenie, PagerDuty, incident.io
Opsgenie, incident.io
Two alternativesBetter Stack, FireHydrant
against: BigPanda, PagerDuty, ServiceNow ITSM
Runframe, Squadcast
Two alternativesHyperping, Rootly
against: PagerDuty
no first choice
Two alternativesFireHydrant, PagerDuty
against: ServiceNow ITSM, Splunk
against: ServiceNow ITSM
Kimi K2Better Stack
Three alternativesSpike.sh, Squadcast, incident.io
against: Opsgenie, PagerDuty
SquadcastChanged
Three alternativesHyperping, PagerDuty, xMatters
against: Opsgenie
incident.io
Three alternativesBetter Stack, FireHydrant, Squadcast
against: Jira Service Management, PagerDuty
OneUptime
Five alternativesBetter Stack, Grafana IRM, Hyperping, Squadcast, incident.io
incident.io
Five alternativesBetter Stack, Grafana IRM, Jira Service Management, Rootly, Squadcast
against: Opsgenie, PagerDuty
against: BMC Remedy, Broadcom Layer7 API Gateway, IBM, PagerDuty, ServiceNow ITSM, Splunk
GLM 4.7 FlashXincident.io
Two alternativesBetter Stack, Rootly
Better StackChanged
Two alternativesSpike.sh, incident.io
against: PagerDuty
incident.io
Eight alternativesBetter Stack, FireHydrant, Hyperping, Jira Service Management, PagerDuty, Rootly, Spike.sh, Squadcast
Spiceworks
Two alternativesJira Service Management, PagerDuty
no first choiceagainst: BigPanda, Opsgenie, PagerDuty, ServiceNow ITSM, Splunk On-Call
MiniMax M2.5Squadcast, incident.io
One alternativemonday service
against: PagerDuty
Better Stack, TaskCallChanged
Two alternativesHyperping, incident.io
PagerTree, incident.io
Five alternativesBetter Stack, Jira Service Management, PagerDuty, Rootly, Spike.sh
PagerDuty, incident.io
Three alternativesBetter Stack, FireHydrant, Squadcast
no first choiceagainst: Benchmark Gensuite, Cority, Intelex, ServiceNow ITSM, incident.io, xMatters
Bold is the first choiceAlternatives are counted; the count opens them.What the answer argued against

The record

One row per call: the version string exactly as returned, whether the model searched, sources cited, and latency.
Seventy-two rows: every prompt, every model, every answer.
PromptModelVersion stringTime (UTC)SearchedSourcesLatency
Direct recommendationClaude Haiku 4.5claude-haiku-4-5-202510012026-09-17 11:06yes98 s
Direct recommendationGPT-5.4 minigpt-5.4-mini-2026-03-172026-09-17 10:23yes35 s
Direct recommendationGemini 3.5 Flashgemini-3.5-flash2026-09-17 11:50yes1223 s
Direct recommendationPerplexity Sonarsonar2026-09-17 10:58yes205 s
Direct recommendationGrok 4.20spacexai/grok-4.1-fast-non-reasoning via vertex (asked for grok-4.20-non-reasoning; the API answered as this version)2026-09-17 11:37yes3816 s
Direct recommendationMistral Smallmistral/mistral-small via mistral2026-09-17 11:15yes108 s
Direct recommendationDeepSeek V4 Flashdeepseek/deepseek-v4-flash via fireworks2026-09-17 12:28yes913 s
Direct recommendationLlama 4 Maverickmeta/llama-4-maverick via bedrock2026-09-17 11:23yes53 s
Direct recommendationQwen 3.7 Flashalibaba/qwen3.7-flash via alibaba2026-09-17 11:56yes919 s
Direct recommendationKimi K2moonshotai/kimi-k2 via novita2026-09-17 13:18yes1933 s
Direct recommendationGLM 4.7 FlashXzai/glm-4.7-flashx via zai2026-09-17 10:26yes2545 s
Direct recommendationMiniMax M2.5minimax/minimax-m2.5 via minimax2026-09-17 11:18yes59 s
ParaphraseClaude Haiku 4.5claude-haiku-4-5-202510012026-09-17 10:48yes199 s
ParaphraseGPT-5.4 minigpt-5.4-mini-2026-03-172026-09-17 13:12yes25 s
ParaphraseGemini 3.5 Flashgemini-3.5-flash2026-09-17 13:20yes1124 s
ParaphrasePerplexity Sonarsonar2026-09-17 13:05yes205 s
ParaphraseGrok 4.20spacexai/grok-4.1-fast-non-reasoning via vertex (asked for grok-4.20-non-reasoning; the API answered as this version)2026-09-17 10:26yes3915 s
ParaphraseMistral Smallmistral/mistral-small via mistral2026-09-17 14:13yes55 s
ParaphraseDeepSeek V4 Flashdeepseek/deepseek-v4-flash via fireworks2026-09-17 13:05yes1720 s
ParaphraseLlama 4 Maverickmeta/llama-4-maverick via bedrock2026-09-17 13:53yes53 s
ParaphraseQwen 3.7 Flashalibaba/qwen3.7-flash via alibaba2026-09-17 14:12yes1556 s
ParaphraseKimi K2moonshotai/kimi-k2 via novita2026-09-17 12:18yes1961 s
ParaphraseGLM 4.7 FlashXzai/glm-4.7-flashx via zai2026-09-17 10:48yes1519 s
ParaphraseMiniMax M2.5minimax/minimax-m2.5 via minimax2026-09-17 12:58yes837 s
ComparativeClaude Haiku 4.5claude-haiku-4-5-202510012026-09-17 12:55yes99 s
ComparativeGPT-5.4 minigpt-5.4-mini-2026-03-172026-09-17 11:57yes612 s
ComparativeGemini 3.5 Flashgemini-3.5-flash2026-09-17 12:14yes1721 s
ComparativePerplexity Sonarsonar2026-09-17 13:00yes2010 s
ComparativeGrok 4.20spacexai/grok-4.1-fast-non-reasoning via vertex (asked for grok-4.20-non-reasoning; the API answered as this version)2026-09-17 11:34yes5318 s
ComparativeMistral Smallmistral/mistral-small via mistral2026-09-17 11:57yes56 s
ComparativeDeepSeek V4 Flashdeepseek/deepseek-v4-flash via fireworks2026-09-17 10:21yes1416 s
ComparativeLlama 4 Maverickmeta/llama-4-maverick via bedrock2026-09-17 13:01yes53 s
ComparativeQwen 3.7 Flashalibaba/qwen3.7-flash via alibaba2026-09-17 11:24no037 s
ComparativeKimi K2moonshotai/kimi-k2 via novita2026-09-17 09:43yes1457 s
ComparativeGLM 4.7 FlashXzai/glm-4.7-flashx via zai2026-09-17 12:10yes1360 s
ComparativeMiniMax M2.5minimax/minimax-m2.5 via minimax2026-09-17 09:44yes517 s
Budget constrainedClaude Haiku 4.5claude-haiku-4-5-202510012026-09-17 12:19yes98 s
Budget constrainedGPT-5.4 minigpt-5.4-mini-2026-03-172026-09-17 10:50no06 s
Budget constrainedGemini 3.5 Flashgemini-3.5-flash2026-09-17 10:16yes1520 s
Budget constrainedPerplexity Sonarsonar2026-09-17 09:23yes206 s
Budget constrainedGrok 4.20spacexai/grok-4.1-fast-non-reasoning via vertex (asked for grok-4.20-non-reasoning; the API answered as this version)2026-09-17 10:47yes3321 s
Budget constrainedMistral Smallmistral/mistral-small via mistral2026-09-17 11:30yes54 s
Budget constrainedDeepSeek V4 Flashdeepseek/deepseek-v4-flash via fireworks2026-09-17 13:17yes1010 s
Budget constrainedLlama 4 Maverickmeta/llama-4-maverick via bedrock2026-09-17 12:59yes53 s
Budget constrainedQwen 3.7 Flashalibaba/qwen3.7-flash via alibaba2026-09-17 11:27yes527 s
Budget constrainedKimi K2moonshotai/kimi-k2 via novita2026-09-17 11:18yes1035 s
Budget constrainedGLM 4.7 FlashXzai/glm-4.7-flashx via zai2026-09-17 10:19yes1455 s
Budget constrainedMiniMax M2.5minimax/minimax-m2.5 via minimax2026-09-17 09:28yes921 s
Scale constrainedClaude Haiku 4.5claude-haiku-4-5-202510012026-09-17 10:55no05 s
Scale constrainedGPT-5.4 minigpt-5.4-mini-2026-03-172026-09-17 13:01no05 s
Scale constrainedGemini 3.5 Flashgemini-3.5-flash2026-09-17 13:47yes1827 s
Scale constrainedPerplexity Sonarsonar2026-09-17 10:01yes2010 s
Scale constrainedGrok 4.20spacexai/grok-4.1-fast-non-reasoning via vertex (asked for grok-4.20-non-reasoning; the API answered as this version)2026-09-17 12:37yes149 s
Scale constrainedMistral Smallmistral/mistral-small via mistral2026-09-17 10:07no08 s
Scale constrainedDeepSeek V4 Flashdeepseek/deepseek-v4-flash via fireworks2026-09-17 11:47yes1922 s
Scale constrainedLlama 4 Maverickmeta/llama-4-maverick via bedrock2026-09-17 10:13yes54 s
Scale constrainedQwen 3.7 Flashalibaba/qwen3.7-flash via alibaba2026-09-17 11:55no035 s
Scale constrainedKimi K2moonshotai/kimi-k2 via novita2026-09-17 09:43yes928 s
Scale constrainedGLM 4.7 FlashXzai/glm-4.7-flashx via zai2026-09-17 09:34no012 s
Scale constrainedMiniMax M2.5minimax/minimax-m2.5 via minimax2026-09-17 11:50no011 s
Negative framingClaude Haiku 4.5claude-haiku-4-5-202510012026-09-17 12:48yes1610 s
Negative framingGPT-5.4 minigpt-5.4-mini-2026-03-172026-09-17 12:52yes35 s
Negative framingGemini 3.5 Flashgemini-3.5-flash2026-09-17 10:29yes621 s
Negative framingPerplexity Sonarsonar2026-09-17 11:36yes206 s
Negative framingGrok 4.20spacexai/grok-4.1-fast-non-reasoning via vertex (asked for grok-4.20-non-reasoning; the API answered as this version)2026-09-17 13:28yes4122 s
Negative framingMistral Smallmistral/mistral-small via mistral2026-09-17 10:09yes55 s
Negative framingDeepSeek V4 Flashdeepseek/deepseek-v4-flash via fireworks2026-09-17 13:55yes2823 s
Negative framingLlama 4 Maverickmeta/llama-4-maverick via bedrock2026-09-17 11:35yes53 s
Negative framingQwen 3.7 Flashalibaba/qwen3.7-flash via alibaba2026-09-17 10:18yes9121 s
Negative framingKimi K2moonshotai/kimi-k2 via novita2026-09-17 14:01yes2541 s
Negative framingGLM 4.7 FlashXzai/glm-4.7-flashx via zai2026-09-17 10:42yes3593 s
Negative framingMiniMax M2.5minimax/minimax-m2.5 via minimax2026-09-17 12:55yes2137 s

Normalization in this category

Every judgment call made between the raw labels and the numbers above, listed so it is visible and reversible.

ShowHide
Category-scoped readings
BMC Helix read as BMC Helix ITSM
Ivanti read as Ivanti Neurons for ITSM
ServiceNow read as ServiceNow ITSM
ServiceNow IT Service Management read as ServiceNow ITSM
Unresolved, counted raw
Benchmark Gensuite
Cority
HeyOnCall
OutSystems
Vantaj
Discontinued, still offered
No shut-down product was recommended here.
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