Why are teams switching from Opsgenie? Top 10 pain points from 125+ customer interviews

February 5, 2026 — 19 min read

Last Updated: February 2026

TL;DR: the top 10 Opsgenie pain points at a glance

#Pain PointCustomer Impact
1Forced migration due to product deprecationApril 5, 2027 sunset date - no choice but to migrate
2Zero product innovation since Atlassian acquisition"I don't think they've really done much to it" since 2019
3JSM migration creates 2x cost increaseSame features, double the price
4Manual process burden that does not scale"Everything that happens after acknowledgment is manual"
5Poor UI/UX creating navigation confusion"Most engineers have no idea what they're doing"
6Unreliable API and integration issues"The Opsgenie API is terrible" - frequent overloads
7Alerting-only tool with no incident lifecycle"Really basic" - just "who's on call"
8Poor support and service reliabilityAlerts disabled "for long periods of time" by Opsgenie
9Schedule management complexity and rigidity"Hell on earth to manage overrides"
10Alert noise and poor alert management"A lot of false positives and just spamming alerts"

Table of contents

  1. What is happening to Opsgenie?
  2. Why has Opsgenie stopped innovating?
  3. How much more does JSM cost than Opsgenie?
  4. Why is Opsgenie so manual?
  5. What do engineers say about Opsgenie's interface?
  6. Is Opsgenie's API reliable?
  7. Why is Opsgenie considered just an alerting tool?
  8. Has Opsgenie support quality declined?
  9. What scheduling limitations frustrate Opsgenie users?
  10. Why do teams experience alert fatigue with Opsgenie?
  11. Should I switch from Opsgenie?

What is Opsgenie, and why are teams leaving?

Opsgenie was a leading on-call management and alerting tool that gained popularity for its Atlassian ecosystem integration after being acquired in 2018. For teams already using Jira and Confluence, Opsgenie seemed like a natural fit.

But after analyzing 125+ customer interviews conducted between 2024-2025, we discovered something surprising: teams aren't just leaving Opsgenie - they're being forced to leave. Atlassian announced Opsgenie's deprecation, with a hard sunset date of April 5, 2027. New sales already ended on June 4, 2025.

This creates unprecedented urgency. Every Opsgenie customer must migrate, and the patterns from our interviews reveal why many are choosing alternatives over Atlassian's suggested path to JSM.


1. Forced migration due to product deprecation

Opsgenie will be completely discontinued on April 5, 2027. This isn't speculation - Atlassian has officially announced the sunset, and new Opsgenie sales ended in June 2025.

The April 2027 deadline creates migration urgency

Every Opsgenie customer must migrate. The question isn't whether to move, but where to move and how quickly.

What customers are saying about Opsgenie deprecation

"We're looking for a replacement for Opsgenie that's going end of life in 2027. So this is the main motivator for us." - Engineering leader at a global payment processing company (500 users)
"Opsgenie has been bought by Atlassian in 2019 and now they are sunsetting Opsgenie in 2027." - SRE team lead at an e-commerce platform
"Opsgenie is going away like you're not going to have a choice." - Platform engineering manager at a fintech comparison company
"The Opsgenie is going to be deprecated next year." - Engineering leader at a financial infrastructure company
"We discovered that Opsgenie is leaving the market... in 2027." - Engineering director at a salon software company
"We're running into the whole Opsgenie going away in 2027." - SRE lead at a real estate technology company
"Opsgenie sent us an email to let us know that they're completely closing down in 2026." - Engineering manager at a cloud solutions company
"We are currently using Opsgenie but are looking to switch because Opsgenie is retiring next year." - Platform engineer at a managed cloud services company

Companies actively migrating from Opsgenie (Q4 2025)

Company TypeMigration Status
A global private equity firmPlatform team + 10 tech teams actively migrating
An enterprise marketing analytics platformTeams migrating one by one with shadow mode
A marketing automation companyMigration scoping in progress
A major gaming companyLarge-scale migration requirements gathering
An aerospace technology companyActive evaluation with Opsgenie admins involved
An enterprise document platformMigration guide created
An HR technology platformOn-call POC and migration planning
A global fintech companyTransitioning all on-call teams and incident responders

2. Zero product innovation since Atlassian acquisition

Opsgenie has been effectively frozen since Atlassian acquired it in 2018. Customers consistently report that the product hasn't evolved to meet modern incident management needs.

"I don't think they've really done much to it"

Since the acquisition, Atlassian has focused resources on JSM rather than improving Opsgenie, leaving customers with a stagnant tool.

What customers say about Opsgenie innovation

"Since it's been bought by Atlassian, I don't know how many years ago now, I don't think they've really done much to it to be quite honest." - Engineering leader at a payments company
"The product set of stuff in the market is a lot different now, way more features than what Opsgenie offers." - Platform engineering manager at a payments company
"Continued improvements with incident.io well beyond what we saw with Opsgenie just kind of being the same thing for the last eight years that I've used it." - SRE lead at an open source foundation
"I don't think the product has changed in the last four years since the day we used it." - Engineering manager at a SaaS company (2024)
"Opsgenie is obsolete and it's stepping into this role of infrastructure." - Platform engineer at a print-on-demand company

Innovation gaps customers identify

AreaOpsgenie Status
AI capabilitiesNone available
Workflow automationMinimal, mostly manual processes
Modern Slack integrationBasic integration vs. native solutions
Post-incident analyticsLimited insights and classification
Proactive detectionReactive only, no anomaly prediction

3. JSM migration creates 2x cost increase with same features

Atlassian's suggested migration path to JSM doubles costs while providing the same core features. This cost shock is driving customers to evaluate alternatives.

"Twice the cost for basically the same features"

JSM's pricing structure forces Opsgenie customers into significantly higher costs without corresponding feature improvements.

What customers say about JSM pricing

"Opsgenie being deprecated... JSM ends up being twice the cost for basically the same features." - Engineering leader at a health wearables company (2024)
"A bunch of customers that did move because it was so much cheaper and now they have to move again." - SRE at an AI software development company
"I don't find a lot of their product valuable in the way of that they charge per user." - Engineering manager at a digital marketing agency
"We're paying $3,000 per month for Opsgenie." - Engineering lead at a financial services company

Opsgenie vs. JSM: cost comparison

FactorOpsgenieJSM Migration
Base pricing~$20-23/user/month~$40-46/user/month
Feature setBasic alertingSame basic alerting
InnovationFrozenAtlassian roadmap
Integration rebuildNot requiredMany need rebuilding
Effective cost increaseBaseline2x increase

What gets lost in JSM migration

  1. Slack incident management integrations - Deprecated features not carrying over
  2. Team-level activity streams - Legacy feature converting to different structure
  3. MSP functionality - Not available in JSM
  4. Many integrations - Require manual reconfiguration and rebuilding

4. Manual process burden that does not scale

Opsgenie lacks automation for the actual incident management process, leaving teams to handle coordination, communication, and resolution manually.

"Everything after acknowledgment is manual"

Opsgenie excels at paging but falls short on incident lifecycle automation, forcing teams to build workarounds or use additional tools.

What customers say about manual processes

"As soon as a person acknowledges that alert, everything that happens after that is more or less manual." - Engineering leader at a global private equity firm
"A whole lot of manual processes." - SRE at an enterprise observability company
"As soon as you have to do something manual, it all starts falling apart especially if you're doing it at scale." - Engineering manager at an animal health company
"We create Slack channels manually... communicate with customers... that's all done through a spreadsheet." - Platform engineer at a mobile payments company
"It's very manual today, and it's not very uniformly followed across the company." - Engineering leader at a developer tools company
"The only way in Opsgenie to do it is to actually go into Opsgenie and create an alert for that particular person." - SRE lead at a mortgage technology company
"For Opsgenie, there is no workflow at the moment purely, it is directly alert is coming and we are like, using it." - Engineering manager at a quick commerce company
"Onboarding teams involves a lot of manual operations." - Platform engineer at a fintech platform

What teams end up automating manually

  1. Incident channel creation - Building homegrown Slack bots
  2. Stakeholder notification - Manual communication processes
  3. Video call coordination - Separate tool integration required
  4. Post-incident documentation - "Post-mortems stored in Notion are barely tagged" (a financial infrastructure company)
  5. Action item tracking - "Action items created in Jira are not properly backtracked" (a financial infrastructure company)

5. Poor UI/UX creating navigation confusion

Engineers consistently describe Opsgenie's interface as confusing and difficult to navigate. The user experience creates operational friction and reduces adoption.

"Most engineers have no idea what they're doing"

The UI complexity means teams struggle with basic tasks, creating knowledge gaps and operational risk.

What engineers say about Opsgenie's interface

"Most engineers have no idea what they're doing when they're navigating the Opsgenie UI." - SRE at a global design platform
"I couldn't believe how many people did not know how to even use Opsgenie to page another team." - Engineering leader at an insurtech company
"Sometimes it's difficult to navigate within their UI." - Platform engineer at a B2B payments company
"Opsgenie's overriding feature is very finicky and bad outdated." - SRE lead at a treasury management company
"It seems like the cart's before the horse here with Opsgenie." - Engineering manager at a global retail company (on acknowledgement UX)
"Not really interested to go with Jira Service Management." - Platform engineer at a trading platform (finding JSM unsuitable)
"Three or four button clicks to get to the alerting." - SRE at a financial services company (comparing JSM to Opsgenie)

UX problems teams encounter

ProblemImpact
Complex navigationEngineers can't perform basic tasks
Poor mobile experienceAlert acknowledgment issues on mobile
Unintuitive workflowsMultiple clicks for simple operations
Training burdenNew hire onboarding takes excessive time
Override management"Finicky and bad outdated" interface

6. Unreliable API and integration issues

Opsgenie's API has critical reliability issues that affect incident response capabilities and integration stability.

"The Opsgenie API is terrible"

Infrastructure reliability directly affects incident response effectiveness, and customers report consistent problems.

What customers say about API reliability

"Opsgenie API is a bit weird as it often tends to overload." - Platform engineer at a fintech platform
"The Opsgenie API is terrible." - Engineering manager at an events technology company
"Our current tools, shit for it. So it will like it will just crap out and then not work for five minutes." - SRE at a cybersecurity company
"It did not have the ability to create a Zoom call on the fly." - Engineering leader at a payroll software company
"Setting up Zendesk integration was problematic due to deduplication issues." - Platform engineer at a document management company
"Encountered problems when attempting to add more seats in Opsgenie." - Engineering manager at a cloud networking company
"The right hand doesn't know what one of the fingers is doing." - SRE lead at a fraud prevention company (on poor customer service coordination)

Integration challenges teams face

ChallengeCustomer Quote
API overload"Often tends to overload" (fintech platform)
Datadog integration"Okay, but it's not exceptional" (EV charging company)
Cross-team coordination"Manual command required" for escalation (EV charging company)
Seat management"We couldn't add another subscription" (trading technology company)
Configuration complexityTeam opted for "manual configurations instead" (events technology company)

7. Alerting-only tool (no full incident lifecycle management)

Opsgenie functions primarily as an alerting and paging tool, not a comprehensive incident management platform. Teams need additional tools for the full incident lifecycle.

"Really basic" - just "who's on call"

The scope of Opsgenie is limited to notification - teams must piece together other tools for communication, coordination, and resolution.

What customers say about Opsgenie's limitations

"Described Opsgenie as providing really basic functionality - just who's on call." - SRE at a financial services company
"Only use Opsgenie for critical alerts with pretty basic dashboard." - Platform engineer at a B2B payments company
"What we don't get and we expect from an incident management solution is better analytics." - Engineering manager at a quick commerce company
"Opsgenie only works for incidents that are only pure software systems issues - lacks cross-team integration." - Engineering leader at an EV charging company
"Want to automatically add the primary on call for their Opsgenie schedule." - SRE lead at a fitness software company (noting missing automation)
"Opsgenie was not providing an integrated view between incident management, problems, and change management." - Engineering manager at a healthcare technology company

What teams need beyond Opsgenie

  1. Slack-native incident management - Real-time coordination in communication tools
  2. Status page integration - Customer communication during outages
  3. Post-mortem system - Documentation and learning tracking
  4. Analytics platform - MTTR, MTTA, and incident insights
  5. Workflow automation - Runbook execution and response coordination
  6. Cross-team collaboration - Not just siloed alerting

8. Poor support and service reliability issues

Opsgenie has experienced significant reliability issues that directly impact incident response capabilities - the core function of the product.

"Opsgenie has been real bad for us"

Enterprise customers report both product reliability failures and declining support quality.

What customers say about Opsgenie reliability

"Opsgenie has been real bad for us... they've slowed down our incident response and our alerting capability has been disabled for long periods of time from actions entirely on their end." - SRE team lead at a global design platform
"We have had issues in the past with things not like cases where alerts do not get routed anywhere." - Engineering leader at a mortgage technology company
"Sometimes miss alerts due to the configuration issues with Opsgenie." - Platform engineer at a fintech platform
"Mobile app notification issues where alerts weren't bypassing the silent mode of the phone." - SRE at a music streaming company
"In Opsgenie, you can't mute the phone. The Opsgenie like gets alerted even if your phone is on mute." - Engineering manager at a trading technology company
"Some issues with Opsgenie being a little unreliable right now for escalations." - SRE lead at a conversational AI company
"Doesn't have the AI driven features to accelerate and improve your resolution times." - Engineering leader at a conversational AI company

Reliability issues teams encounter

IssueImpact
Alerting capability disabledHours of missed incidents
Alerts not routingCritical pages never delivered
Mobile notification failuresOn-call engineers not woken
Configuration fragilityAlerts missed due to setup issues
Escalation unreliabilityIssues with reliable escalation paths

9. Schedule management complexity and rigidity

Opsgenie's scheduling system struggles with real-world on-call requirements, creating operational friction for teams managing complex rotations.

"Hell on earth to manage overrides"

What should be straightforward scheduling tasks require workarounds and manual intervention.

What customers say about Opsgenie scheduling

"It's hell on earth sometimes to just manage the override for the month especially when there are vacations." - SRE at a music streaming company
"Interface for managing schedules can be painful due to bugs and usability issues." - Engineering leader at a music streaming company
"Scheduling adjustments require manual intervention through web application." - Platform engineer at a developer tools company
"On-call schedule is a mess and half the time aren't replying." - Engineering manager at a healthcare technology company
"Not all members of our team were using Opsgenie all that effectively." - SRE lead at a research computing center
"Simply Opsgenie's schedule management interface does not play nicely with international teams." - Engineering leader at an online gaming company (on time zone management)
"Primary issue with who sets up on-call rotations and associated permissions in Opsgenie, which have been problematic." - Platform engineer at an IoT platform company

Scheduling limitations teams encounter

  1. Override management - "Hell on earth" with vacations
  2. International team support - Poor time zone handling
  3. Permission complexity - Issues with who can modify schedules
  4. Manual intervention required - No bulk editing capabilities
  5. Coordination across teams - "A burden" and challenging (a financial infrastructure company)

10. Alert noise and poor alert management

Opsgenie's alert management creates significant noise problems, with customers reporting alert fatigue and false positive overload.

"A lot of false positives and just spamming alerts"

Poor alert filtering and management leads to engineer burnout and response fatigue.

What customers say about alert noise

"A lot of bad practices around... a lot of false positives and just spamming alerts." - SRE lead at a cryptocurrency trading company
"Has very noisy monitors and misconfigurations in Datadog integration." - Engineering manager at an EV charging company
"Express frustration about noise generated from alerts." - Platform engineer at a digital marketing agency
"Team manually triages alerts - sifting through many alerts each week." - Engineering leader at a mobile payments company
"One Slack channel that everything goes to results in a bunch of noise." - SRE at a healthcare technology company
"Developers receive a lot of redundant alerts leading to alert noise and cry wolf syndrome." - Engineering manager at a trading technology company
"Many alerts are noise and not actionable." - Platform engineer at a print-on-demand company

Why alert fatigue matters

ImpactConsequence
Engineer burnoutConstant false alarms exhaust on-call teams
Alert desensitizationReal incidents get ignored amid noise
Increased MTTRTime wasted triaging non-critical alerts
Team moraleNobody wants pages for non-issues
"Cry wolf" syndromeTeams stop trusting the alerting system

Should I switch from Opsgenie? A decision framework

Based on 125+ customer interviews, here's when switching from Opsgenie makes sense:

You must switch if

  1. You're using Opsgenie today - The April 5, 2027 sunset is mandatory
  2. You don't want to pay 2x for JSM - Alternative solutions offer better value
  3. You need modern AI capabilities - Opsgenie has no AI features
  4. Your team describes Opsgenie as "just alerting" - You need full incident lifecycle management
  5. Engineers struggle with the Opsgenie UI - Adoption issues affect incident response

You might choose JSM if

  1. You're deeply integrated into the Atlassian ecosystem (Jira, Confluence)
  2. Budget isn't a primary concern (prepared for 2x cost increase)
  3. You don't need Slack-native incident management
  4. Your use case is genuinely basic alerting only

Migration considerations

Most modern incident management platforms offer:

  • Opsgenie-compatible alert sources for easy migration
  • 2-4 hour setup vs. weeks of JSM reconfiguration
  • Free trial periods to validate before committing
  • Shadow mode deployment to reduce migration risk
  • Structured migration guides based on real Opsgenie migrations

Migration timeline recommendation

Migration StartRisk Level
Q1 2026Low - 15+ months buffer
Q2 2026Medium - 12 months buffer
Q3 2026High - 6-9 months buffer
Q4 2026Critical - Last-minute rush

FAQs

Picture of Tom Wentworth
Tom Wentworth
Chief Marketing Officer
View more

See related articles

View all

So good, you’ll break things on purpose

Ready for modern incident management? Book a call with one of our experts today.

Signup image

We’d love to talk to you about

  • All-in-one incident management
  • Our unmatched speed of deployment
  • Why we’re loved by users and easily adopted
  • How we work for the whole organization