GoAlert vs MonoDuty

GoAlert is free, open-source software for on-call scheduling, alert routing, and escalation. Schedules, rotations, and escalation policies decide who receives an alert and move it onward when it is not acknowledged. Alerts can enter through the generic API, email, Grafana, Prometheus, Site24x7, Sensu, or manual interface entry. Notifications include Twilio SMS and voice, Mailgun email, and Slack. GoAlert is self-hosted, distributed as a single binary or Docker images, and requires a running PostgreSQL instance. Administrators can enable GitHub OAuth or OpenID Connect. The setup guide recommends a data-encryption key for sensitive stored information such as API keys. The interface is responsive and mobile friendly. Two-way SMS is available for US-based numbers; Indian government regulations prevent it for Indian numbers. Rotation scheduling, escalation policies, handoff tools, multichannel notifications, and calendar sync are listed capabilities. The project is licensed under Apache License 2.0.

MonoDuty is a workspace-based incident management service for teams responsible for production systems. It brings together team-owned services, on-call schedules, escalation policies, Heartbeats, uptime Monitors, and email, SMS, and voice notifications. All published plans include on-call scheduling. Systems that can send HTTP requests can submit incidents through its Universal HTTP Webhook using MonoDuty's documented JSON payload; Pro and Business plans can send lifecycle updates to Slack, Discord, and Microsoft Teams. Monitors check websites and APIs from Helsinki, tracking response times, validating responses, checking HTTPS certificates, and alerting on recovery. A REST API uses scoped, short-lived customer tokens, with documented access for incidents, services, and Monitors. Security controls include TLS 1.2/1.3, workspace roles, rate limits, CSRF protection, and optional time-based one-time-password MFA. MonoDuty says it does not currently publish security certifications. Its production service runs on a single European virtual server, without promised geographic failover, load-balanced application replicas, or provider redundancy. The free plan includes seven-day incident retention; Pro and Business list 30- and 90-day retention. A 14-day trial is listed.