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IBM Cloud Pak for Automation vs PagerDuty Operations Cloud comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 17, 2024

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

IBM Cloud Pak for Automation
Ranking in Process Automation
30th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
5.8
Number of Reviews
2
Ranking in other categories
Business Orchestration and Automation Technologies (22nd)
PagerDuty Operations Cloud
Ranking in Process Automation
6th
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
46
Ranking in other categories
IT Alerting and Incident Management (1st), AIOps (7th), Critical Event Management (CEM) (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2026, in the Process Automation category, the mindshare of IBM Cloud Pak for Automation is 1.0%, up from 0.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of PagerDuty Operations Cloud is 0.4%, up from 0.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Process Automation Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
PagerDuty Operations Cloud0.4%
IBM Cloud Pak for Automation1.0%
Other98.6%
Process Automation
 

Featured Reviews

SYEDMUJTABA - PeerSpot reviewer
Vice President - Digital Automation Services at Techvista Systems
Effectively handles parallel instances effectively
I find it quite straightforward, perhaps around 8.5 out of 10 in terms of ease. When we upgraded from the old version of IBM BPM to the new one within IBM Cloud Pak for Automation, we didn't encounter any major issues. There were some minor ones, but they were easy to overcome.The migration process was part of our deployment strategy. We had a plan to migrate two processes per week from on-premises to the cloud. The migration involved taking the instances and migrating them to the new environment. There is an inbuilt feature in IBM Cloud Pak for Automation that facilitates the migration process, although I personally haven't conducted it myself; it's managed by my team. Overall, the setup process was relatively smooth.
NS
Senior SRE at IBM
Automated incident workflows have transformed on-call operations and improved response times
Since I host our internal services, I want more customization relating to our specific use case. The needed improvements include the configuration process, as new team members face a steep learning curve to understand the platform. With many new members, they need training to set up runbook workflows, event orchestration, and manage complex on-call schedules across 23 services, making it a challenge for new users. Additionally, I feel the web interface requires improvements. I would rate PagerDuty Operations Cloud as eight out of ten because the cons include a complex configuration process and high costs for each add-on that I try to obtain, making subscriptions costly, along with limited customization in certain incident workflows. The primary reasons for rating it an eight include the complex configuration which makes it challenging for new users, as well as their difficulty in setting up advanced runbook workflows and managing complex on-call setups. The web user interface also requires improvement. Although I receive alerts via the mobile app, which is beneficial for handling schedule maintenance, the same features should be added to the web interface. Customization issues persist, such as the inability to clone entire schedules as part of the workflows, and I want to keep incidents open for a specified duration, neither of which I can currently customize. Thus, I raised a ticket with PagerDuty Operations Cloud to address these concerns. Furthermore, the cost is high, making it one of the more expensive incident management solutions.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"What this product allows us to do is to move from on-prem instances where we are running independent instances of FileNet, Datacap, and ODM. It allows us to leverage container-based resiliency and availability modeling so that we have some visibility across the CP4BA ecosystem. We're now migrating all of our data to be in the Cloud Object Storage, and we can now use some of the features of Azure in terms of how we store and retrieve content for our members and our providers."
"I believe two significant features of IBM Cloud Pak for Automation are the focus on SLA management and the capability to handle parallel instances effectively. Parallel instances, for instance, are valuable when dealing with a large number of users, enabling tasks to be performed concurrently for efficient system operation. The SLA aspect is crucial for tracking and ensuring timely completion of tasks. Additionally, the cloud compatibility of IBM BAW allows for seamless migration from on-premises to the cloud. This version also includes a business rule management system for storing and managing business rules effectively."
"After implementing PagerDuty Operations Cloud's runbook automation, I have reduced the response time from over 20 minutes to less than two minutes, saving approximately 80 to 90 percent of the time and making mean time to resolve significantly faster."
"The most valuable feature is the phone app that allows us to send notifications without the additional fees when sending by SMS or phone calls."
"PagerDuty Operations Cloud positively impacts my organization by helping us win customer trust; when problems occur, the speed of our reaction and involvement with customers is crucial, and PagerDuty Operations Cloud facilitates quick responses to potential issues."
"It integrates with multiple applications and is highly customizable, with policies, escalation procedures, and an event routing tool that ensures contacting the right person."
"PagerDuty Operations Cloud is a great tool that saves time and is worth starting to use."
"I'd rate the solution ten out of ten."
"A cool feature is that it helps us to understand the flow of the alert. If the alert was coming to the current on-call and he didn't catch the call or didn't notice it for any reason, it starts being escalated automatically, according to the escalation schedule, or to other teammates. You can see the flow very easily on your phone or via the website, if you want to do a post-mortem."
"The alerts are immediate in this solution, which allows us to respond to errors quickly."
 

Cons

"I believe there is room for improvement in the user interface, particularly in the Process Portal that customers use to view and manage their tasks. The UI of the Process Portal needs enhancement. Additionally, in the next release, I would like to see improved compatibility with Angular, allowing for direct integration with front-end systems. It would be beneficial to have built-in GUI features based on Angular within the system, rather than developing separate applications externally. This, in turn, would provide a more seamless and enhanced front-end experience."
"One of the challenges we're having is finding vendors who have experience in developing on the cloud. We can find developers on the old platform, but it is leading-edge technology. So, we are having some challenges, and IBM is assisting us to find vendor partners. To be able to leverage all the capabilities of the new platform, we have to upgrade our existing ecosystem of FileNet applications. Upgrading to the new platform while trying to modernize is always challenging because it is like you have a moving target."
"More analytics can be brought into PagerDuty Operations Cloud; while I know there are some, they still seem basic to me, and having options for user-customized charts would be really helpful, especially in this GenAI world where prompts can yield valuable data."
"PagerDuty can improve the integration with Terraform."
"It’s quite hard to reach the support team."
"I would like the UI to be more intuitive. I would like to be able to group or color-code the discoveries. When you create a system, you have a listing of all the different configurations. You can list them by teams, but some additional color coding would be helpful. I would break it down by incident controls. In other words, it should be broken down it into response teams and engineering divisions."
"The biggest area for improvement with PagerDuty is noise suppression. There have been a handful of incidents through our use of PagerDuty over the years where one incident may lead to 30 to 50 pages because you're monitoring all these different things, and each thing is an individual page. There should be the ability to set up paging tiers and group correlations between some of the different pages. That is something that would be really valuable. We should be able to say this one page may have a group or a tree of effective other pages that may tier off of it. So, if you see those pages independently, go ahead and alarm, but if you see this plus that, don't do that."
"I think the view on the website regarding how we see the chart and graph of who is on-call at what time could be improved."
"There is room for improvement with the time schedule. The way the schedule currently works is you assign all the team members in one schedule and it automatically spreads them around throughout the schedule... It would be better to be able to edit the schedule and place my team members where I want, or at least to have that option in addition to the automatic process."
"PagerDuty could improve the event orchestration by enhancing features, such as easier condition setup inside the orchestration."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Its cost is almost the same or comparable to what we pay with FileNet, but I'm not sure what we pay a year. A good part of CP4BA is the CPU-based licensing model. When we're dealing with 50,000 dentists, for example, if we were to use Salesforce, we would be hit with the licensing of 50,000 dentists, whereas when we build out in CP4BA, it is just based on our CPU usage, not on individual licenses."
"IBM Cloud Pak for Automation is relatively expensive, especially considering it is designed for long-living processes, not for normal automation needs. On a scale of one to ten, I would rate the pricing at around 9. There are no additional costs beyond the standard licensing fees, but IBM has multiple pricing models that make it expensive in its own way. Different plans are available, but overall, the experience suggests it is a costly solution."
"Licensing costs are around $700 a month, and the only additional costs, are phone costs in some instances."
"The pricing may be about $1,000 per user."
"The cost is quite high. But if you want to get a full-featured application and you have a big team..."
"If we wanted phone calls or additional SMSs, we would have to pitch up for those. They give us so many per month per user, then we have to pay extra if it goes over that."
"They're very good in pricing compared to the competitors in the area. I would rate them a five out of five in terms of pricing."
"If you add more people, then you have to pay more, which is always a thing with the SaaS solutions."
"The price is very high."
"PagerDuty has monthly and yearly licenses available, the costs of which can get quite high if you have a large number of users."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
No data available
Performing Arts
16%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Educational Organization
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business15
Midsize Enterprise14
Large Enterprise26
 

Questions from the Community

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What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for PagerDuty?
I purchased PagerDuty Operations Cloud through AWS Marketplace while at Intel, and my experience has been positive regarding pricing, setup costs, and licensing. I had around seven users part of it...
What needs improvement with PagerDuty?
Since I host our internal services, I want more customization relating to our specific use case. The needed improvements include the configuration process, as new team members face a steep learning...
What is your primary use case for PagerDuty?
I have been working in my current field for over seven years as a DevOps and site reliability engineer, and my primary experience involves managing the reliability of infrastructure platforms hoste...
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Information Not Available
40% of the Fortune 100 TrustPagerDuty. Customers include: Slack, Intuit, Zendesk, Panasonic, Pinterest, Airbnb, eHarmony, McKesson, Comcast
Find out what your peers are saying about IBM Cloud Pak for Automation vs. PagerDuty Operations Cloud and other solutions. Updated: December 2025.
881,114 professionals have used our research since 2012.