MonoDuty

MonoDuty is a workspace-based incident response and monitoring service for teams that need on-call rotations, escalation paths, and operational checks in one place. It suits small operations starting free and growing into per-user plans; organizations requiring certified security or redundant infrastructure should be cautious.

Overview

MonoDuty connects incidents with team-owned services, schedules, monitors, and Heartbeats. A universal HTTP Webhook accepts MonoDuty’s documented JSON payload from any system able to send HTTP requests, giving teams a straightforward inbound route without requiring a catalog of native connectors.

Every published plan includes on-call scheduling, including rotation and handoff workflows. Monitoring checks websites and APIs from Helsinki, measuring response time, validating responses, checking HTTPS certificates, and issuing recovery alerts. That combination is useful for a compact operations stack, although checks from one location cannot represent worldwide user experience.

Key features

Incident routing and team coordination

Schedules, escalation policies, and handoffs support explicit ownership when production fails. Free sends email alerts; Pro and Business add SMS and voice allowances. Those paid tiers also publish incident lifecycle updates to Slack, Discord, and Microsoft Teams, making them better suited to teams that coordinate response in chat.

API and access controls

The REST API uses scoped, short-lived customer tokens and an explicit v1 allowlist covering incidents, services, and Monitors. Workspace roles, TLS 1.2/1.3, one-way credential hashing where applicable, CSRF protection, rate limits, and optional time-based one-time-password MFA provide sensible controls for a small service. MonoDuty does not publish ISO, SOC, payment-card, health-data, or comparable certifications, so regulated buyers may need a different vendor.

Infrastructure and support

Production runs on a single European virtual server. There is no promise of geographic failover, load-balanced application replicas, or provider redundancy, which is a material concern when the incident tool itself must remain available during an outage. Support comes through a help center, tickets, a contact form, and email; contact messages are reviewed on business days.

Pricing

Free

Free costs nothing, billed forever. It allows 1 user, 3 services, 5 Monitors, 5 Heartbeats, 1 team, 1 on-call schedule, 5 webhooks, and 50 incidents per month, with email alerts and 7-day incident retention. This is a credible starter for one small rotation, but the single-user and low quotas quickly constrain a larger team.

Pro

Pro costs €9 per user per month, or €90/user/year billed once a year, and includes a 14-day trial. Up to 25 users, 3 Account Admins, 50 services, 50 Monitors, 100 Heartbeats, 10 teams, 10 schedules, 50 webhooks, and 5,000 incidents per month suit a growing operations group. Email, SMS (500 per month), and voice calls (200 per month), plus chat integrations, make it the practical upgrade from Free. Retention rises to 30 days.

Business

Business costs €19 per user per month, or €190/user/year billed once a year, with a 14-day trial. Unlimited users and webhooks, 10 Account Admins, 500 services, 250 Monitors, 500 Heartbeats, 50 teams, 50 schedules, and unlimited incidents target larger organizations. Its allowances reach 2,000 SMS and 500 voice calls per month, with 90-day retention. Choose it for scale rather than merely for extra notification volume.

Platforms

MonoDuty provides web, iOS, Android, and API access. A mobile app supports responders away from a desk, while the API accommodates automated workflows.

Who it's for

MonoDuty fits teams responsible for production incidents that want scheduling, escalation, monitoring, and webhook-based intake in one service. Free is best for a single small team proving the workflow; Pro fits multi-team operations needing chat delivery and richer notification channels; Business fits organizations with high service and incident volumes. Buyers with formal certification requirements or a need for geographically redundant service should look elsewhere.

Pros and cons

• Pro: On-call scheduling is included even on Free, so a basic rotation does not require an upgrade.
• Pro: Helsinki monitors combine response-time tracking, validation, certificate checks, and recovery alerts.
• Pro: Scoped short-lived API tokens and optional MFA provide useful access safeguards.
• Con: Free is limited to one user, three services, and 50 incidents monthly, making expansion an immediate paid decision.
• Con: Free has email only; SMS, voice, and chat lifecycle delivery require paid plans and have monthly allowances.
• Con: A single European virtual server and absent published certifications weaken the case for high-resilience or regulated workloads.

Alternatives

For a broader directory of scheduling tools, see On-Call Scheduling Software and On-Call Management Software.

• incident.io is a freemium option with native Slack or Microsoft Teams incident response, single-team on-call, and a status page on its Basic plan; choose it when chat-native response is the priority.
• OpsKnight offers a free, self-hosted AGPL-3.0-only Community plan with one status page per install; choose it when self-hosting matters.
• PagerDuty has a free five-user plan with one schedule and one escalation policy; choose it for that narrower starter scope.
• PagerTree provides a free plan for up to five users and two teams with three months’ retention; choose it when those caps fit.
• TaskCall offers a $9 monthly Starter plan with unlimited global SMS and voice notifications; choose it when those channels are central.
• IncidentRelay is free, open-source, and self-hosted; choose it for that deployment model.
• Opsgenie has a free five-user tier and paid tiers with stated incident and retention quotas; choose it when those terms suit your team.
• LinkedIn Databus is Apache 2.0 open source; choose it when an open-source data-bus project, rather than incident response, is what you need.

Verdict

Choose MonoDuty if you want affordable, explicit on-call and escalation workflows bundled with webhook intake and website/API monitoring, especially when Free or Pro covers your team size. Look elsewhere when certified compliance, geographic failover, or a redundant incident-service infrastructure is a hard requirement.