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Upstat vs xMatters

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Executive Snapshot

xMatters is enterprise critical event management. Upstat is focused incident operations.

xMatters (now part of Everbridge) provides enterprise critical event management with IT alerting, multi-channel notifications, and workflow automation for 6,500+ global customers. However, it requires external monitoring tools and charges $39-59/user/month for capabilities that exceed most DevOps teams' needs. Upstat provides complete incident operations—monitoring, incident workflows, runbooks, status pages—for $29–$49 per user without enterprise complexity.

Right-size your incident operations

xMatters targets enterprise IT operations across government, healthcare, and financial services with complex critical event management requirements. Teams needing focused IT incident operations (not enterprise-wide physical and digital threat management) can consolidate with Upstat at lower cost without sacrificing operational capabilities.

Capability comparison

Platform Focus

Upstat

Incident operations platform with native monitoring, response workflows, runbooks, and status pages for DevOps teams.

xMatters

Enterprise critical event management and IT alerting platform (now part of Everbridge); relies on external monitoring sources.

Monitoring

Upstat

Built-in uptime, API, and heartbeat monitoring with automatic incident creation.

xMatters

No native monitoring—aggregates alerts from 200+ external integrations; focuses on notification routing and workflow automation.

Incident Response

Upstat

Full incident workspace with Kanban/list views, timelines, role assignments, and embedded runbooks.

xMatters

Alert-centric workflows with multi-channel notifications and ChatOps rooms; deeper coordination typically in external ITSM tools.

Workflow Automation

Upstat

No-code workflow builder and interactive runbooks guide incident response procedures.

xMatters

Code-free drag-and-drop workflow builder with self-healing automation and 200+ pre-built integrations.

Service Catalog

Upstat

Operational dashboards showing ownership, dependencies, impact, and real-time health status for every service.

xMatters

Service catalog for visualization and classification; designed for service management rather than real-time incident context.

Status Communication

Upstat

Customer-facing status pages automatically updated from incidents and monitor health.

xMatters

No native status pages—requires external tools or integration with separate status communication platforms.

Target Market

Upstat

DevOps, SRE, and engineering teams managing production systems at small-to-midsize organizations.

xMatters

Enterprise IT operations across 6,500+ global customers in government, healthcare, financial services, and energy sectors.

Pricing

Upstat

$29 / $49 per user with full platform including monitoring and status pages.

xMatters

$16-59/user/month depending on tier; does not include monitoring. xMatters pricing starts at $39/user (Base plan) comparable to PagerDuty.

Why teams evaluate xMatters alternatives

Enterprise complexity without enterprise needs

xMatters provides enterprise critical event management capabilities—physical security, travel risk management, public warning systems—that most DevOps teams do not require. Teams needing focused IT incident operations pay for enterprise features they never use. Upstat provides purpose-built incident operations for DevOps teams without unnecessary enterprise overhead.

No native monitoring capabilities

xMatters requires external monitoring sources (200+ integrations) to feed it alerts—teams maintain separate subscriptions for monitoring tools (Datadog, Prometheus) plus xMatters ($39-59/user) plus status pages ($X/month). Upstat consolidates all three into one platform with native monitoring, incident workflows, and status pages included.

Limited incident coordination tools

xMatters focuses on alert routing and workflow automation—teams coordinate incident response in external ITSM tools or Slack. No native incident workspace, Kanban views, role assignments, or embedded runbooks. Upstat provides full incident coordination with timelines, automated workflows, and real-time collaboration in one platform.

No status pages included

xMatters provides multi-channel alerting and ChatOps integration but no customer-facing status pages. Teams maintain separate status communication tools (Statuspage.io, custom solutions) adding cost and configuration overhead. Upstat includes status pages that update automatically from incidents and monitor health.

Learn more about Why teams evaluate xMatters alternatives

Right-size from enterprise CEM to focused incident operations

Teams using xMatters for IT alerting (not broader critical event management) can consolidate with Upstat and reduce total stack cost.

  • 1
    Identify which monitoring tools currently feed alerts into xMatters.
  • 2
    Configure Upstat native monitoring to replace external detection sources.
  • 3
    Migrate on-call schedules, escalation policies, and workflow configurations to Upstat.
  • 4
    Set up Upstat incident workflows, runbooks, and status pages to replace downstream tools.
  • 5
    Run both systems in parallel to verify alert routing and workflows, then retire xMatters and upstream monitoring subscriptions.

Consolidation checklist

Identify monitoring sources feeding xMatters, configure Upstat native monitoring, migrate on-call and workflow configurations, and retire separate subscriptions.

Learn more about Right-size from enterprise CEM to focused incident operations

Build the executive business case

A 25-person team using xMatters ($39-59/user), monitoring tools ($200-2,000/month), and status pages ($100-400/month) typically spends $18k-35k annually across three separate subscriptions. Consolidating with Upstat reduces this to $8.7k (Teams) or $14.7k (Business) annually—eliminating $9k-20k in redundant tooling costs while right-sizing from enterprise complexity to focused incident operations.

Combine this cost comparison with the downtime impact scenario below to demonstrate to finance and procurement the value of consolidating your incident operations stack with one unified platform.

Cost of downtime scenario

Downtime gets expensive fast—Upstat helps teams respond faster.

Incident response costs extend beyond subscription fees. Every minute a critical service is down impacts revenue, customer trust, and team morale. The scenario below models a conservative mid-market SaaS company with a 25-person on-call rotation.

Baseline: 3 customer-facing incidents per quarter (12 annually), averaging 40 minutes of impact. We use $10,000 per hour as a mid-market revenue-at-risk benchmark.

Multi-tool stack: Monitoring via Datadog/Prometheus, alert routing via xMatters, manual coordination via ChatOps/ITSM tools. Context switching between monitoring dashboards, alert workflows, and coordination platforms. Typical annual cost: ~$25k in subscriptions, plus ~$80k in lost revenue from eight hours of downtime.

Upstat outcome: Unified workflows eliminate context switching and tool fragmentation, reducing coordination time by 40%—a conservative take on the 50%+ MTTR improvements we target with integrated monitoring, incident workflows, and runbooks. Downtime drops to 4.8 hours, protecting ~$32k in revenue while eliminating enterprise tool complexity.

Tool costs

$25,000 → $14,000

Three separate tools (monitoring + xMatters + status pages) vs. Upstat unified platform.

Tool savings: $11,000/year

Downtime impact

$80,000 → $48,000

40% faster MTTR from unified incident workflows eliminating context switching and tool fragmentation.

Revenue protected: $32,000/year

Total annual savings

$43,000

Tool consolidation ($11,000) + faster incident resolution ($32,000).

* Estimates based on a 25-seat incident rotation, $10k/hour revenue at risk, and a 40% MTTR improvement aligned with internal performance benchmarks. Adjust the numbers to match your business before sharing with finance.

Frequently asked questions

Teams using xMatters for critical event management evaluate whether Upstat provides comparable enterprise capabilities at a lower total cost.

Is Upstat suitable for enterprise-scale operations like xMatters?

xMatters (now part of Everbridge) targets large enterprises with 6,500+ global customers across government, healthcare, and financial services sectors, charging $39-59/user/month. Upstat provides complete incident operations for small-to-midsize teams at a simpler price point. Teams needing enterprise critical event management across physical and digital threats should consider xMatters; teams needing focused IT incident operations should evaluate Upstat.

How does Upstat pricing compare to xMatters?

xMatters charges $16-59/user/month depending on tier (Base plan $39/user, Advanced $59/user) and does not include monitoring or status pages. Upstat offers $29 (Teams) or $49 (Business) per user with native monitoring, incident workflows, runbooks, and status pages included—eliminating the need for external monitoring subscriptions and reducing total stack cost.

Does Upstat support multi-channel alerting like xMatters?

Yes. Upstat provides multi-channel alerting (mobile app, SMS, phone, email) integrated directly with native monitoring and incident workflows. xMatters offers similar multi-channel capabilities but requires external monitoring tools to trigger alerts. Upstat unifies monitoring, alerting, incident coordination, and status communication in one platform without tool sprawl.

Can Upstat replace both xMatters and our monitoring tools?

Yes. xMatters requires external monitoring sources (200+ integrations) plus separate status page tools, resulting in multiple subscriptions. Upstat provides native monitoring, alert management, incident coordination, runbooks, and status pages in one platform—eliminating tool sprawl and reducing total cost. Teams using xMatters for IT alerting (not broader critical event management) can consolidate with Upstat and retire upstream monitoring subscriptions.

Ready to right-size your incident operations stack?

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