PagerDuty is a vendor of hosted software for on-call scheduling, alerting and incident response. Its Terms of Service define the products as Hosted Services (cloud-based), On Prem Services (software installed on the customer’s own infrastructure) and Professional Services, all described through the Documentation and an Order Form or online ordering portal.[1] This article summarizes how those products are licensed and where the deeper articles in this series pick up the detail.
Offerings
PagerDuty’s public pricing page presents two groups of plans.[3]
- Incident Management plans, priced per user: a Free plan for a single team (up to five users, one on-call schedule and one escalation policy) and a Professional plan. The page shows Professional at USD 21 per user per month on annual billing, or USD 25 billed monthly.[3]
- PD Reliability Platform tiers, priced as an annual platform fee that includes a set number of seats, events and AI actions: Starter at USD 2,800 per year, Essential at USD 12,000 per year, Plus at USD 48,000 per year, and Ultimate at custom pricing.[3]
PagerDuty’s Product-Specific Terms describe the PD Reliability Platform as formerly PagerDuty Operations Cloud.[2] The documentation also refers to Business and Enterprise for Incident Management plans, to a legacy Digital Operations plan, and to Starter and Team legacy plans.[6] The current pricing page lists Business and Enterprise only for Customer Service Operations, at USD 41 per user per month on yearly billing (USD 49 monthly) for Business and on request for Enterprise.[4] A customer on an older plan should therefore treat its Order Form as the controlling description of its entitlement, since the pricing page does not describe every plan still in use.
Add-ons
The Professional plan lists add-ons purchased separately: AIOps, PagerDuty Advance, Runbook Automation, Status Pages and Live Call Routing.[3] A Stakeholder licence is available as an add-on on the Customer Service Ops plans.[4] Stakeholder users are available by default on some plans and can be bought as add-on users on Business and Professional plans.[6] The Platform tiers include AIOps capability under the name Signal Intelligence, and AI capability under the name AI Actions, while the standalone AIOps and PagerDuty Advance SKUs remain available for sale and renewal.[3] Status Pages are offered as internal, external and private pages.[11]
Metrics
The vocabulary is mixed because several billing models coexist.
| Model | Unit | Where it applies |
|---|---|---|
| Per user | Full User; Stakeholder User | Incident Management and Customer Service Ops plans |
| Platform fee with limits | Seat, Event, AI Action, Live Call Routing line, Credit | PD Reliability Platform |
| Consumption | Event (AIOps) | Standalone AIOps add-on |
| Per user per month | Runbook Automation User | Runbook Automation and Runbook Automation Self Hosted |
For per-user plans, the monthly user charge is based on the highest number of full users the account has had at any point in the current or any prior month, and removing users does not by itself lower the bill.[5] Stakeholder users are billed at a different rate and are typically purchased in tiered bundles.[5] The user and stakeholder licensing article covers these rules. On the Platform, seats are measured by the highest number used in the previous month and include stakeholder licences.[3] An Event is a data object submitted to the events API or an email integration that has been accepted and processed, excluding events found invalid, rate-limited or rejected.[2] The Platform article works through limits and credits.
Runbook Automation and Runbook Automation Self Hosted (previously Process Automation On-Prem) are purchased based on the number of Users per month, and individuals who access the service through the customer’s own application login or API are counted as Users.[2] The AIOps standalone product is billed on events consumed per year.[2]
Counting, floors and overage
The Terms of Service require each User to be identified by a unique email address and username, forbid sharing User subscriptions among more than one User without consent, but allow reassignment to replacement personnel.[1] Users added during the term are coterminous and prorated to the end of the Subscription Term unless the Order Form says otherwise.[1] The Terms state that use may be subject to limits including number and types of Users, alert volumes and Instances, and that failure to comply may cause malfunction, accrue additional usage fees, or lead to suspension.[1]
For the Platform, Product-Specific Terms make the customer responsible for ensuring that usage does not exceed Platform Limits at any time. Usage first draws against included annual limits and then against purchased Credits. Without enough Credits, PagerDuty may limit or suspend access until Credits are purchased or limits reset at the start of the next annual period.[2] For AIOps, events above the maximum of the purchased tier are billed per event at overage rates, in arrears monthly.[2]
Renewal and commercial terms
Service fees are invoiced annually in advance, with payment due within 30 days unless the Order Form states otherwise, and each Order Form is non-cancellable and non-refundable except as the agreement or the Order Form provides.[1] Hosted Services orders renew automatically for the same term at prices communicated at least 60 days before term end; renewals run for at least twelve months, except month-to-month self-serve customers, and customers must give 30 days’ notice before the renewal date to downgrade or not renew.[1] On Prem Services orders do not renew automatically, and purchases through resellers do not renew automatically either.[1] Upgrades are self-service in the web application, but downgrading requires contacting the Sales team.[5]
Subscription Terms entered into before 2023-12-21 stay governed by legacy agreements until the end of that term, so a customer with multiple Order Forms may hold different versions of the Terms.[1] The Product-Specific Terms can be updated by PagerDuty in its sole discretion.[1] The terms, SLA and support article describes the contract documents.
Cloud and self-hosted deployment
PagerDuty’s core offerings are Hosted Services. The exception is Runbook Automation Self Hosted, an On Prem Service defined as one or more Instances, each a running copy of the software installed on a physical or virtual server in customer-controlled infrastructure.[1] The Terms say that use may be limited by number of Users and Instances, and that On Prem Services may include code licensed under third-party terms including open source.[1] The Service Level Agreement applies to hosted services and sets Runbook Automation availability at 99.5 percent.[8]
Programs
Support is delivered in packages. Tech Touch and Standard Success are included automatically at no extra charge based on annual recurring revenue, while Silver Services, Gold Services, Premium Support and a la carte add-ons are available for purchase.[9] A trial lasts 14 days unless the order says otherwise, and a Free Plan can be withdrawn by PagerDuty without notice.[1]
Out of scope
This article does not cover PagerDuty’s open source projects or community offerings, its data processing and security documents (listed on the legal index),[10] the Jeli post-incident review legacy products, or customer-specific negotiated terms.