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Everbridge IT Alerting vs xMatters comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary
 

Categories and Ranking

Everbridge IT Alerting
Ranking in IT Alerting and Incident Management
8th
Average Rating
8.8
Number of Reviews
23
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
xMatters
Ranking in IT Alerting and Incident Management
10th
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.6
Number of Reviews
31
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of December 2024, in the IT Alerting and Incident Management category, the mindshare of Everbridge IT Alerting is 14.5%, up from 9.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of xMatters is 8.2%, down from 9.8% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
IT Alerting and Incident Management
 

Featured Reviews

CQ
We have seen substantial savings with its usage as it drives down our MTTR
The automated escalations are the most valuable feature. We program in our escalation chains for each individual IT group. Being able to go out and request a resource from that team, and if they don't respond, that automated escalation makes it very hands off. So, our major incident managers and our network operations center can focus more on the other work that they need to do rather than chasing down those resources. They can rest assured that somebody will be answering. Another valuable feature is the ease of integration into our ServiceNow platform, where we are doing all of our work between two teams. They are able to make requests from within the tickets that we can manage rather than having to use another portal or logging into Everbridge directly. Reliability is their biggest value.
Dean-Robinson - PeerSpot reviewer
A versatile solution with excellent logging capabilities that reduced our time to resolve
The reporting functionality could be improved, though I know that's something xMatters, inc. is working on. For example, sometimes I need to go into the platform and find users who aren't in groups that have been created recently, haven't logged in and so on. Previously, this was hard work, but they added loads of filters, making it more accessible. Still, the ability to create custom-designated reports that I could run and schedule would be fantastic for me. It would be good if they keep improving the reporting functionality, as it can be somewhat restrictive sometimes. There are a couple of improvements that xMatters could make to the incident hub, where we can manage high-priority incidents. More sharing capability between collaborating incident managers would be good to see, including the ability to whiteboard. That would allow them to share and sketch out ideas while looking for a solution. Those two features are essential, and that's why we want to use the solution in conjunction with Everbridge because xMatters doesn't have them.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Our performance showed us that, for major incidents, we spent over 40 minutes just making manual call-outs. That is why we implement the tool in the first place and that time has been cut down to two or three minutes."
"It's a lot easier to create and manage schedules, especially in comparison to the on-call scheduling creation in ServiceNow. That has always been something of a bear to operate. We've found it's a lot simpler in Everbridge."
"A robust solution with multiple modules that can be leveraged."
"The most valuable feature is automated escalation, as it eliminates a manual process which is prone to errors."
"It just runs. I do not think we have had a single outage; nothing. There has not been a single issue with it in the time that we have had it running. It just works."
"The system has a lot of great features and they keep adding to it."
"People are able to join a bridge with one press of a button. It gives us the ability to contact the correct people via rules, based on conditions."
"I personally love VCC because I just think there needs to be more data to support it so we can be more proactive and easily assess the impact. So, I appreciate the visual aspect, but it has to have the data to support it. It has proved very useful, particularly because we have a GSOC that's not technically 24/7. We do have an 800 number that people call 24/7. If something happens, they can easily send Everbridge a notification to activate the team off hours. It is useful in that respect too. We use it in conjunction with teams, but off-hours and for additional people outside of the core team, we use Everbridge, which is useful."
"For our major incident management, it has expanded what we can do in terms of the format of the communication. People can subscribe, and they can receive delivery on multiple platforms, whether it's a voice message, email, or mobile app message. It enables us to deliver the right communication to the right people in the format they want."
"xMatters is helpful for getting the right on-call resources. That is a key factor. It is also very user-friendly, and just a little documentation helps you to understand things such as how on-calls are configured, how groups are configured, and how users update their on-call devices."
"It helped change behavior across the organization to improve accountability."
"The on-call schedule that they have for groups is amazing in terms of how it works and how it triggers. You don't need to do anything. You just upload the users, and you have the calendar of the schedules. It is amazing how it works and how easy it is to work with this feature."
"Having our users manage their own notification devices within xMatters is huge, since it takes the burden off our datacenter."
"That automation is the critical aspect of xMatters. Without those workflows, then we would have a system that maintains an on-call schedule in Excel. So xMatters provides the notification workflow and ensures you're notifying the right person at the right time."
"We saw the value by being able to import everyone's schedule into one common central repository and have one tool for all the operational teams, or any team for that matter. It gave us the technology to find out who is on call. The incident management of xMatters' integration was another key aspect, where we could say, "You can configure this when a high ticket fires.""
"The UI: It is easily navigable."
 

Cons

"The ability to not have to worry about the IT alerting and calendar resources. I would like it to be simpler in the sense of a different cost structure."
"You have to create schedules in Everbridge. It would be better if it could tie into an existing solution, such as Microsoft Exchange or Google Calendar, so that you don't have to create it in both places. That's one thing it lacks right now. You can't just say, "Hey, look at this Microsoft calendar. That's what we want to use." You have to create it in Everbridge."
"I've worked closely with Everbridge teams in my previous positions too, and the one thing I would like to see is the distance. You have to measure it, and it's not really accurate. If we could have a general distance within the alert itself to tell us where the closest asset is, it would be useful. That's one thing I'd like to see."
"I swapped two people's weeks, and at least from what I saw, I had to do each day individually. It would be nice if I could swap two people's weeks without having to do it each day."
"The solution's non-targeted communication with external parties could be enhanced."
"The initial setup was very complex. We did not have a very good experience with our initial deployment. Most of this was due to customizations in our ServiceNow instance."
"The company would like to have super detailed analytics, as we integrate this with our security software."
"An ability to get to the database that houses our information would be great. Currently, we are at the mercy of Everbridge and, if they do not have the function built, we cannot gather the information that we would like."
"I would like some minor UI changes. I believe I filed some enhancement requests with xMatters. For example, in one area, they have some way for you to look at a particular functionality with different sets of reporting UI. However, that same reporting UI is not yet available with some other functionalities. Essentially, in their existing functionality, the xMatters application does an excellent job, but in other functionalities within their UI, they don't have that. On the back-end, they are related. Instead of one click where you can see everything, right now you need to go to different areas to access similar information. It would be nice to have everything in one place. While they have an excellent element A, I am hoping that they could just simply make that feature also available in their element B."
"The only thing that has caught us out a little bit is that on certain screens, you don't have the same admin options. There should be more consistency with the admin options because not all screens provide you with the same options. As an administrator, it feels like they should always be there. For example, on some screens, there is an Export button that provides fantastic, detail-rich exports, which obviously are very handy because then you can, as an administrator, do your administration, and extract what has been done to share with or prove to others. However, the Export button is not always present, and on the screens where it isn't, you miss it. You're like, "Oh, where's the Export button?", which can be quite problematic. There should be more consistency in the UI in terms of available options for anything that is referenced data or configurable. If you can put it in, there should be a way to run an export function to essentially pull it out. That's the only improvement that I can really think of."
"They recently released an incident module that allows users, or at least teams, to track major incidents and other things, and you can send out communication via that one webpage. You can engage on-call teams and communicate to stakeholders as well, but one thing that is missing there is a group chat. If there is a group chat on the same webpage that all of the support teams could use, it would be a one-stop shop that all of the major incident managers would use as their product to manage a major incident. Without that, at the moment, they are mainly referring to teams and then adding data into xMatters as and when they can."
"What I would like it to do is tell me anytime there is a P1 incident, except when the ticket is assigned to this team or when this word is in the summary, but there is no exclusion option. I have been complaining about this for a couple years. At one point, we created a ticket for this with the developers to review. I assume that once enough people complain about it, they will bump it up in priority to work on. However, if not enough people think it is an issue, then they prioritize their work and work on other features and functionality. However, this is something that has been challenging for us because we have needed to find ways to work around it or just deal with it. So, I would love to see an exclusion option."
"As an agent, as someone who is on call, I can mark an absence time and I can optionally put somebody in my place, but once you've done that, you can't edit it. You have to delete it and create a new absence, which is annoying, but it's not a massive issue. It's a minor annoyance. That's probably about the only thing I can come up with because I absolutely love the product. It's met our needs so well."
"We have to create an Excel sheet for onboarding users and then upload it. But if an employee resigns, we don't have any checkpoints to validate whether the user is still active or not. We have to do that manually every week: Check who has left the organization, and do a cross-check, whether this person had any licenses or signed in to xMatters."
"Beyond the typical grouping, xMatters has what is referred to as dynamic teams. Dynamic teams are criteria for setting up and targeting a group of people that meet specific criteria. The bad thing about this setup is that you cannot alter those criteria through the typical xMatters import/export process. The attributes that create the criteria for dynamic teams can only be altered via the Web UI. So, if you want to create a new dynamic team in a mature xMatters environment (one that is already populated with hundreds of users), and you want to add, say, 100 users to that dynamic team, you have to do it manually."
"Support may take longer than desired to resolve some issues."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The end result is that we have driven down our MTTR by an average of about 45 minutes across all major outages. That is very substantial considering the cost of every minute of outage can be thousands of dollars lost."
"Their pricing is a good value and very reasonable. They are very upfront about their pricing. There is nothing confusing about it."
"Their call structure is based on how many people are IT alert people and who is on the calendar, and the cost will be driven by those numbers versus if you are using it for the non-IT alert. As you look at the competition and other vendors, make sure you truly understand your cost structure with them."
"As far as I'm aware, there are no costs beyond the standard licensing fees."
"The pricing was under $25 a month per user. We had about 1,000 defined users."
"We thought the base product was pretty reasonable. It can pricey once you start adding stuff on."
"The annual cost is $125,000 USD. That is for everything. It includes the 11,000 mass notifications. Technically, we have 500 licenses for IT Alerting."
"I do not know about the licensing costs, but I know they're in groups, and there are permission caps. For example, you can have five admin accounts, and anyone can receive a notification. There's a mobile component too, which I find particularly useful, but it has to be a part of the contract."
"I am not really privy to how much my client is paying for this service. They just tell me the number of licenses that they have. Every time that I say, "I need extra licenses to make sure that all Level 1 and 2s have their own xMatters account," they keep telling me that it is too expensive. If the only purpose is to call people, it doesn't justify the cost of paying more than the number of licenses that they already have."
"Then, in pricing, you are limited on your number of SMS messages that you can send a month and the licensing cost annually."
"Cost is probably my biggest concern. I know the solution was recently acquired by Everbridge, and Everbridge was one of the competitors that was included in our RFP five years ago. Everbridge's costs were astronomical compared to where every other solution was, not just xMatters."
"It feels like good value in the sense that the service is excellent. The people above me who look at such things have renewed it a couple of times, and I think they would have thought whether it was good value, whether it was wildly overpriced, or whether there were better and cheaper alternatives. So, from that perspective, the pricing is fair and proper."
"I don't make the decisions on the cost aspect. We haven't had any complaints. I think it has a reasonable price."
"xMatters shortens the time to resolution, so the amount saved in potential lost revenue and productivity has justified the cost for our organization.​"
"The pricing and licensing are okay. I wish that the user licenses were cheaper but the stakeholder licenses are at a reasonable cost."
"​Pricing is pretty straightforward and listed on their website. I recommend starting small and expanding later.​"
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
17%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Government
10%
Healthcare Company
9%
Computer Software Company
30%
Financial Services Firm
21%
Retailer
6%
Manufacturing Company
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Everbridge IT Alerting?
It's mainly for mass notification and pooling of contacts. Pooling of customers is valuable.
What needs improvement with Everbridge IT Alerting?
The solution's non-targeted communication with external parties could be enhanced.
Ask a question
Earn 20 points
 

Also Known As

No data available
xMatters IT Management
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Choice Hotels, Alexion, Navy Federal Credit Union, EastWest Bank, IBM, Core Logic, Paypal, Charter Communications, Lowes, Express Scripts, Finastra, Worldpay
Over 2.7 million users trust xMatters daily at successful startups and global giants including athenahealth, BMC Software, Box, Credit Suisse, Danske Bank, Experian, NVIDIA, ViaSat and Vodafone. xMatters is headquartered in San Ramon, California and has offices worldwide.  Visit our website to see how business like yours found solutions with xMatters.
Find out what your peers are saying about Everbridge IT Alerting vs. xMatters and other solutions. Updated: December 2024.
824,053 professionals have used our research since 2012.