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Senior Analyst at a retailer with 10,001+ employees
Real User
The rotation and replacement options save our managers a lot of time
Pros and Cons
  • "The rotation and replacement options save our managers a lot of time."
  • "The rules option has been helpful, as we can adjust the conditions in the template."
  • "Explanations are limited to 500 characters in description fields."

What is our primary use case?

The primary use case of how we started using the product was to add contacts to Everbridge as if it was an Active Directory. We have logins for manager and member portals. The manager portal gives total access and member portal is given to everyone with partial access.

We also use it to send out communications, such as emails, during major incidents from our command center. We have expanded its use as an emergency notification tool.

How has it helped my organization?

The rotation and replacement options save our managers a lot of time.

What is most valuable?

When scheduling, it gives us the option to amend times or replace someone (with an explanation). 

The rules option has been helpful, as we can adjust the conditions in the template.

What needs improvement?

Explanations are limited to 500 characters in description fields.

While the reporting is good, we are having a problem with one particular report which is creating a large manual process for us.

Buyer's Guide
Everbridge IT Alerting
February 2025
Learn what your peers think about Everbridge IT Alerting. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: February 2025.
837,501 professionals have used our research since 2012.

For how long have I used the solution?

One to three years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

We don't have stability issues.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

We have been able to expand the tool and are planning to take it to the store level.

In our organization, we have 390 management users currently. We are looking to add 250 more. We have requested to have 650 management user licenses in the future.

We currently have 9000 member users. We are looking to add another 3500 member users, so we have requested 12,400 member licenses.

How are customer service and support?

We would like the tech support to have better response times. Since we are looking at going global, they have told us Everbridge has told us that they are working on the issue.

Overall, their responses have been good.

I personally would rate the technical support as a 10 out of 10.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

Previously, we were using xMatters, then we moved on to Everbridge because we thought there were some limitations xMatters when we used their templates and there were a lot of delays with sending out notifications. We also did not feel that xMatters product was user-friendly.

How was the initial setup?

Initially, we thought it wasn't complicated. However, we did have some issues with stability and had to reach out to the support team. Later on, it wasn't difficult.

The deployment took about three to four months.

We have four team members on our Everbridge team.

What was our ROI?

It saves us a lot of time.

What other advice do I have?

It is the best tool that I have ever used.

Disclosure: PeerSpot contacted the reviewer to collect the review and to validate authenticity. The reviewer was referred by the vendor, but the review is not subject to editing or approval by the vendor.
PeerSpot user
it_user860868 - PeerSpot reviewer
Director Of Operation Risk Management at a financial services firm with 1,001-5,000 employees
Real User
We have been able to use it to track and verify that people are on the bridge
Pros and Cons
  • "We have been able to use it to track and verify that people are on the bridge."
  • "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."

What is our primary use case?

For IT alerting, we are using it for incident management for severity 1 and 2 type call-outs. We are using the calendar for on-call rotations, and we have configured call trees within the calendar to page out based on system and business impacts. 

How has it helped my organization?

We have been able to use it to track and verify that people are on the bridge. It has also made it much easier when you have one touch to join the bridge, and we have been tracking our resolution time, which is now shorter. This is partly because of Everbridge and it being easier to get people on the phone. Also, we are able to escalate and track resources throughout the incident process.

They have improved our ability to be flexible in the way that we are setting up our calendar and structure. We can use it for individual call-outs versus an incident versus being able to run a test, etc. 

What is most valuable?

You can build consistent templates. They give you a couple of different phone numbers, so if you have more than one incident (which we have had), you can page out to different people and have people run different call bridges from that point. 

The other thing that I personally like is the flexibility that we have to do updates four times a day. We do not just do it once a day or once a week. We do it four times a day. If somebody changes their phone number in the middle of the day, we will pick it up and be able to make sure if they are on call that night that we can call the right number. This configuration has been good for us.

What needs improvement?

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. 

I would like to see: When employees move locations, how does it correct in the system (Everbridge) versus PeopleSoft (which we also run)? I need to check on this functionality.

For how long have I used the solution?

Less than one year.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

We have never had any issues with stability. 

From a functionality standpoint, we have been able to go in there, run things, and do things. We have had great success. We have written a white paper about the fact that we had 49 people trapped in Puerto Rico with the hurricanes. We have used it for more than 500 different notifications, tests, etc. I think the way it is configured and setup has been fairly successful.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

We are growing with mergers. We have added approximately 500 people over the year. We are merging with some other divisions and had no problems with scalability. We have consistently grown under PeopleSoft.

How are customer service and technical support?

My biggest compliment is we have great account management people that help us out. We have been able to turn the tool over to IT people that have never used it, and they have been able to run it with minimal help or support. 

We still work with our implementation manager, who has been extremely effective, very consistent, and spot on. I have opened up about 10 tickets with approximately seven of them being very positive with quick turnaround, the support being knowledgeable, and knowing the answer. In maybe just one instance, a person did not listen very well, then I ended up calling our implementation manager. 

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

We did have a previous solution, but they were bought out. I used this solution for a couple of years.

How was the initial setup?

Since I have already done the setup with our competitor, I pretty much understood the project.

What about the implementation team?

We hired Everbridge to be on site for three days. This was very helpful, because of our resources were strained. We got Everbridge in a room and the project got done, versus trying to string it along. Therefore, I thought the implementation was actually good. 

The implementation was simple. They have Everbridge University online. They have videos and a help desk which will be able to help you if you choose. They have multiple ways to get you to the place where you are looking to be.   

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

They are one of the top three most expensive products. I also understand if you are going to use them for IT alerting, it is worth it. They are competitively priced, but the IT alerting is the differentiator. The way that they market it and push it out. That is their premier function. 

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.

When we did our contract, we did a three year contract with fixed pricing. We locked in the pricing for three years. As we have grown, we locked in pricing for additional units of employees. 

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

We went through about an 18 month RFP process. We issued it to 10 different organizations. We narrowed it down to the top three. We did demos and brought in our senior IT people to participate in the demos from that point.

There are only one or two companies that can even come close to the detail requirements of IT alerting, like Send Word Now and Text Matters, their systems do not come close. They are cheap knock offs. We did demos with them, priced them out, and while they were cheaper, they did not have the scalability and quality that we were looking for, and that is why we eliminated them. 

We also evaluated xMatters.

What other advice do I have?

  • Continue to do detailed RFP requirements.
  • Know how to differentiate solutions and what you are buying. 
  • Demo it and make sure that it meets your requirements and integrate it with your tools and systems. 

If you buy it and don't install it (or you don't install it right then), you are wasting your money. I am assuming that if you are going to invest a couple thousand dollars a year, easily, if not more depending on the size of the organization. 

The tool does not change the process. It facilitates the process. Don't expect the tool to solve the business process. 

They truly take security very seriously on passwords and make you change it frequently. 

Disclosure: PeerSpot contacted the reviewer to collect the review and to validate authenticity. The reviewer was referred by the vendor, but the review is not subject to editing or approval by the vendor.
PeerSpot user
Buyer's Guide
Everbridge IT Alerting
February 2025
Learn what your peers think about Everbridge IT Alerting. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: February 2025.
837,501 professionals have used our research since 2012.
reviewer2405115 - PeerSpot reviewer
Head of Business Continuity & Resilience at a manufacturing company with 5,001-10,000 employees
Real User
Top 20
Provides good detection and escalation features to reduce downtime
Pros and Cons
  • "One key aspect of the solution is that it can send information very quickly and is connected to different nodes."
  • "The solution's non-targeted communication with external parties could be enhanced."

What is most valuable?

One key aspect of the solution is that it can send information very quickly and is connected to different nodes.

What needs improvement?

The solution's non-targeted communication with external parties could be enhanced.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using Everbridge IT Alerting for three to four years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

I rate the solution’s stability a nine out of ten.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

Everbridge IT Alerting is an easily scalable solution.

I rate the solution a seven or eight out of ten for scalability.

How are customer service and support?

Reaching the technical support team is sometimes very easy, and other times, it takes a little time.

How would you rate customer service and support?

Neutral

How was the initial setup?

We wanted to have a tool implemented to include the setup. It went well, and there was no big disruption in how it was implemented.

On a scale from one to ten, where one is difficult and ten is easy, I rate the solution's initial setup a seven or eight out of ten.

What about the implementation team?

The solution was deployed in our organization in three months.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

Everbridge IT Alerting is a cost-efficient solution.

What other advice do I have?

We are using Everbridge IT Alerting for incident and crisis modules. The tool is powerful in itself, but as with any tool, you need to adapt it to the organization to be suitable for managing specific situations. When we did the analysis, Everbridge IT Alerting was one of the main products in the markets adapted to our organization's expectations. Currently, we are using it for a different aspect.

Overall, the solution gives a better understanding of the incident response aspect. It helps manage that kind of situation. The solution's detection and escalation features are crucial in reducing downtime. The solution's automation capabilities help quickly identify the right members and skills.

Everbridge IT Alerting is deployed on the cloud in our organization. We tried to make the solution more independent. However, we tried one or two integrations, and they went well. You need to have the right skills to integrate the solution with other tools. I would recommend the solution to other users based on their industry and business requirements.

Overall, I rate the solution an eight out of ten.

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
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Communication Manager at a tech services company with 1,001-5,000 employees
Consultant
Simplifies on-call schedule creation and management, and allows us to focus on restoration rather than on calling people
Pros and Cons
  • "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."
  • "With their templates, you can only have a maximum of three phases: new, updated, and resolved. It's not always that easy when we open up a call, that we identify who we need, page out, and we're good. A lot of time it requires multiple page-outs. Being restricted to those three phases, there's no way to say, "I want this variable to be persistent, and this one to not be." ...I would like to see a bit more flexibility and tighter control over the templates and the variables you can create."
  • "They still have a limitation due to their partner, I believe it's Twilio, where, if you're on an incident call, there is a four-hour time limit. We often have calls that go over four hours in length so people have to drop and rejoin to reset their four-hour timer. It's a minor inconvenience, but it's not ideal."

What is our primary use case?

Our use case is using it to reduce the time to assemble everyone, especially when reacting to major incidents, and to reduce the time spent doing manual call-outs and engagements in the course of them.

The background, and why we looked into getting a tool in the first place, is that when we were engaged on an incident and it rose in severity or the scope of impact broadened, there were many different checkboxes that we could check: "Okay, now we need to re-engage this person, this person, and this person." Also, just in the average incident-information process, we needed additional speed in getting people engaged, rather than manually looking up the on-call information to see who's engaged or on-call. We would have to manually call them and possibly get voicemail and have to try the second number.

We use it for every bridge call that we host and every engagement of an on-call group that we need. We use it multiple times a day, every day.

How has it helped my organization?

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. We've had tremendous gains on that.

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.

It enables everybody on our team to focus on their primary responsibilities, driving toward restoration, instead of being distracted by manually calling folks.

What is most valuable?

Creating the templates and being able to create my own variables are helpful features.

Their latest features are going to allow me to be a bit more flexible with using Everbridge for internal communications. We started using it for internal incident notifications a few months ago, and having that group lookup, allowing me to create a relation between a property and a variable in the template, and who should be contacted as far as a group in the organization goes, is going to allow for some nice self-service for our internal folks when we transition to a different Everbridge organization for our internal coms.

What needs improvement?

With their templates, you can only have a maximum of three phases: new, updated, and resolved. It's not always that easy when we open up a call, that we identify who we need, page out, and we're good. A lot of time it requires multiple page-outs. Being restricted to those three phases, there's no way to say, "I want this variable to be persistent, and this one to not be." Everything that you select will be brought over as you continue. In our environment, as we have many different call-outs that have to happen, even though they are incredibly simple to select and execute now in Everbridge, it is quite the long list. I would like to make it a bit easier and more intuitive. I would like to see a bit more flexibility and tighter control over the templates and the variables you can create.

Also, they still have a limitation due to their partner, I believe it's Twilio, where, if you're on an incident call, there is a four-hour time limit. We often have calls that go over four hours in length so people have to drop and rejoin to reset their four-hour timer. It's a minor inconvenience, but it's not ideal. That is pretty persistent with any IT alerting partner you go with.

For how long have I used the solution?

One to three years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

We've been using it for a year. There have been a couple of instances of our encountering some weird issues with the calls being dropped, or people not being able to hear. That was more towards the beginning part of our go-live. We ended up identifying it through troubleshooting with Everbridge and Twilio and different networks. It was an issue with an AT&T circuit somewhere. They were kind enough to give us a different set of bridge numbers so that we were going on a different path. Since going to those numbers, we haven't encountered that same sort of instability or call-quality issues. 

Other than that, occasionally a service advisory will go out from Everbridge where a certain communication path is having issues. But those are typically quickly resolved. We are pretty comfortable with the stability.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

We've had no problems with scalability. We brought in Everbridge shortly after we had bought another company and started merging together into a new, unified company. That, obviously, brings some substantial scaling challenges. But we've encountered no issues with adding many, many more users to the system over the last several months.

We only have a couple of hundred people directly interfacing with Everbridge, maybe a few hundred. But as far as the users we're communicating to, it's a few thousand and that keeps increasing as we progress.

How are customer service and technical support?

Everybody I've dealt with at Everbridge tech support, barring one individual on their staff, has been pretty nice to work with. They're knowledgeable, they're helpful, they want to assist. There have been a couple of times that it's been challenging to get the escalation that we were looking for. We were hoping to get some more urgency, especially when we were first going live, with the instability issues we were seeing. It took a little longer to get that escalation that we were looking for, but once it happened, we certainly got the amount of attention that we needed on the issue. For the most part, after that experience, it's been pretty good.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

We were not using a different solution previously for IT alerting. The on-call schedules were managed and stored in ServiceNow. As I said, the reason behind getting IT Alerting was that everything was manual. We weren't using a competitor like PagerDuty or xMatters.

How was the initial setup?

The initial setup really depends on the environment you are operating in. They can easily integrate and do imports from an HR system and from ServiceNow and from many different applications. They do have a lot of good options that you can easily get things set up with. For internal reasons we couldn't do it, but I definitely saw that the ability was there to do it. I would call it straightforward.

We did the deployment in under a month. It was a pretty aggressive time frame.

We didn't really have an implementation strategy. We were focused on getting the users that we wanted to bring over from ServiceNow identified and on marrying up that data with what was going to be in Everbridge. You can pass that information along through the API connector. We ended up just doing an export and then manually uploading it to Everbridge.

It was a matter of identifying who was in the system that we needed to get in there as a contact. From there, our strategy was to get meetings scheduled with the high-level folks who pass information down through the disparate on-call groups that they're in charge of, so they could let them know what changes were coming.

One big part of the overall strategy was having executive backing, because going from one organizational culture, where folks are used to having a certain amount of time to respond to a bridge call, to Everbridge, where we wanted to have the system escalate, and escalate quickly - since when we engage those folks on a bridge call, it's because we're losing money and our customers are losing money - you have a lot less time to respond to a call before it escalates. Obviously, people who are living on-call schedules are not going to like that kind of news. If you don't have that executive backing, then people aren't going to be as quick to adhere to the new organizational culture of, "you need to be on a call within a few minutes, if we start paging you." There would be no more of this, "I'll be there, when I can, in 15 minutes."

What about the implementation team?

We had our integration consultant from Everbridge on hand. There were no third-parties.

What was our ROI?

We have definitely seen ROI, not in terms of dollars and cents, but the mean time to restore from major incidents has been more than halved in terms of duration. Being the company we are, in the financial world, and with how many transactions are processed through us in a second, the potential financial savings from even just a minute of reduced outage time can be substantial.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

For the one-way license, which refers to someone is just on the receiving end, it's very affordable. I was actually surprised that it was a really good price. The two-way license, like for an on-call resource who is actually going to be in a calendar and be paged, it is a bit more expensive, but for the gains that we've realized, it's certainly worth the price.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

We looked at MIR3 - they are called OnSolve now - and we looked at xMatters. MIR3 just didn't check enough boxes. It didn't seem like a good solution for storing and managing and quickly engaging people on bridge calls. xMatters and Everbridge seemed to have a better, more intuitive user interface, more robust options, better reporting options, and more flexibility.

What other advice do I have?

Get that executive leadership backing, and make sure that you're not just going to use Everbridge to page out to people in a different manner. You should look to set that "timer" pretty low on bridge engagement and get people used to responding and getting on bridge calls immediately, because every minute of an outage is lost money.

Determine up front if you are going to do the group integration from whatever application you might be looking to do the user-sync with. If you are going to have an application with on-call schedules maintained, such as Service Now - as I believe there is an option to turn on group sync - be careful about turning that group sync feature on. User sync is pretty straightforward but we were warned against using the group sync feature for various reasons, even from within Everbridge.

Our users are support staff, on-call resources, on-call leaders, incident commanders, communication managers. There are a couple of senior leaders who know how to use it, but it is mainly incident management and communication management.

Our deployment team was just a handful of folks. We needed a little bit of partnership from our ServiceNow folks to get the API into place. You could go with a half-dozen people on the integration. For the maintenance aspect, it's even less than that.

There are four of us who administrate the tool. I'm the communication management piece of it. My manager handles major incident and critical communications, so he's incident management as well, and he does a lot of admin work in it. Our project manager is the incident commander and communication management.

We have support staff who don't have the rights to kick off Everbridge to automatically engage people, but they'll still access the Everbridge Member Portal to manually look up resources and call them for lower-priority issues. We use it pretty heavily right now and we are definitely looking at other ways of utilizing the tool. We expect it to increase pretty substantially, as we go forward.

One of the big things that we're looking to do is integrating it with event monitoring. We're looking to further reduce the mean time to assemble for major incidents by bypassing the current process. Currently, event monitoring takes in a ticket and it gets assigned to a queue in ServiceNow where an agent will see it, and they'll call out the support person. That person will say, "Okay, well we need a bridge call for this." What we are trying to do is identify, with the various application support teams, among the events that are creating tickets, which ones are deemed "critical" that could be a precursor to a major incident. We want to identify those and create incident conditions in ServiceNow that will engage an Everbridge template to get the incident management team engaged right away, rather than waiting on those manual actions to happen. We're still in the early stages of that, and we are looking to increase that sort of usage for Everbridge to gain more efficiencies.

Some of them are live right now. We call them the "Everbridge critical alerts" and we have many that are already in production. We are looking to expand that even more.

I would rate Everbridge IT Alerting at eight out of ten, overall. It's a very powerful tool. We've made a lot of efficiency gains but there are definitely things that, from an enhancement standpoint, we would like to see added to the tool. The progress on that hasn't been as quick as we'd like. Its been pretty slow going.

With what we already have in place, it's enabling us to do a lot. I absolutely love having the tool. I would not rate it as a ten out of ten, but they're definitely heading in the right direction. From what I've seen, as far as what they are planning on having, I would say it could be a ten out of ten this time next year, if things go well in year-two. But for year-one, I would say it's an eight out of ten.

Disclosure: PeerSpot contacted the reviewer to collect the review and to validate authenticity. The reviewer was referred by the vendor, but the review is not subject to editing or approval by the vendor.
PeerSpot user
Manager32cf - PeerSpot reviewer
Manager at a transportation company with 51-200 employees
Real User
Email integration enables our staff to send alerts from other programs using email triggers
Pros and Cons
  • "The email integration, the ability to launch from other programs using email triggers, was the primary reason we got the solution and it's been really helpful"
  • "An incident management feature would be nice because, as it stands now, you select different items when you're filling out a form to launch a notification. If those were more conditional it would help. Right now it just puts out whatever you put into the form, whereas, if you could specify a "yes" or "no" and it would input a different verbiage, that would be nice to have, instead of having to spell out all the verbiage."

What is our primary use case?

We use it for the email integration portion.

How has it helped my organization?

We've created fake units in the CAD system and, when activated, it sends an email to Everbridge. That has allowed the dispatchers to send out quick notifications. Before, they'd have to log into Everbridge, find the right thing, fill it out - do the full Everbridge thing - which always got deferred to later because they were busy doing other things. By creating the fake unit in CAD to trigger the email integration, all they have to do is assign a unit using the system they're already working in and it will send out the raw information from the call. That's been helpful so that the command staff gets quicker notifications of things.

The initial reason we got it was the lightning protection integration. We had a guy struck by lightning at the airport about a year and a half ago. Our lightning system was going off but this provides an extra layer of protection. With it, all the people who have signed up for that notification automatically get an Everbridge notification on their phone as soon as the thing goes off. They know, "This is active, I should do something about that," instead of relying on the horns and sirens that the lightning system uses. It's hard to quantify. We haven't had anyone struck by lightning since, but we hadn't had anyone struck by lightning before either. It is just an extra way for our tenants to be able to be in the loop on what's happening.

The lightning integration has been really helpful, especially for our maintenance department. It was intended for tenants and stakeholders. But the maintenance department, because they're out in the field all day, their director said all their work phones get it, no matter what. Before, they were running around trying to find people to tell them, "Lightning is on," to make sure they were shutting down. Now, everybody out there in the field who has a phone, and almost all of them do, immediately knows the lightning system is active and that they need to shut down.

What is most valuable?

The email integration, the ability to launch from other programs using email triggers, was the primary reason we got the solution and it's been really helpful. We've been able to integrate our CAD system into it using it. The CAD system is kind of old and it doesn't like to talk to things so the integration is useful.

We also have a lightning protection system and were able to integrate it using email. The lightning was our main purpose for upgrading to IT Alerting but we have found other uses for it since then.

What needs improvement?

It does have a pretty steep learning curve, especially if you're trying to parse information, instead of just sending it raw. Learning the Regular Expression language, to try and get it to pull out what you want, is a pretty steep learning curve upfront. The steep learning curve is specifically for IT Alerting, its features. And, for the API integrations, you've got to know how to write the REST API code if you want to use them.

The Everbridge system itself was fairly straightforward to learn.

An incident management feature would be nice because, as it stands now, you select different items when you're filling out a form to launch a notification. If those were more conditional it would help. Right now it just puts out whatever you put into the form, whereas, if you could specify a "yes" or "no" and it would input a different verbiage depending on the case, that would be nice to have, instead of having to spell out all the verbiage.

The only thing our users want, because they work 12-hour shifts and it times out if they're not using it, would be to stay logged in for at least 12 hours before it times out. The max is eight hours right now.

For how long have I used the solution?

One to three years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

We haven't had any issues with stability. For the product as a whole, we have had one delayed notification and we've had the product for two and a half years now. We called support on that one and found out they were having a nationwide problem but it was fixed within two to three hours. They sent out a root-cause analysis a couple of hours after that, explaining to us what happened. They're pretty responsive.

That's the only delay we've had since we've had the overall Everbridge product.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

In this budget cycle, we just purchased some more seats for notifications and we're trying to get all of our in-house staff on it. It was pretty simple. We called them, we told them what the deal was. They were willing to work with us, to work with it in the budget cycle process. As far as scaling up and working within the budget cycle, they understood all that and were really helpful in getting it worked out.

How are customer service and technical support?

We don't have that many problems with Everbridge. The couple of times I've had to engage with tech support they've gotten right back to me, helped me figure it out. Even the one time it was something I was doing wrong, they were able to point me in the right direction and get me squared away. They replied quickly. I don't have anything bad to say about them.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

We were using CodeRED. We needed some of the functionality Everbridge had that CodeRED didn't have. CodeRED was fairly solid and was a heck of a lot cheaper, because we were piggy-backed on with our Sheriff's Office. But the functionality of the internet management portion of Everbridge outweighed the cost difference.

How was the initial setup?

The initial setup was pretty straightforward. Everyone on the implementation team had a good understanding of it and, once Everbridge turns it on, they let you play with it, so that's good. And then they sent out a team to do training. We had a pretty good handle on it, so the training was more addressing our questions. They turned it on about a week before the training crew got out here, to let us start messing around in it. We were able to figure it out, so by the time the training crew got here, it was more like questions and answers, except for our PR staff who hadn't played with it at all. They got a full top-down, step one, step two, training, whereas the Admin folks got a bit more Q&A. They were really adaptable to what were trying to do.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

We thought the base product was pretty reasonable. It can pricey once you start adding stuff on, but that's the same with anything. We have scaled up almost every year. We bought the base, 500 contacts, the thing they sell to airports, in our first year. Then we got the IT Alerting because we needed the email integration stuff and some of the scheduling features. This year we've gone up another step in contacts, from 500 to 1,000. We're investing in the system.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

We were okay with CodeRED. The user interface was kind of clunky for how we were using it with the dispatchers. But that was more because of how we were doing it. For some of the commands, at the time, they didn't want electronic-sounding messages so they were making the dispatchers verbally record every message. Once we went with Everbridge, we got the command staff to be okay with electronic sounding messages; Everbridge is reliant on electronic messaging. Before, for whatever reason, they wanted voice messages and that's what CodeRED did really well. But it required a dispatcher to record it and it was a whole thing. Once we got everyone convinced that text messages are reliable, and that they'll get an email if the text message doesn't work, that there's an app - all that - it was a pretty easy sale after that.

Also, CodeRED called everything you had at the same time. With Everbridge you can have it switch methods every five minutes. CodeRED was "call everything, every time." It called your house phone, your cell phone, your work cell, your personal cell, your dog's cell, your cat's cell, your wife, your daughter. It called them all, all at the same time. That's why it was called CodeRED, because your whole house went on fire. IT Alerting can be set to call just one phone at a time. That was a big sell too.

What other advice do I have?

Dig into the resources they have, like Everbridge University. Don't rely completely on the on-site training because it's only one day. The best way to learn is by doing. You need to get in there, push the buttons, pull the triggers, etc. My advice would be, when they turn it on, get in there and put in a couple of contacts and start sending messages, to get used to the interface. Take their online stuff, use all the resources they give you. Don't just rely on that one day of on-site training they provide, that's not going to do it for you.

You can go into Everbridge University and type in, "I want to know how to do 'x'," and there will be modules on how to do that. You can watch the courses and it gives you enough to get in there and start figuring it out. There is also an interactive user community.

We haven't gotten much into the API stuff. We need to. We're starting to use scheduling a little more. With our police and fire department and the air-com staff, the staff that I manage, we're trying to get more people involved with it. Because the scheduling is its own thing and it doesn't integrate with how they schedule their staff, it's been a little difficult getting them to stand that up. But that's more just trying to find someone there who is willing to keep that schedule in Everbridge up to date so we can make sure we're not waking up people who shouldn't be woken, and that we're alerting the people who need to know. That's what we're focusing on now.

We like it. It works great. If you ask the dispatchers who do 90 percent of the launches, it's leaps and bounds better than what we were doing before. Back then, they were having to call in and type in all these codes and verbalize the messages. If they misspoke they had to hang up and start over. It was a giant pain. With Everbridge, it's just fill out the form. If "x" is happening you click on that form, you fill it out and hit Go and it goes. You don't have to worry about whether the right person will get it because that's all been pre-programmed. They really like the ease of use.

This has been one of the better products that you buy off the shelf because it just works. With almost everything you buy that requires as much customization as something like this does, you're going to have problems, but we've had very few with Everbridge. It just works.

Disclosure: PeerSpot contacted the reviewer to collect the review and to validate authenticity. The reviewer was referred by the vendor, but the review is not subject to editing or approval by the vendor.
PeerSpot user
Lead Pipeline Designer/GIS Specialist at a consultancy with 1,001-5,000 employees
Real User
It just runs. We have not had a single outage.
Pros and Cons
  • "The system has a lot of great features and they keep adding to it."
  • "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 most important features are the scheduling capability and the integration with ServiceNow."
  • "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."

How has it helped my organization?

We went from a manual email system to an organized responsive automated system. It was able to improve our efficiency and improve everyone's responsiveness, because people were not responding to emails. 

It also improved our ability to capture everything in tickets, whereas before, emails and tickets were rarely, if ever, getting created.

What is most valuable?

The most important features are the scheduling capability and the integration with ServiceNow. The ease of putting in a replacement person who will cover for you, or if you want to switch with two people, this is very easy to do. It is very easy to capture the calendaring and make sure everybody is aware of it. There is ability for it to communicate back and forth with ServiceNow and our ticketing system. This is much easier and more real-time in its capturing what is happening when a ticket opens, a ticket is accepted for work, and it is closed out.

There is also the application that you can install on your phone, which the engineers really like. If allows you the flexibility to choose: Whether you notify your home phone or your cell phone, and whether you get a text first. You get choose in what order, so the flexibility for each engineer is very good.

What needs improvement?

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. There may be a way to do it, but I just didn't find it, so I did it day-by-day. This would be a neat feature to have. 

For how long have I used the solution?

One to three years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

It just runs. We have not 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 best thing I could say about any system is that it just works. That is the highest compliment that anyone can give to a system. It is one less headache that I have because I know that it is up and running.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

We are not a heavy usage, enormous company, but I see no limitations to the scalability of it. You could use this if you were a small company, and you could use this if you were a 4500 person U.S. company or a 200,000 person global company.

I could see how it would scale up very easily.

How are customer service and technical support?

Tech support is excellent. They are very responsive. We are able to reach them very quickly. On a scale of one to 10, I would give them a 10. They are very quick about getting us answers when working with us.

Their account team is excellent. Their marketing team is excellent. 

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

We had a very manual system where we alerted everyone to all system alerts.

With Everbridge, we were able to set up a schedule where only people on call get notified, so everybody was not getting emails and having to somehow wake up in the middle of the night.

We were also able to split out our system alerts so we now have five-minute system alerts that the infrastructure team likes to see. However, we do not need to open up a ticket and have an engineer react to it. We have a separate one now where after 30 minutes, it creates a ticket and alerts an engineer to investigate. 

How was the initial setup?

The initial setup was very straightforward. The configurations took us a day and a half to be completely set up. We saved the last half a day in case we ran into problems. After, a year or two of using it, never found a problem. Therefore, it was very easy to set up.

What about the implementation team?

Their support staff and the installation/professional services team were great.

When implementing, talk to your account team and work with the installation team. Make sure you have a plan as to what you are looking for and work closely with the Everbridge team. They will get you where you need to go.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

Their pricing is a good value and very reasonable. They are very upfront about their pricing. There is nothing confusing about it.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

We were looking for an IT alerting system. A couple of my peers gave me a couple of different suggestions. I believe I might have met them originally at the ServiceNow Knowledge Conference, and we looked at a couple of other systems along with this. We had a team of people who reviewed different options and functions that each system had. Out of that evaulation, we selected Everbridge.

We evaluated PagerDuty as a potential option. However, the system feels like it is stuck a bit in the past.

What other advice do I have?

I am pretty happy with the way it works. We are very happy with it. We have not made changes to it because it just works.

It does what it says it does. The application works. They have a long history, but the system is advanced and modern. It has a lot of great features and they keep adding to it.

Disclosure: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer:
PeerSpot user
PeerSpot user
Senior Systems Administrator for Enterprise Monitoring at a pharma/biotech company with 5,001-10,000 employees
Real User
Interactive and helpful dashboard, robust API, good integration with ServiceNow, and descriptive reporting
Pros and Cons
  • "The post mortem reports are descriptive, indicating who joined the call and when."
  • "The incident templates can get complex and hard to troubleshoot, so it helps to focus on keeping it simple."

What is our primary use case?

We use Everbridge for IT on-call management of both P1 issues (through our integration into our ServiceNow platform) and on-demand P2 bridges. These are generated by our critical incident management team, which leverages our Skype (and soon Teams) environments.

When an incident occurs, the appropriate on-call calendars are hit and the critical incident team coordinates the issue as it is worked to a solution. 

Each of the groups has one or two group managers who keep the calendar up to date and assist on-call personnel who have questions about how to interact with the platform. 

How has it helped my organization?

Everbridge IT Alerting accelerated the time to engage with our IT support staff. Our incident management team benefited by pulling the right personnel at any given time to troubleshoot serious IT issues. 

The interactive dashboard shows the state live, of who has joined and who is being contacted. The reporting that can be generated afterward also supports how teams responded to the system.

Everbridge IT Alerting also has a robust API which we have used for other monitoring systems to send to. The commands can be easily tested in Swagger.

What is most valuable?

The integration to ServiceNow via the store app synchronizes our assignment groups within ServiceNow to groups within Everbridge, saving time for group managers needing to add personnel to on-call calendars. The groups->calendars feature helps scope each group manager's efforts in managing on-call resources.

The incident templates have a lot of flexibility in managing the behavior of an incoming incident, including what devices to contact and the user experience in general. 

The post mortem reports are descriptive, indicating who joined the call and when.

What needs improvement?

Parts of the mobile app are a bit difficult to navigate (to see published calendars, for example) and there can be some confusion if you also license Everbridge Mass Notification at your company.

The incident templates can get complex and hard to troubleshoot, so it helps to focus on keeping it simple.

For how long have I used the solution?

We have been using Everbridge IT Alerting for approximately four years.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

We used xMatters and switched, as we had licensed Everbridge Mass Notification already and found that xMatters was complex to manage.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

Licensing cost is driven largely by the number of users in the platform including admins, group managers, and message senders, so you want to consider your needs there. 

Everbridge did a good job on onboarding support, conducting multiple working and Q&A sessions which helped enable our success.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

We evaluated xMatters as well.

What other advice do I have?

Everbridge IT Alerting appears to be a straightforward product at first glance. Be sure to have adequate training both for starting administrators as well as for group managers, message senders, and of course for on-call personnel (contacts).

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
reviewer1482084 - PeerSpot reviewer
Principal Architect at a energy/utilities company with 10,001+ employees
Real User
Very robust, with multiple modules that can be leveraged
Pros and Cons
  • "A robust solution with multiple modules that can be leveraged."
  • "Lacks ability to customize messages."

What is our primary use case?

Our primary goal is to find an enterprise-wide notification solution so I'm looking at multiple solutions to find a product that could solve, say, 80% of our notification needs. We've just rolled out Everbridge. My involvement is more at the strategy level, determining whether the contract is good enough from a financial standpoint and those kinds of things. I'm the principal architect and we are customers of Everbridge. 

What is most valuable?

I think it's a robust solution with multiple modules that can be leveraged. I am looking at rationalizing the application landscape as we have too many applications in our enterprise to be able to manage them effectively. I'm trying to consolidate. What they've done until now has been very good. They've been very responsive and very helpful in answering questions. 

What needs improvement?

The customization of messages might be one area that they can improve on. For example, if I'd like to do a hyper-focused customized message within a campaign for each and every individual notification, that is something I don't believe they support right now. 

For how long have I used the solution?

I've been using this solution for about four months. 

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

The solution is quite new for us so it's hard to comment on stability. We haven't had any problems till now. 

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

As mentioned, we have around 40,000 users so the solution is easily scalable. 

How was the initial setup?

The initial setup was pretty straightforward.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

This is not a cheap solution. Our current license is for around 40,000 employees and contractors. In the future we may evaluate expanding that to cover a larger customer base.

What other advice do I have?

This product has certain functionalities that make it a lucrative solution and platform. It's geared towards big companies. I'm not involved in implementation, my role is more at the strategy level.

I would rate the solution quite highly, an eight out of 10. 

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
Buyer's Guide
Download our free Everbridge IT Alerting Report and get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions.
Updated: February 2025
Buyer's Guide
Download our free Everbridge IT Alerting Report and get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions.