“Incident tracking software” means two different things. For IT and DevOps teams, it is a tool that logs outages and service problems, alerts the right people and records how they were fixed. For workplaces, it is a tool that records accidents, injuries and near misses so you can meet safety rules and prevent repeats. This guide covers both, in separate sections, so you can jump to the one you need.
The IT market has also shifted. Atlassian is retiring Opsgenie, and Grafana has archived its open source OnCall project, so a few tools in older lists are no longer a safe choice. They are flagged below.
Which kind of incident tracking do you need?
| If you need to | You want | Jump to |
|---|---|---|
| Fix outages and service disruptions | IT incident management and on-call tools | Part 1 |
| Handle employee and customer IT requests | IT service desk (ITSM) | Part 1 |
| Record workplace accidents and near misses | EHS incident reporting software | Part 2 |
Part 1: IT and DevOps incident tracking
Within IT, there are two overlapping jobs. A service desk handles tickets: a person reports a problem and a technician resolves it. An incident response tool handles live production problems: a monitor fires, an engineer gets paged, a team coordinates the fix and writes a review. Some products do both. Others do one very well.
What good IT incident tools include
- Intake. Tickets from email, chat, a portal or monitoring alerts.
- Prioritization. Severity levels and service level targets.
- Routing and on-call. The right person is paged, with escalation if they don’t respond.
- Collaboration. A shared channel or timeline during the incident.
- Post-incident review. A record of what happened, plus follow-up tasks.
- Reporting. Time to acknowledge and resolve, and which services fail most.
IT service desk and ITSM platforms
ServiceNow
ServiceNow is an enterprise platform for IT service management, with incident, problem and change management and a wide workflow engine. It suits large organizations that run many IT processes in one system and have staff to configure it. See ServiceNow.
Jira Service Management
Jira Service Management is Atlassian’s service desk and ITSM product. It is a natural choice for teams already on Jira and Confluence, and it links incidents to the engineering work that fixes them. Atlassian is also directing Opsgenie customers to move their incident and on-call work here or to Compass. See Jira Service Management.
Freshservice
Freshservice is the IT service management product from Freshworks. It covers ticketing, incident and change management, and asset tracking, and it is aimed at small and mid-sized IT teams who want something simpler than the enterprise platforms. See Freshservice.
SolarWinds Service Desk
SolarWinds Service Desk is a cloud service desk with ticketing, a service catalog, asset management and reporting. It fits IT teams that want a service desk and asset tracking together. See SolarWinds Service Desk.
SysAid
SysAid is an ITSM platform with ticketing, automation and asset management, and it has added AI assistance to its service desk. It tends to appeal to mid-sized IT teams. See SysAid.
HappyFox
HappyFox is a help desk platform with ticket automation and multichannel intake. It is often used for customer support and internal help desks. See HappyFox.
Zendesk
Zendesk is a customer service platform built around ticketing across email, chat and phone. It is a good fit when the incidents are customer problems rather than IT outages. See Zendesk.
On-call and incident response tools
PagerDuty
PagerDuty is a long-established platform for on-call scheduling, alerting and incident response. It receives alerts from monitoring tools, pages the right responder and tracks escalation. See PagerDuty.
incident.io
incident.io runs incidents from inside chat. It creates a channel when something breaks, assigns roles, keeps a timeline and helps with the follow-up review. It suits engineering teams who already coordinate in chat. See incident.io.
Rootly
Rootly is an incident management platform that automates the steps around an incident: channels, roles, updates and retrospectives. See Rootly.
Splunk On-Call
Splunk On-Call, which grew out of VictorOps, is Splunk’s on-call and alerting product. It makes sense for teams already using Splunk for monitoring. See Splunk On-Call.
Grafana IRM
Grafana IRM, part of Grafana Cloud, combines on-call and incident response with Grafana’s monitoring. It is the route Grafana points users to now that the open source OnCall project is archived. See Grafana IRM.
Retired or folded-in tools to avoid starting with
- Opsgenie. Atlassian stopped selling it in 2025 and has said access ends in April 2027. Existing users are being moved to Jira Service Management or Compass, so a new project should start elsewhere.
- Grafana OnCall (open source). The repository is archived and read-only. New work continues in Grafana Cloud IRM.
- Spiceworks self-hosted help desk. The on-premises version was discontinued, and what remains is a cloud service, so older “free self-hosted help desk” advice no longer applies.
IT comparison table
| Tool | Type | Best fit |
|---|---|---|
| ServiceNow | ITSM platform | Large enterprises |
| Jira Service Management | Service desk and ITSM | Teams on Atlassian tools |
| Freshservice | ITSM | Small and mid-sized IT teams |
| SolarWinds Service Desk | Service desk | Service desk plus assets |
| SysAid | ITSM | Mid-sized IT teams |
| HappyFox | Help desk | Support and internal help desks |
| Zendesk | Customer service | Customer-facing tickets |
| PagerDuty | On-call and response | Production operations |
| incident.io | Chat-based response | Engineering teams |
| Rootly | Incident automation | Engineering teams |
| Splunk On-Call | On-call and alerting | Splunk users |
| Grafana IRM | On-call and response | Grafana users |
How to choose an IT incident tool
- Decide whether you need a service desk, on-call, or both. A help desk will not wake an engineer at night, and a pager tool will not run a service catalog.
- Match your monitoring. The tool should take alerts from the monitoring you already run, without custom glue.
- Check where your team talks. If incidents happen in chat, a tool that lives in chat will be used.
- Plan the review step. The point of tracking is to stop the same incident returning, so pick a tool that makes reviews easy to write and follow up.
- Ask about retirement and roadmap. As Opsgenie shows, products can be wound down. Ask vendors about their plans before you migrate your on-call data.
Your own website can also fail. If you run WordPress, uptime depends on your host and setup, so read how to choose WordPress hosting and how performance and scalability affect reliability.
Part 2: Workplace incident reporting (EHS)
Workplace incident tracking is a different job. Here an incident is an injury, a near miss, an unsafe condition or an environmental event. The software records what happened, who was involved, the cause and the corrective actions, and it keeps the records you may need for safety regulators and insurers. The specific rules depend on your country and industry, so confirm requirements with a safety professional.
What good EHS incident software includes
- Easy reporting. A mobile form that anyone on a site can fill in within minutes, with photos.
- Investigation workflows. Assign an investigator, record root causes and track findings.
- Corrective actions. Tasks with owners and due dates, so fixes actually happen.
- Regulatory records. Logs and forms that match the reporting rules where you operate.
- Trend reporting. Which sites, shifts or tasks see the most incidents.
- Near-miss capture. A low-friction way to log events that did not cause harm.
EHS platforms
Cority
Cority is an enterprise EHS and sustainability software suite covering incident management, safety, occupational health and compliance. It is built for larger organizations with many sites. See Cority.
EHS Insight
EHS Insight offers software for safety, compliance and ESG reporting, including incident management and audits. It targets mid-sized and larger companies. See EHS Insight.
Donesafe (HSI Donesafe)
Donesafe is a cloud EHS platform with modules for incidents, risk, audits and training, now part of HSI. It suits organizations that want a configurable system across several sites. See Donesafe.
A lighter option for small teams
A very small business may start with a shared online form that writes to a spreadsheet, with a named person who reviews each entry weekly. It is not a substitute for a regulated system, but it beats paper in a drawer. Move to dedicated software when you have several sites, regulated reporting duties or enough incidents that nobody can keep track by hand.
How to choose EHS software
- Start with your reporting rules. Ask what you must record and submit where you operate, then check the software supports it.
- Test the field experience. If reporting takes ten minutes, people will skip it.
- Look at actions and follow-up. A record with no corrective action is only paperwork.
- Ask about integration. Links to HR, training and audit systems save double entry.
- Check data export. You may need records for years, so confirm you can take them with you.
Frequently asked questions
What is incident tracking software?
Incident tracking software records problems, assigns them to people and tracks them until they are resolved. In IT it logs outages and service issues. In workplace safety it logs injuries, near misses and unsafe conditions. The two uses need different tools.
What is the difference between incident management and incident tracking?
Tracking is the record of an incident, while management covers the whole response: alerting, coordination, communication and review. Many tools do both, though some focus on live response and others on ticket records.
Is Opsgenie still available?
Atlassian stopped selling Opsgenie in 2025 and plans to end access in April 2027. Existing customers are being moved to Jira Service Management or Compass. If you are choosing a tool today, start with another option.
What is a good free incident tracking tool?
Some products offer free or entry plans, such as Jira Service Management for small teams, but plan limits change often. Check each vendor’s current plan page. For workplace safety, a shared online form is a starting point for very small teams.
Do I need on-call software or a service desk?
A service desk is for tickets that people raise and technicians resolve in business hours. On-call software is for urgent alerts that must reach an engineer at any hour. Larger IT teams usually use both.
What should a workplace incident report include?
It should include who was involved, when and where it happened, what happened, any injuries or damage, witnesses and immediate actions. The investigation then adds root causes and corrective actions. Your local regulator may require specific fields.
Should near misses be reported?
Yes. Near misses show hazards before someone is hurt. Make reporting fast and blame-free, or people will stay quiet.
Next step
Decide whether your problem is IT, safety or customer reports, pick two tools from the matching section and trial them on one real incident. To keep your own website healthy, read how hosting affects speed, security and uptime, compare security plugins and internal help desk software, and see why automation without guardrails causes outages.