The Problem That Started It All
As engineers, we've all been there. It's 3 AM, your phone buzzes with an alert, and you're trying to navigate through a maze of dashboards, configurations, and complex workflows just to understand what's happening. By the time you figure out how to acknowledge the incident, precious minutes have slipped away.
This was our daily reality. We worked with enterprise incident management tools that promised everything but delivered complexity. Tools with hundreds of features, most of which we never used, and documentation that required a PhD to understand.
Something had to change.
The Complexity Trap
Modern DevOps teams face an interesting paradox. The tools designed to make our lives easier have become sources of friction themselves. We observed several patterns across organizations:
Feature Bloat
Most incident management platforms try to be everything for everyone. The result? A Swiss Army knife with 200 blades when you just need to cut bread.
Configuration Nightmares
Setting up escalation policies shouldn't require a two-week training course. Yet, many teams spend more time configuring their alerting tools than actually responding to incidents.
Learning Curves That Never End
Every new team member needs extensive onboarding just to understand how the alerting system works. This isn't sustainable.
Our Philosophy: Less is More
When we started building MonoDuty, we made a radical decision: we would say no more often than yes. Every feature had to pass a simple test:
"Does this make incident response faster and less stressful?"
If the answer wasn't a clear yes, it didn't make the cut.
Core Principles
- 5-Minute Setup: If you can't get started in 5 minutes, we've failed.
- Intuitive by Default: No training videos required. If it needs explanation, we redesign it.
- Mobile-First: Incidents don't wait for you to reach your laptop. Neither should your tools.
- Transparent Pricing: No hidden fees, no enterprise-only features that should be standard.
What We Removed (And Why)
Building a simple product isn't about doing less—it's about doing the right things well. Here's what we deliberately left out:
Unnecessary Integrations
Instead of 500 integrations that "kind of work," we focused on deep, reliable integrations with the tools teams actually use: Slack, Microsoft Teams, PagerDuty webhooks, and generic webhooks for everything else.
Complex Workflow Builders
Visual workflow builders look impressive in demos but rarely work as expected in production. We replaced them with sensible defaults and simple override options.
Redundant Dashboards
One clear dashboard beats ten confusing ones. We show you what matters: active incidents, who's on-call, and system health.
The Result
Today, MonoDuty powers incident response for teams ranging from solo developers to enterprises. Our average setup time is under 3 minutes. Our average incident acknowledgment time is 47 seconds.
But the metric we're most proud of? Zero customers have asked for a training session. The product speaks for itself.
Looking Forward
Simplicity isn't a destination—it's a discipline. As we grow, we remain committed to:
- Resisting feature creep
- Listening to what users need (not just what they ask for)
- Making on-call less painful for engineers everywhere
Because at the end of the day, the best incident management tool is one you barely notice. It should work quietly in the background, alerting you when needed and getting out of your way when not.
That's the tool we set out to build. That's MonoDuty.
Ready to experience simplicity? Start your free trial today — no credit card required.