Everbridge IT Alerting Reviews

Alerts from our monitoring system to hit on-call and our help desk to create on-call bridges.

We have been somewhat able to quantify the benefits. Users like the ease of use via the mobile app. Also, the simplicity of the on-call process is encouraging stakeholders to use the product rather than to try to call someone directly.

• System availability
• SaaS solution, so no infrastructure
• Mobile app

Powerful conference bridging that rigorously reaches out to stakeholders, which saves time working an issue. The mobile app provides ease of use for our resolvers and mobile push has proven quick and reliable. It also gives us flexibility around creating sometimes complex shifts within an on-call calendar.

One thing that could be improved would be to enable the mobile app to more easily display published calendars via the Member Portal. Currently, it is quite difficult.

No issues with stability.

No issues with scalability.

Tech support is excellent; very responsive and they provide good follow-up.

We did use another product previously and we switched because Everbridge met our requirements. In addition, our Global Security team was using the Everbridge Mass Notification product, so going with it created synergy.

We selected Everbridge through a PoC process performed early in 2017.

The initial setup was very fast with the controller coming online almost right away. The implementation team assisted us in onboarding our users and calendars. The complex part has been in transitioning our user community to the new system.

Get a clear idea of the number of users (those that manage calendars and/or initiate incidents) and use SSO which greatly facilitates adoption.

xMatters.

Any new system will create adoption challenges, especially if you are migrating off another platform. Emphasize the benefits of moving to it (SaaS, the mobile app, ease of use, system stability) and be sure to conduct both formal training and close follow-up with users.

IT incident management.

It's now a little quicker to get folks together on a bridge. It has enabled us to have quicker times to resolution.

The ability for people to be 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. 

The ability for members to change their schedules, and change the person they're swapping with, could use improvement. For two people to swap, both people have to log in, as you can only update your own schedule with a member account.

Suppose I am swapping with Bill for the day because he is sick. It makes no sense that both he and I each have to update the schedule. He has to go in and put me as a replacement for him. Then, the day he is taking for me, I have to go in and put him as my replacement.

It's pretty stable.

It's scalable.

The tech support is great. They're almost always able to solve my issues pretty quickly.

The initial setup was probably somewhere in the middle, between straightforward and complex. I think the some of the harder parts were the importing of all the data.

Definitely use the rules and conditions so you can contact the right people for different outages. The GUI is a little tough to navigate. It's not very straightforward when someone is trying to change schedules.

It's very accurate and, once you get to know it, you can make it meet your needs.

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. 

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. 

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.

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.

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.

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.

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. 

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

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

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.   

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. 

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.

• 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.