Crisis management software prepares your team to respond and keep operations moving during setbacks. When unexpected incidents occur – like system outages or supply chain issues – the right tool helps you fix the issue before it disrupts customers.
In this guide, you’ll explore how crisis software supports business continuity and the seven best tools for small teams dealing with internal mishaps or emergencies.
What is crisis management software (and what features do you need)?
Crisis management software helps organizations prepare for and recover from unexpected events. It centralizes communication and provides a space to manage real-time response efforts.
Larger organizations often have crisis teams and formal protocols. Small businesses face the same risks with fewer resources.
That’s why emergency management software is essential. It enables small companies to coordinate responses in cost-efficient and effective ways.
Here are the main types of crisis management software:
Type of crisis management software | Key features |
Incident management software records what’s happening so you can stay organized and respond in real time. |
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Mass communication tools quickly get critical information to your team or customers across any communication channel. |
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Business continuity planning solutions give you pre-built plans and checklists so you can act quickly. |
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Risk monitoring tools warn you about threats early so you can take the next best action before they escalate. |
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Collaboration platforms keep your team connected while working remotely or under pressure. |
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Many small businesses don’t use an all-in-one platform to manage crises. Instead, they patch together tools (like Slack for crisis communication and Google Docs for planning). While this works, a unified system helps you respond fast when speed matters most.
The right software depends on your goals – think managing operations, keeping customers informed or planning ahead.
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7 best crisis management software solutions for fast responses
Many top crisis tools target large organizations with complex needs and dedicated teams. Small-scale operations need something simpler.
Small business crisis tools don’t try to do everything. They usually focus on one area, such as alerts, coordination or recovery.
Here are seven options that cover a range of needs, so you can find the right fit for disruptions likely to hit your company.
1. AlertMedia: best for multi-channel crisis communication
Tool category: mass communication tool (for employees)
AlertMedia allows organizations to deliver urgent messages to employees, supporting communication across multiple channels. It also includes tools to monitor external threats like natural disasters as they develop.
Who it’s for: Companies that need to reach staff during disruptions – particularly remote teams. Managers send one alert instead of repeating the same message on multiple platforms.
AlertMedia’s key features:
Multi-channel alerts – send the same message through SMS, email, phone call, mobile app and desktop
Two-way messaging – employees can respond directly and confirm they received the alert or report new issues
Templates – store pre-written messages for common situations like building closures or service interruptions
Location targeting – send alerts only to employees in a specific area, preventing messages from reaching unaffected staff
Delivery tracking – know when recipients receive, open and reply to messages
Mobile access – admins can send and manage alerts from a mobile device
The takeaway: AlertMedia prioritizes communication speed during emergencies. Its threat-monitoring tools help your team maintain situational awareness as events unfold.
2. Statuspage (by Atlassian): best for customer-facing communication
Tool category: incident management and mass communication (for customer relations)
Statuspage helps small-to-medium-sized businesses (SMBs) in tech communicate with customers during downtime. It manages customer expectations and reduces tickets when support systems experience issues.
Who it’s for: SaaS sales startups, development teams and service providers that want a customer-facing communication planning tool.
Statuspage’s key features:
Hosted status pages – create branded status dashboards showing the health of each system
Incident updates – post real-time updates for outages, slowdowns and fixes so responders can stay on track
Subscriber notifications – let users opt in for updates via email or webhook
Historical uptime reporting – show users how often your systems have been available to build customer trust
The takeaway: Statuspage is for tech-focused SMBs that need a way to communicate with customers during incidents. While it won’t manage your internal response, it keeps users informed.
3. PagerDuty: best for managing technical incidents
Tool category: incident management (for tech companies)
PagerDuty is an incident management platform focusing on emergency preparedness in the software, infrastructure and IT industries. Small businesses can detect issues, notify people and resolve problems before they escalate.
Who it’s for: Tech SMBs that need on-call scheduling, automated alerts and fast coordination for system failures.
PagerDuty’s key features:
On-call scheduling – create rotation schedules and escalation rules to ensure the right person is always available
Multi-channel alerting – send alerts by SMS, voice, push notification, social media and email
Incident workflows – automate tasks like stakeholder updates and ticket creation
Noise reduction – use event rules to prevent duplicates and remove old alerts
Integrations with monitoring tools – connect to software that tracks your system health, like Datadog and New Relic
The takeaway: PagerDuty is for tech SMBs that need to fix system issues. The starter plan works for development-heavy companies that can’t allow downtime. Unless you’re running 24/7 systems and don’t have on-call engineers, it may have functionality you don’t need.
4. Crises Control: best for alerts and incident tracking
Tool category: mass communication and incident management
Crises Control is a cloud-based platform that helps organizations respond to events. It focuses on rapid communication and task tracking during incidents.
Who it’s for: Organizations that must manage live incidents across multiple teams or locations.
Crises Control’s key features:
Mass emergency notifications – deliver alerts via SMS, email, voice and mobile push notifications
Incident management – allows teams to activate contingency plans, assign tasks and monitor progress
Audit trails – record all actions and messages for compliance management and review
Mobile access – enables incident management and communication through a mobile app
Business continuity and recovery tools – create effective risk assessments, plans and recovery protocols
The takeaway: Crises Control is for organizations that need live emergency response coordination. It offers mass notification tools and business continuity features.
5. Preparis: best for continuity planning
Tool category: business continuity planning and incident management
Preparis is a cloud-based platform for small businesses to build and manage business continuity plans. It provides structure and incident coordination tools without the complexity of enterprise-level systems.
Who it’s for: Small businesses that need a centralized way to handle continuity planning and improve business decision-making during incident responses.
Preparis’ key features:
Plan customization – adapt continuity plans to meet specific business and industry requirements
Risk assessments – use templates and workflows to guide users through identifying potential risks
Incident management – leverage real-time incident management tools, like virtual coordination spaces
Compliance reporting – generate documentation to support regulatory and audit requirements
Business impact analysis (BIA) – evaluate how different disruptions could affect operations
The takeaway: Preparis is for small teams who need continuity processes but can’t build them from scratch. It doesn’t require heavy technical knowledge and helps coordinate tasks during the disaster recovery phase.
6. Veoci: best for coordinating crisis responses
Tool category: incident management
Veoci’s digital workspace handles crises through a central environment for tracking what’s happening, managing responsibilities and keeping information flowing.
Who it’s for: Small businesses with cross-functional teams (like human resources or operations) and limited oversight.
Veoci’s key features:
Digital playbooks – turn response plans into interactive step-by-step workflows
Task tracking – assign and monitor crisis-related tasks in real time
Custom forms – capture updates, reports or requests from staff during an incident
Centralized communication – store discussions and updates alongside relevant actions
Access controls – set permissions so that different users see only what they need to see
The takeaway: Veoci structures crisis responses without needing a dedicated response team. It combines business continuity planning, task management and communication to keep processes running.
7. Incident.io: best for Slack-native incident response
Tool category: Incident management
Incident.io is a lightweight incident management tool for Slack-based teams. Small tech companies, for instance, can respond to outages and performance issues without switching tools or building a custom process.
Who it’s for: Startup companies and small development teams that want to manage incidents inside Slack, with workflows and documentation.
Incident.io’s key features:
Slack-first workflows – declare incidents, assign roles and manage responses through Slack
Post-incident reviews – automatically create timelines and incident reports
Automated updates – keep stakeholders up to date with pre-written messages and timeline tracking
Custom severity levels – set your incident categories to fit your team’s needs
Integrations with standard tech software – connect with tools like Jira, PagerDuty and GitHub
The takeaway: Incident.io allows small teams to manage incidents without leaving Slack. It’s practical for teams that want to coordinate incident responses without a full-scale incident management solution.
How to support your crisis management plan with Pipedrive
While not a dedicated crisis management platform, Pipedrive can be valuable in streamlining your internal response process. You can adapt its customer relationship management (CRM) features as a lightweight crisis solution.
Here are ways you can support your crisis management plan with Pipedrive.
1. Log crisis-related deals, tasks and updates in one place
First, create a dedicated pipeline to centralize disruption response activities. This pipeline acts as a live crisis dashboard. It’ll give your team a central place to log what’s happening and who’s handling it.
Go to the drop-down list at the top right of your Deals page and click + New pipeline.
Name the pipeline something like “Incident Response” or “Business Continuity”. Add stages to reflect your internal processes, like:
Issue Identified > Investigating > Responding > Following-up > Resolved.
Each deal card in your pipeline might represent:
A specific incident (e.g., “Outage – March 12”)
A client requiring tailored communication
A key internal process (like system restoration)
Move the card between stages to reflect where that issue stands in your response plan. For instance, once you confirm the problem, advance the card to Investigating.
As you set up your incident response pipeline, think about what would work best for your organization. Pipedrive is a highly customizable CRM, so you’ll have no problem tailoring it to your needs.
2. Assign and track follow-ups after an incident
Once a crisis is moving through your pipeline, each stage will require specific actions. Pipedrive’s Activities feature lets you assign and track tasks directly from each deal card. Everything connects to the incident in progress.
Inside any deal, click on Activity. Name the type of activity (e.g., call, meeting or to-do) and assign it to a team member.
Add a due date that aligns with the current pipeline stage. Finally, add a short description of the desired outcome or instructions for the responsible team member.
As the deal moves through the pipeline, you can use activity filters to track what’s due, completed or delayed.
3. Use automations to trigger updates and reduce manual work
Use Pipedrive’s workflow automations to trigger internal notifications, create follow-up activities or send status emails.
In a crisis, automating these tasks prevents anything from slipping through the cracks. It removes the need for manual updates, reducing delays and ensuring everyone is in the loop.
From your dashboard, click on … > Automations and click + Automation. Next, choose a trigger based on your pipeline.
Choose an action for the automation to perform, like:
Send an email to a person or group
Create an activity
Update a field (e.g., mark “Incident Response” as “Closed”)
For example, you could set up something like When a deal moves to ‘Communicating’ > Notify management team or When a deal moves to ‘Resolved’ > Create a follow-up review task.
Automations make your plan easier to follow under pressure and help your team stay one step ahead as things unfold.
4. Manage post-incident work with Pipedrive’s Projects add-on
Pipedrive’s Projects software helps you manage post-incident work without switching to a separate project management tool.
Note: The Projects feature is standard on Pipedrive’s Power and Enterprise plans, or you can purchase it as an add-on for Professional accounts or lower.
Once you’ve solved the immediate crisis, follow up with longer-term tasks. For example, fix underlying issues, update documentation and communicate with clients.
To handle your tasks, drag any deal to Move/convert and choose Projects in the Save to… drop-down menu.
Create a project to manage follow-up activities, adding tasks like:
“Conduct internal review to find root cause”
“Update client-facing status page”
“Update business continuity documentation”
You can assign each task to a relevant team member, set deadlines and use the project board view to track progress.
5. Use Pipedrive’s Smart Docs feature to create reports and plans
Smart Docs lets you create, manage and share incident-related documents in Pipedrive. Instead of losing updates in emails or chat threads, you keep everything connected to your crisis pipeline.
Go to Documents to build reusable Smart Docs templates for post-incident reviews, risk assessments or action plans.
For example, create a crisis management document template with fields for summary, timeline, root cause, impact and follow-up actions.
Quickly fill out the relevant sections whenever needed and attach the document to your crisis pipeline.
You can also track when someone opens a shared file to know when a stakeholder has seen an update.
With Smart Docs, small teams can easily capture key details, share updates and maintain visibility within Pipedrive. The feature is available on the Advanced plan and higher (or as a paid add-on for lower-tier plans).
Final thoughts
Crisis management solutions help small businesses respond quickly and stay organized when disruptions happen. With the right setup, you can give your team structure and clarity to minimize confusion and recover without serious issues.
Pipedrive offers a flexible way to manage follow-ups and track tasks directly in your CRM, even when things don’t go to plan. Start your 14-day free trial and see how it supports your crisis response workflow.
