Agility PR Solutions is a media monitoring and analysis platform for public relations management, and a subsidiary of Innodata. The product was originally PR Newswire Agility, which was divested to MediaMiser, a subsidiary of Innodata, then rebranded as Agility PR Solutions.
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Cision PRWeb
Score 7.0 out of 10
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Cision PRWeb aims to impact customer behavior by providing efficient communication tools to continuously engage with target audiences across multiple online channels including search, social media and with industry-specific partner websites, bloggers and influencers.
Agility PR Solutions is well-suited to finding mentions for a large number of keywords and keeping them organized. As a membership association, this is perfect for us because we are able to track all of our members. We are also able to use it to find up-to-date reporter contacts in the right areas for our media pitches and press releases for both ourselves and members. Scenarios where Agility PR Solutions is not well suited... I haven't really found any yet. I anticipate that if you expected the software to do everything for you, then maybe that would be a problem.
Wire press release distribution is often a luxury purchase, especially at the price point. In my experience Cision acts as if it's destined to win everyone's business just because of its name. Too often we've found ourselves being turned off by the arrogance and taking our business (and our clients' business) to alternative companies that are happy to have us.
PRWeb is fairly easy to use to issue press releases. They have a review process that will look over your release before submission although this review is not going to catch spelling and grammatical errors.
I've seen our press releases posted on industry relevant websites thanks to the reach that PRWeb provided us.
Although I never used it because we subscribed to a different service, PRWeb allows you to create and send email blasts within their OutMarket marketing platform.
I enjoy the ability to add a quote call out in the release.
I also like that images or videos can be added to the release.
There is a lot of stuff you can do on the website, and it can be challenging to find what you need without asking customer service for help. I'm a person who likes to do things for myself.
Sometimes I wish that more of their features were just a part of what was available instead of an upsell. I want to use everything but can afford it.
I feel like they upgrade a lot which is great but at the same time, changing the feeling of things makes it feel less familiar.
Increasing the volume of media that can receive communication would help - going from 5,000 to 7,500 or 10,000 would be a massive help.
Providing a social media platform in which to send out either X posts, LinkedIn, and Facebook posts to media as an alternative communication would help
Increasing the number of podcasters and there contact details would help.
We are unlikely to renew PRWeb because I feel that the costs outweigh the benefits of the service. For a company like ours (small business with about 60 employees) we don't have enough press that warrants monthly coverage. We may look at using PRWeb on an as needed basis, 3-4 times a year for single submissions, but that would be the extent of it. I could see PRWeb being much more beneficial for large companies that are constantly needing to issue press.
The Cision PRWeb platform is mostly intuitive. It is broken into Monitoring, Social, Insights, and Outreach sections. The way Mention Streams are set up and organized has confused employees who are new to the dashboard. Under Outreach, the Launchpad and Activities tabs are a little bit redundant and could probably be consolidated.
I have only required support from PRWeb on two separate occasions and they handled my issues without any problems. I was a bit confused at first not sure if they had received my requests but shortly after I received responses and was able to move forward with my press release.
It is not an "either-or" situation. If a company really wants to put a release out on the wire, one service might be better suited for it than the other. For when a company wants to target certain countries or vertical markets (e.g. Latin America), PR Newswire would be the proper choice.
We love to be able to share member news, so Agility PR Solutions enables us to do just that. Better! This improves our member engagement, which then improves retention.
We are a funded EDA Tech Hub. I use Agility PR Solutions to track both mentions for ourselves so we can share them with the EDA which is important for ratings, but also to track what the other hubs are doing.
Agility PR Solutions has had an impact on our media relations because I can now send out a media advisory about a press release to a targeted list instead of just putting out a press release that might never reach anyone.
