Business Wire vs. Cision PRWeb

For a funding announcement or a big product launch, Business Wire is the service to use. For less important announcements, and for clients with limited budget, it might be worth considering other options. PR Newswire and Marketwired are both decent services that provide comparable results, but the high touch quality of Business Wire is pretty unique.

Incentivized

Cision PRWeb is a wonderful tool for our team of communications professionals. We typically include media mentions over a given time period in our internal reporting, and appreciate the quick notifications whenever we are mentioned somewhere. It is also much quicker than manually curating media lists when you are in a hurry to send a press release. The platform allows you to integrate your social media channels, but I would not use it to pull definitive cross-channel reports on social media performance.

Incentivized

• The site has a very specific search function that makes it easy for users to sort through the many press releases put on the site each day, making the process easier/more efficient.
• The "Media & Journalist Tools" tab is helpful for myself and my colleagues, specifically, the RSS feeds to make sure we're staying on top of business happenings.
• I don't use the "How-To" section, though I know folks who have to learn more about writing press releases, and I've heard it's very helpful.

Incentivized

• Identification of key and relevant media as a result of inputting key parameters
• Cision PRWeb provides actionable insights into media engagement
• Cision PRWeb provides a quick and easy platform on which to build and grow relationships with the media
• Cision PRWeb facilitates the entry into new vertical media markets.

Incentivized

• Expensive - distributions cost hundreds to thousands of dollars, with a higher cost for longer releases and additional fees for multimedia content like photos or videos.
• Limited number of media outlets specifically in Florida.

Incentivized

• Would be nice if they didn't charge extra for a release that has is submitted the day before it is scheduled to be posted.
• The option to upload a word document instead of copy and pasting all release content into a form would be nice addition.
• Uploading social media links a representative of a client is not so easy.

Incentivized

It's the best service we have used. We have tried a competitor and everyone prefers Business Wire.

Incentivized

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.

Incentivized

I gave it this rating because the Business Wire website is very user-friendly. Being able to navigate the platform on my own without technical assistance made it possible for me to quickly and easily submit news release distributions, which can be critical at times, such as during hurricane season when we need to get information out to the news media and our customers quickly.

Incentivized

Cision appears to go out of its way to make its user interfaces terrible. Like, literally every product they offer was anywhere from slightly better to FAR better in earlier iterations. No current iteration of any Cision product is the best iteration. The UX for Cision PRWeb is no different.

Incentivized

The team members are very quick to respond and do their absolute best to help resolve issues quickly. I also like that I can have one of them proofread my press releases before they are distributed. It always helps to have another set of eyes on the content. There have been a few times that they've caught an error that nobody else did so it's worth the extra couple minutes that it takes!

Incentivized

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.

Incentivized

Business Wire is very easy to implement. This isn't a requirement, but it's recommended that you begin to set up saved distributions for different clients so that you don't have to start over from scratch. Rather than doing all this work on the front end, you can just do it as you send out your first piece of news for each client.

Incentivized

Implementation of PRWeb required very little of Strouse. It was a quick process and we were almost immediately ready to use the platform.

Incentivized

Cision PRWeb was not good at targeting the major business community and was not fitted well into our demands. The price of Cision was high and very unjustifiable as there were not enough features in it and was not efficient in its working as well. But on the contrary, if I look at Business Wire then I think it is just a perfect match for our business demands.

Cision PRWeb is a cheaper option among Business Wire and PR Newswire, but the ultimate outcome of what we pay them for (press release distributions) is essentially the same. That said, PR Newswire is also owned by Cision, so it suffers from the same bad user experience. I've also used EIN Presswire and eReleases (a PR Newswire reseller), both of which were not on the list of comparable products. For my money, eReleases is the single best option because of two things: spectacularly affordable price point, and awesome customer service.

Incentivized

• Staying updated on business news in my team's industry
• Helps my team generate story ideas for our publication, allowing us to do our jobs more efficiently

Incentivized

• It was definitely a cost decision for us, but the ability to have access to their media database was by far the most useful and needed tool for us.
• For tracking media hits, it saved us time tracking the majority of hits. Where it didn't save us time was with smaller, more niche media.

Incentivized