Cision PRWeb vs. CyberAlert vs. Free-press-release.com

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.

Incentivized

This is a great tool for larger size companies that will have a lot of media tracking they need to do. It appeals to stakeholders involved in PR, data analytics, and helps decision makers know what will have the most impact and where their marketing dollars should go!

Incentivized

• 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.

Incentivized

• Gave us a concise report daily of our media clips (media tracking)
• Gave us analytical information about how much reach those clips had (how much influence they had)
• Helped us evaluate better ways to get and use earned and paid media

Incentivized

• 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.

Incentivized

• Personally I didn't see any. Though I know my boss had a few calls with their team to get the daily reports formatted and presented just the way she wanted them. The team took a few tries to get into the swing of what she was asking for, but they were more than willing to put in the time and effort to customize the reports for her.

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

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.

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

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

Incentivized

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.

Incentivized

I think it's a bit more developed and professional looking. It's best for bigger companies.

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

• I wasn't at the top of these discussions but, I did help make monthly reports that went directly to the CFO and CEO that used these analytics to show how our corporate communications office was doing and all the work we had done for the past month. This is a way to cover yourself and show that we had done a lot of work and good work at that.

Incentivized