Likelihood to Recommend PRWeb served it's purpose for Strouse by sending news out to new audiences although this never generated an overwhelming amount of traffic to our website. If you are only interested in issuing PR and getting your name out there, then I think PRWeb is a fine solution. I find PRWeb less appropriate if you really want to drive traffic to your site through a press release in hopes of creating sales. During the selection process I would be interested in knowing what sources my PR would be submitted to. Is it being submitted to relevant websites? Will links be provided on all of these websites? Ask yourself, will these websites benefit my companies SEO?
Read full review Critical Mention is great for schools/businesses/etc. that want to know when they are in the news. Sometimes a brand's reputation can suffer greatly if you are not aware of an issue that was posted by a competitor or media outlet If you are not in the news a lot, there is no need for this product.
Tom McGuire Director Of Communications (and Media Relations)
Read full review Pros It provides a newswire option at a very reasonable price. The pricing is in a sweet spot for many startups who would want to use it. It hits up all of the key media outlets that you would expect a wire service to be connected to. Read full review Critical Mention's customer service is excellent. Any time we've had a challenge finding a clip or anything, they are on top of it and go above and beyond to make sure we have what we are looking for quickly. The ability to create tailored clips of each mention and quickly share them is unparalleled. The reporting feature is fantastic. It makes it very simple to pull detailed reports and share them with interested parties. Read full review Cons One issue we ran into with media tracking was that when it came to smaller or more niche media, it had a hard time tracking hits from those outlets for our clients. Building larger media lists was time consuming and cumbersome. Read full review I believe the one frustration I have with searching in general that if the closed captioning is not correct on the broadcast end Critical Mention will miss that data. Which is not a Critical Mention issue and does overcome depending on the search. Also, it would be great if you wanted to capture a complete 30 minutes newscast, it could be done by using the search. The clips need to be about to handle 30-minute programs. One nagging issue when using Critical Mention is that it does not save e-mail addresses when sending a report and this requires a waste of time having to type in e-mails that should be able to be pulled from the customers' contacts. Also, it would be great if you wanted to capture a complete 30 minutes newscast, it could be done by using the search. The clips need to be able to handle 30-minute programs. Read full review Likelihood to Renew 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.
Read full review I gave this a 5 only because I do not make the decisions to renew. When I used this at my previous company, I also recommended to the decision maker to renew this tool as it was a crucial piece to the overall client objective
Read full review Usability It is a very simple program to use. They walk you step by step on what is necessary to complete a PR.
Read full review It's great for quickly looking up a specific clip, but this platform makes it difficult to select and accurately report on a high volume of clips
Read full review Support Rating 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.
Read full review Look, Critical Mention follows up on an or phone call immediately or in the AM the following business day. I have called them after hours and get a live person to work through any issues that may have come up. Support seems to be job one with Critical Mention.
Read full review Implementation Rating Implementation of PRWeb required very little of Strouse. It was a quick process and we were almost immediately ready to use the platform.
Read full review Critical Mention implementation was easy and fast. Their support and training were awesome.
Read full review Alternatives Considered I've used all these services. Which one to choose depends on the situation. It's good to have knowledge of all the options. Of course, there are many other services as well, and even free services that a very small business or nonprofit can use that do similar things. I find PRWeb is a good fit for many of my clients because of the pricing. Photos are increasingly important in getting news picked up and PRWeb doesn't charge you an arm and a leg like some services do to include a photo
Read full review Burrelles is confusing and outdated. Critical Mention works on the side of the account team and understands our needs better. I was able to share hundreds of outlets that I wanted to be included in my online search and Critical Mention added all of them in less than a day I was seeing better results in my searches. The possibilities with Burrelles seem limited while Critical Mention's online monitoring service really lets me craft reports the way I want to
Read full review Return on Investment 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. Read full review Every week the department I am a part does dozens of searches on Critical Mention. We use it as our primary search engine for all things broadcast. One negative aspect is that we do not know where Critical Mention gets their audience viewing numbers from so we just have to take it as their word. Another negative aspect is that we are limited on the amount of time that one clip can be so we have to share several clips of the same show with our clients. Read full review ScreenShots