Critical Mention vs. Pulsar CORE

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Critical Mention
Score 5.3 out of 10
N/A
Critical Mention headquartered in New York offers their eponymous media monitoring platform for public relations and crisis management.N/A
Pulsar CORE
Score 10.0 out of 10
N/A
Pulsar is a social media monitoring platform offering social listening, owned channels analytics, and social CRM. Customers use Pulsar for brand tracking and campaign measurement. The platform includes 4 tools: TRAC: Social media listening across topics, audiences and content diffusion. CORE: Owned channels analytics to measure your content performance and audience growth. FLOW: Social customer relationship management and social media publishing. TEAM: Analyse your internal social networks…
$1,200
150,000 mentions
Pricing
Critical MentionPulsar CORE
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
TRAC (starter package)
$1,200
150,000 mentions
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Critical MentionPulsar CORE
Free Trial
NoNo
Free/Freemium Version
NoNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoYes
Entry-level Setup FeeOptionalNo setup fee
Additional Details—Prices listed are on a 'starting from' basis. All TRAC packages have unlimited user log-ins, unlimited search queries and are charged on the amount of mentions pulled in. Bespoke packages are available.
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
Critical MentionPulsar CORE
Top Pros
Top Cons
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Critical MentionPulsar CORE
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Mention
Mention
Score 9.4 out of 10
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User Ratings
Critical MentionPulsar CORE
Likelihood to Recommend
1.8
(21 ratings)
7.0
(1 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
10.0
(7 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Usability
9.0
(2 ratings)
7.0
(1 ratings)
Availability
8.0
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Support Rating
10.0
(1 ratings)
8.0
(1 ratings)
Implementation Rating
10.0
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
Critical MentionPulsar CORE
Likelihood to Recommend
Critical Mention
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.
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Pulsar
I think that Pulsar is a good tool for brands or agencies who have a set list of competitors or subbrands that they are looking to do a monthly/weekly comparison of engagement metrics. When you have the brand account inputted, the data is shown in a visually tangible way and easy to comprehend.
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Pros
Critical Mention
  • 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.
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Pulsar
  • Track engagements over time
  • Easy to use interface
  • Modern and updated display
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Cons
Critical Mention
  • 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.
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Pulsar
  • Unfortunately, when exporting data it is often hard to read in an easy format.
  • I've used other tools where you can get historical data once you put into the tool but Pulsar cannot do that.
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Likelihood to Renew
Critical Mention
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
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Pulsar
No answers on this topic
Usability
Critical Mention
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
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Pulsar
Pulsar is not a complex tool by any means. The interface is updated and comprehensive, and I've used multiple tools in the past where the interface was very outdated and exporting data was often a difficult process since it was not well organized. The tool works well in visualizing complex data.
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Support Rating
Critical Mention
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.
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Pulsar
I have not had to reach out to Pulsar support before but my coworkers have and said the support was good.
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Implementation Rating
Critical Mention
Critical Mention implementation was easy and fast. Their support and training were awesome.
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Pulsar
No answers on this topic
Alternatives Considered
Critical Mention
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
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Pulsar
I think that Pulsar is one of the more updated platforms that I have used and the metrics exported/shown in the dashboard are accurate. I think that some tools report inaccurate metrics gathered from social media platforms due to the new APIs, something that often causes confusion and lack of clarity.
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Return on Investment
Critical Mention
  • 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.
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Pulsar
  • Input into our algorithm for brand strength and stature
  • Quick engagement tracking
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ScreenShots

Pulsar CORE Screenshots

Screenshot of The activity dashboard gives you a thorough snapshot of all the key numbers in your datasetScreenshot of Pulsar TRAC advanced location detection gives you up to 100% geo-localised data by city, country and GPS coordinatesScreenshot of The Network map visualizes the engagement patterns within your audience and identifies the most influential usersScreenshot of Slice and dice the data with contextual, behavioural and content filtersScreenshot of See the bigger picture. Pulsar CORE gives you integrated brand-level metrics across all owned channels, so you can measure the total reach and engagement you're getting.