Meltwater vs. Parse.ly

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Meltwater
Score 7.9 out of 10
N/A
Meltwater Media Intelligence platform is a set of public relations software tools for media monitoring, social media monitoring, and collecting brand insights. The four areas of functionality are Monitor, Analyze, Distribute, and Engage. (Note that this product combines features from the vendor Meltwater's former Buzz, Press, and News products.)N/A
Parse.ly
Score 7.8 out of 10
N/A
Parse.ly is a content optimization platform for online publishers. It provides in-depth analytics and helps maximize the performance of the digital content. It features a dashboard geared for editorial and business staff and an API that can be used by a product team to create personalized or contextual experiences on a website.
$499
per month
Pricing
MeltwaterParse.ly
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
No answers on this topic
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
MeltwaterParse.ly
Free Trial
NoYes
Free/Freemium Version
NoNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoYes
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeRequired
Additional Details
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
MeltwaterParse.ly
Features
MeltwaterParse.ly
Web Analytics
Comparison of Web Analytics features of Product A and Product B
Meltwater
-
Ratings
Parse.ly
7.6
7 Ratings
6% below category average
Lead Conversion Tracking00 Ratings6.23 Ratings
Bounce Rate Measurement00 Ratings6.65 Ratings
Device and Browser Reporting00 Ratings8.36 Ratings
Pageview Tracking00 Ratings8.26 Ratings
Event Tracking00 Ratings7.85 Ratings
Reporting in real-time00 Ratings8.46 Ratings
Referral Source Tracking00 Ratings7.66 Ratings
Customizable Dashboards00 Ratings7.66 Ratings
Best Alternatives
MeltwaterParse.ly
Small Businesses
Newswire
Newswire
Score 9.0 out of 10
StatCounter
StatCounter
Score 9.0 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
Newswire
Newswire
Score 9.0 out of 10
Optimal
Optimal
Score 9.1 out of 10
Enterprises
Cision Communications Cloud
Cision Communications Cloud
Score 8.0 out of 10
Optimal
Optimal
Score 9.1 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
MeltwaterParse.ly
Likelihood to Recommend
7.4
(73 ratings)
7.8
(82 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
10.0
(10 ratings)
8.7
(32 ratings)
Usability
6.2
(5 ratings)
7.7
(35 ratings)
Availability
10.0
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Support Rating
10.0
(29 ratings)
7.8
(35 ratings)
In-Person Training
8.0
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Online Training
8.0
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Implementation Rating
6.1
(2 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Vendor post-sale
1.0
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Vendor pre-sale
9.1
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
MeltwaterParse.ly
Likelihood to Recommend
Meltwater
Meltwater is well-suited for agencies that have an engagement team who is looking to service a variety of client needs such as social media reporting, public relations outreach, and community management. If you're looking to have a platform serve just one need, you can still use Meltwater but will get more bang for your buck if you are needing a variety of tools.
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Parse.ly
Parse.ly is a great tool for publishers who want to track engagement and audience behaviour across websites. With Parse.ly, we can easily track metrics like pageviews, time spent on page, and scroll depth to see which content is resonating with our audience and optimize our content strategy accordingly. Our marketers found Parse.ly to be an excellent tool for tracking the effectiveness of our campaigns. We can use Parse.ly to track metrics like referral sources, conversion rates, and engagement by audience segment to see which channels and tactics are driving the most engagement and conversions.
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Pros
Meltwater
  • Media research - you can search for relevant publications and journalists to add to your media list.
  • Earned media coverage - you can search for coverage of your brand and find news stories that also include data that may be useful (how many people did the story reach for example).
  • Building media lists - if you have no current existing list, you can build and export one in Excel for example.
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Parse.ly
  • Firstly, the platform is super easy to use, it is user-friendly and easy to navigate through.
  • Secondly, the platform also provides you the option to use filters to your best fit and adjust the filters according to what data you want to look at.
  • Thirdly, it enables the user to have live feedback on their articles and see what can be improved going forward to address the need of the readers.
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Cons
Meltwater
  • The dashboards are not user-friendly, customizable (color, font size, etc.), or worthy of presenting to a client. All of the insights from a dashboard get pulled from the platform and placed into a more client-friendly presentation.
  • Paywalls for certain publications connected to who-knows-what. DowJones racket limits media monitoring capabilities and results in manual searches for a growing number of publications.
  • TVeyes, the broadcast monitoring arm of the media monitoring capabilities, just needs TLC and to become more client-facing. Currently, the links produced to share clips look sketchy, and they have a relatively short shelf life.
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Parse.ly
  • A more readily understandable visual guide to a visitor's pathway through your site would help understand what keeps a reader on-site.
  • The total page view number for the day should be more readily visible--on the overview page, not just by going to Posts>Historical.
  • Maintain the archive for longer than a year under all plans--it's a shame to lose year-on-year data quickly.
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Likelihood to Renew
Meltwater
Meltwater works well for our organization and has allowed us to meet our internal goals. We are always open to new products and services that may be able to provide similar or better features; however, our experience has been that many of Meltwater's competitors are not up to the task.
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Parse.ly
As an employee, this is difficult for me to comment as I am not directly funding or making these business decisions. However, it is a tool many get on with for surface level data that is useful to editorial teams.
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Usability
Meltwater
Once you get some basic training it's pretty easy to use. I would like to see training manuals, or instructional videos to help me explore features I'm not currently using.
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Parse.ly
The Parse.ly platform is very user-friendly and easy to use. User management is simple, and reporting setup only takes a few minutes. They provide very helpful documentation for implementing the scripts on your site and have great customer support to help with custom development such as implementing their content recommendation engine.
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Support Rating
Meltwater
Our account rep at Meltwater went dark for a long time. Then, a couple of weeks ago, our new account manager reached out to set up a meeting. Apparently, they had a big shakeup in the company, and there were some personnel changes. Our new account rep was great in discussing the platform's capabilities that were available to us and even offered to schedule a follow-up meeting with his technical team to introduce our new social media team members to the platform and how it could help them with their jobs.
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Parse.ly
I rate this question this way solely because I haven't requested any support. I feel where I will eventually get support would be when we take Parse.ly up on some training that is being offered. We are looking to do that at some point after the first of the year and when our schedules support it.
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In-Person Training
Meltwater
Again, really in-depth and helpful for a program that is really easy to use.
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Parse.ly
No answers on this topic
Online Training
Meltwater
Walked step by step through program. Very informative on a program that doesn't require much training.
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Parse.ly
No answers on this topic
Implementation Rating
Meltwater
You are only allowed 15 users, so make sure you've identified who will have access to use the tool.
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Parse.ly
No answers on this topic
Alternatives Considered
Meltwater
I was looking for a full-service option. I did some research. What really sold me was the presentation. They offered products that were helpful, and I wasn’t even aware of them. It is more expensive than the other products that are out there, but you get more. The other companies are good, but Meltwater Media Intelligence is more full service.
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Parse.ly
Parse.ly does pretty well compared to Chartbeat, particularly when it comes to historical information and analysis options that are easy for employees to use after some short training. The onboarding for Parse.ly is intuitive, and the scheduled reports take away basically all of the inconvenience associated with regular metrics reviewing. But Chartbeat wins in its social audience tracking because it can source traffic to a specific social post, which can show you exactly how your audience is coming to your content and where you need to put your content to be sure you get that audience.
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Return on Investment
Meltwater
  • As a PR firm, we rely on the media databases that [Meltwater Media Intelligence Platform] supplies to deliver the media exposure that they expect from us.
  • We utilize their tracking of media hits for our overall reporting to our clients.
  • Both of these are advantageous in helping us to not only keep our existing clients happy but also to gain new clients (and, in turn - revenue), as well.
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Parse.ly
  • Sometimes in meetings our editorial director will point out stories that didn't perform well. To us, that means readers don't really care about the topic, so we'll pivot away from writing about that in the future. That might not be "business objectives" though.
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ScreenShots

Parse.ly Screenshots

Screenshot of Overview in full-screen mode: Many Parse.ly pages, like the Overview, are TV-ready. Keep your entire team up-to-date with live, full-screen dashboards on TVs in your office.Screenshot of Overview screen: See a snapshot of what your audience is paying attention to today so you can make fast decisions about what content to produce or distribute. Customize it to show only what your team cares about by filtering it to a particular author, section, or tag. You can pick what stats and listings are displayed.Screenshot of Real-time posts page: See what’s gathering steam so you can capitalize on attention to every post, campaign, or section.
Real-time data includes the last 24 hours and updates every five seconds. It can be seen, filtered, and sorted on most screens.Screenshot of Historical posts page: Explore historical trends by post, author, section, topic, referrer, or campaign. Compare today’s performance to last week, month, or year.Screenshot of Campaign tracking: Easily tie in your off-site promotion to engagement with your on-site content using UTM parameters.Screenshot of Multi-channel tracking: Track all your content in one place, no matter where it lives.
Compare how your content performances on various distributed channels including your website, AMP, Facebook Instant Articles, and Apple News.