Meltwater vs. PR Newswire

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Meltwater
Score 6.6 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
PR Newswire
Score 8.4 out of 10
N/A
N/A
$199
per release
Pricing
MeltwaterPR Newswire
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
Newswire Digital
$199
per release
Newswire Digital Plus
$449
per release
Newswire State
$499
per release
Newswire Canada
$649
per release
Newswire UK
$649
per release
Newswire Asia
$649
per release
Newswire National
$799
per release
Newswire Financial
$799
per release
Newswire Latin America
$949
per release
Newswire Global
1,649
per release
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
MeltwaterPR Newswire
Free Trial
NoYes
Free/Freemium Version
NoNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional Details
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
MeltwaterPR Newswire
Considered Both Products
Meltwater
Chose 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 …
PR Newswire
Chose PR Newswire
I have inherited Meltwater at two companies and always went back to PR Newswire. Their sales people are very aggressive, they didn't deliver on what they said they would and distribution was poor compared to what we saw with PR Newswire. I was told their issues had been fixed …
Chose PR Newswire
We looked at changing due to the price of PR Newswire but were not as impressed with the other services to risk leaving. We have a great relationship with our account rep at PR Newswire and overall, had not had any major issues in the 5+ years we've been using them.
Top Pros
Top Cons
Best Alternatives
MeltwaterPR Newswire
Small Businesses
Cision Communications Cloud
Cision Communications Cloud
Score 7.6 out of 10
Newswire
Newswire
Score 8.3 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
Cision Communications Cloud
Cision Communications Cloud
Score 7.6 out of 10
Newswire
Newswire
Score 8.3 out of 10
Enterprises
Cision Communications Cloud
Cision Communications Cloud
Score 7.6 out of 10

No answers on this topic

All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
MeltwaterPR Newswire
Likelihood to Recommend
5.7
(71 ratings)
8.0
(15 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
8.0
(9 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Usability
2.2
(3 ratings)
8.0
(1 ratings)
Availability
10.0
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Support Rating
7.5
(28 ratings)
5.7
(2 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
MeltwaterPR Newswire
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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Cision
PR Newswire is a terrific solution for ensuring that news is distributed in a way that is findable and searchable. It also automatically ties the news to ticker symbols. It's not a useful or meaningful solution for actually securing news coverage. It still requires picking up the phone and pitching media.
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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.
Read full review
Cision
  • User-friendly - PR Newswire has a very user-friendly website that makes it simple and easy to get a news release set up for a distribution relatively quickly. You can also save your selections from a previous distribution to make it go even faster. Since I am pretty much always sending out my releases to the same distribution list, all I have to do is check that box.
  • Customer support - When you submit a release via the web portal, you have several options about when it will be released. I typically want my releases to go out as quickly as possible, but even then I know an account representative will take a look at my release and accompanying multimedia materials and give me a quick call to confirm and make sure everything is set before officially sending it out. It's a helpful step without making the process cumbersome.
  • Reports - PR Newswire provides timely and comprehensive reports, so it's easy to tell the where the news release went.
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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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Cision
  • The pricing structure is comprehensive, depending on how far you want your release to go.
  • Adding multi-media, such as photos, increases visibility quite a bit but PR Newswire charges extra for photos.
  • PR Newswire also charges an annual fee for storing your logo, which I think should be free for organizations that already have an account (and pay a membership fee).
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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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Cision
No answers on this topic
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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Cision
PR Newswire is an industry leader and gives the user the ability to send out a press release, to a wide audience, very quickly and easily. The pricing is on par with other companies (perhaps they are a bit higher) but they do send useful "visibility" reports after a release is distributed, which is helpful when trying to explain ROI to C suite leaders. You also can email or fax your own distribution list, which is helpful and reduces the need for a media monitoring service
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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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Cision
Honestly this is probably the absolute worst part of the company. I had maybe 5 different emails from 5 different people when attempting to use this service, and I never knew who my account manager was and who the other people were.
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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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Cision
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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Cision
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.
Read full review
Cision
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.
Read full review
Cision
PR Newswire and Businesswire are familiar, similar products in terms of newswire distribution services. Many times it comes down to client familiarity with one service over the other, the cost per distribution, the reach of distribution, as well as other related fees, i.e., you have to be a member of PR Newswire to use the service and then pay fees on top of that for individual distributions.
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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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Cision
  • We lost one of our pre paid distributions due to the expiration date
  • We would like to see more communication between the client and the representative or account manager
  • We have had success in getting larger publications to pick up our over the wire publication
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