Critical Mention vs. Muck Rack

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Critical Mention
Score 5.4 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
Muck Rack
Score 6.9 out of 10
N/A
Muck Rack is a public relations offering from Sawhorse Media.
$5,000
per year
Pricing
Critical MentionMuck Rack
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
Muck Rack
5,000
per year
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Critical MentionMuck Rack
Free Trial
NoNo
Free/Freemium Version
NoNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeOptionalNo setup fee
Additional Details——
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
Critical MentionMuck Rack
Considered Both Products
Critical Mention
Chose Critical Mention
It provides both free and premium and you can also add a portfolio, other media links, and website. It also verifies its members like popular apps like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram [do]. It increases your visibility on google search for free like I use it.
Chose Critical Mention
Critical Mention has an excellent TV coverage solution in the marketing or communication industry. More so, helps us identify or see the comments in most of the social sites mentions, and gives the allowance of positively responding to them. The integration with Google, for the …
Chose Critical Mention
I've used TVEyes in the past. I like it because it's easier to point out national media hits with their search options. You can also search for key words in a given time period.
Muck Rack
Chose Muck Rack
Although it is sold as an all-in-one solution, my experience is that Muck Rack does not come close to comparing to the quality of a combination of Cision and Critical Mention. Comparing costs, Muck Rack's price tag is about the same as what we paid for both of the others, so …
Top Pros
Top Cons
Best Alternatives
Critical MentionMuck Rack
Small Businesses
Cision Communications Cloud
Cision Communications Cloud
Score 7.5 out of 10
Cision Communications Cloud
Cision Communications Cloud
Score 7.5 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
Cision Communications Cloud
Cision Communications Cloud
Score 7.5 out of 10
Cision Communications Cloud
Cision Communications Cloud
Score 7.5 out of 10
Enterprises
Cision Communications Cloud
Cision Communications Cloud
Score 7.5 out of 10
Cision Communications Cloud
Cision Communications Cloud
Score 7.5 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
Critical MentionMuck Rack
Likelihood to Recommend
1.8
(21 ratings)
6.2
(16 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
10.0
(7 ratings)
8.0
(1 ratings)
Usability
9.0
(2 ratings)
9.0
(2 ratings)
Availability
8.0
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Support Rating
10.0
(1 ratings)
9.4
(4 ratings)
Implementation Rating
10.0
(1 ratings)
5.0
(1 ratings)
User Testimonials
Critical MentionMuck Rack
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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Muck Rack
Muck Rack has been well suited for me when reporting and providing value add and ROI reporting to clients who are investing in publications. Not only has it been great creating media lists, drafting, sending out, and tracking pitches, but the ability to track coverage and export a report that showcases the reach, impact, and media value has been so beneficial for me. So, if you are working with clients in an external communications capacity, then the Muck Rack tools are very flexible and can fit your needs very well.
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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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Muck Rack
  • Muck Rack offers a robust and highly targeted media research tool that allows you to build a customized media list to launch a media relations campaign.
  • Muck Rack's customer support team is quite good and is very responsive.
  • Muck Rack's sales team does a great job of explaining how their solution will effectively address the needs of the organization.
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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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Muck Rack
  • Creating coverage reports is time-consuming and it is difficult to filter out unrelated coverage with the Boolean operator-driven functionality
  • Muck Rack does not integrate with our other monitoring and reporting tools, so for sharing reports everything needs to be manually exported and added to our reporting software.
  • Muck Rack does not include broadcast coverage monitoring in its normal package, and the functionality of the added broadcast tool is limited compared to other coverage monitoring tools.
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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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Muck Rack
It's the best tool we've found for this type of product. It is not 100% critical to our daily responsibilities, but as a corporate tool made available to us, it is something we leverage on a weekly basis.
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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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Muck Rack
Little training was required to leverage the tool. It is a very intuitive platform. The only troublesome aspect of the tool has been the email integration features, but that may be more of a security/IT issue with our corporate requirements than a Much Rack problem. Overall, it is a tool that anyone can leverage without much effort.
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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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Muck Rack
I'm sure it's fine. I have never used their customer support, not even when a list does not save. I just figured there isn't much they can do since it was a search. They do have live chat to get answers quickly but most of the time I'm working on lists after hours (since it's a lot of admin and I can do it front of the TV) and no one is available.
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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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Muck Rack
I was not involved with the implementation.
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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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Muck Rack
Cision Media Contact Database. Honestly, it has been a long time since I used it, but I do remember being unhappy with the service. I thought its UI/UE was clunky at the time, but I didn't complain because I had free access to it.
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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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Muck Rack
  • It's hard to measure ROI but I can say this: I have discovered and build relationships with media I may have had a hard time locating before. MuckRack has probably increased my efficiency by 50 percent and doubled my effectiveness.
  • I haven't looked a media databases in about 2 years but it is a much more cost effective media database than the big, traditional ones that everyone else has.
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