Muck Rack vs. Notified Public Relations Solutions with GlobeNewswire

Muck Rack has the potential to be a very powerful tool that can improve PR agency efficiency across the board. The death knell for Muck Rack, and the reason why we terminated our contract early, was that they offered a complimentary six-month on-ramp to win our business. In other words, we had six full months to use Muck Rack while we were still using the other two vendors' products. Multiple team members compared results head-to-head for a wide range of our clients and Muck Rack simply did not stack up. That six-month overlap period proved to be very eye-opening and enabled us to reveal what we found to be severe limitations in terms of the quality of the database and the quality of the reporting.

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This service might be more well suited for large corporations with a lot of press coverage that they need to get out on a very regular basis. GlobeNewswire may be much less appropriate for smaller organizations that cannot commit to the annual spend of the contract and adhere to its strict nature and aren't sending out regular releases. Note that they did not work with us on contract flexibility once signed, so just be sure that you will fully utilize the service and really stay on top of the cancellation date because if you miss it, you will be automatically locked in for another year. Thus for smaller companies it will be best to stick to an a-la-carte service that will be flexible and work with you on your changing needs. That is definitely not GlobeNewswire.

• The media alert function is awesome! Google Alerts can't get the detail I need, nor do they filter just for the media. I can set media alerts for particular selection factors such as everyone with "education" as their beat.
• I am liking the notes ability to log interactions with particular media. This helps me not have to track down conversation chains or actions with media.
• The interface screen is modern. I love that if I am running a search in one screen, when I click on a particular person or outlet, it opens ANOTHER screen so that I don't have use the back button. I can open, say 10 people at once and compare their notes.
• I love the PDF summaries from lists. I love the Who shared feature. I LOVE EVERYTHING in MuckRack!

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• Allows you to see coverage from numerous sources: print, online, broadcast, etc.
• Allows you to track coverage for numerous clients in one organized place.
• Allows you to receive incoming coverage via email.

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• When you export a media list, it does not include the email address so you have to search for it offline or on the journalist's profile. It's annoying.
• Sometimes when you save a list, not all the contacts you marked are saved and you have to do it over.
• There isn't a "click all" button to add all of the contacts to a list. You have to wait until all the people load - which isn't ideal for productivity.

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• Marketwired has recently changed its online platform. It is more complex than necessary. I used it many times and still often had to call the help desk for advice. Sometimes there would be 'bugs' in the system that were out of my control and even the help desk struggled to resolve it.
• I used to simply email the news release & photos to the help desk and they'd get it out for me on time. It was effective and I appreciated the excellent customer service. Now the help desk are no longer allowed to distribute on a client's behalf, which is frustrating - even if you struggle using the online system.
• The section of the online platform I found most confusing was around which media a news story would be distributed too. There are a lot of choices and it wasn't obvious to me as to how they were sub-divided. I often had to check with the help desk to ensure I'd made the best selection for the news story.
• The level of customer service has declined. My account manager who previously provided excellent service was moved to another role as part of an internal restructure. Many team members at my agency voiced frustrations with the level of customer care.

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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.

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.

Any time I have had an issue or a question about something on the platform, someone on the chat now function has always answered within 10 mins at most! Everyone I have worked with has been extremely friendly and quick to solve. There is never the inconvenience of having to call, talk to a robot, or deal with an automated email. Customer service is extremely personal and each account also has a designated account manager to oversee the relationship

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Their customer service is great and has been very supportive when we've needed it. Their team checks up on us regularly to ensure we are getting the most out of our service.

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I was not involved with the implementation.

I previously used Cision PRWeb. It was a good service, but for what I needed it wasn't as affordable and I also found the backend system difficult to navigate and manage. I loved the ease of use and the ability to find out what I needed almost immediately once I logged into Muck Rack. Because I have to think so much already, having a platform that takes the weight off having to do a lot of extra research and ask questions to just use the system effectively and efficiently is a gift.

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We have only ever used GlobeNewswire and have had such success that we don't feel the need to evaluate competitors or switch to another solution in over 5 years.

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• Muck Rack has paid for itself, as the ability to access its media database is essential to the media relations work I do on behalf of my client. By having access, it helps me make strategic choices of which media to pitch for what and when, which ultimately leads to positive client placements in key articles. This in turn leads to happy clients!

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• Circulates news on our company which raises credibility for us in the industry and to clients.
• Being able to use our releases as a resource to point to have had a positive impact on our social media presence.

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