Meltwater

It is great for getting real-time notifications for keywords and topics, especially when something new has been discussed and you are looking for community insights.

Large corporations or agencies that are not price sensitive and can afford to absorb the cost if tools are not being used.

The tool is great for finding specific ads from competitors and getting an estimate of how far the reach is for the audience. There’s also a feature where you can sort news articles based on relevance.

Combining a Boolean search with their advance search feature isn’t possible, but now that you don’t have to do strictly Boolean searches, it is a lot easier to set up searches for yourself. They do have training resources to teach Boolean, however I don’t have much spare time to take the courses. This limits my ability to create effective searches in the tool.

I have also attempted to send newsletters from a Meltwater email, and the emails will not come through to my email. I am unsure if this issue is a Meltwater issue or an issue with my work’s security settings.

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.

It’s great for medium-sized to larger businesses that do a lot of press releases and news services like media monitoring. I would not recommend this for small businesses that do the occasional press release.