The best media database software there is, but room for improvement in other offerings
Updated March 26, 2022

The best media database software there is, but room for improvement in other offerings

Anonymous | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User

Overall Satisfaction with Cision PR Software

We use Cision as a media research database for a wide variety of clients in an array of industries, both domestic and international. As an integrated marketing firm, we have teams across many disciplines, but Cision is typically used by those in our PR department only. It's an integral daily tool to develop media lists for PR campaigns.
  • Creating media lists.
  • Researching media targets that may exist for new business opportunities or existing clients.
  • Reporting results.
  • While the content generated through media research is high quality, the interface to get there is often clunky and slow.
  • The reporting features are good but not great. The software still misses a lot, and it takes time to comb through to determine what needs to be added manually.
  • There is a clear positive ROI with Cision, given its capabilities within the media research category. We've tested offerings from competitive companies and none compare.
  • We did pay for Cision's media monitoring and reporting suite for a short time, but we found alternatives that better suited our needs.
Purely from a media research (media list) database perspective, Cision provides the best, most robust results in the industry. Most important, however, is that the database is kept current. This is a big deal as reporters and producers tend to move around quite a bit. In addition, Cision's overall cost to value was the best we found.
The real core value in Cision's offering is its robust media database. While some of the other fringe offerings are ok (reporting, reporter inquiries, distribution), they alone would not justify paying for the service because there are other companies out there that do a better and cheaper job with those offerings. The bottom line is that we would not be able to do what we do as effectively without the media database.