Meltwater vs. Cision
May 02, 2016
Meltwater vs. Cision
Score 2 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Software Version
Meltwater Press
Overall Satisfaction with Meltwater Press
We use Meltwater Press to build media lists for our clients, who are all in the technology space.
- Fairly easy user interface. But lacks many of the capabilities I was used to when using the Cision tool.
- I do like their Boolean search (better than Cision, in my experience). Like all tools in this space, they don't specialize in technology, so a lot of drop down menus lacked the keywords I was looking for.
- I just built lists for a new client. (For context, we used Cision for 3+ years, but decided to go with Meltwater this year. I regret that decision.) One key capability missing is that I can only export the media list into Excel or csv lists. With Cision, I could export into a Word/PDF document that was not a table - instead it listed the journalist, his/her beat and info about the publication. Looked more professional, like a report, than an ugly spreadsheet.
- I also use Meltwater News, which is pretty nice. I am still getting Cision clips, and Meltwater missed a major piece in CIO Insight magazine. Not sure why, but my account mgr is looking into why Cision caught this article on my client, but Meltwater didn't.
- Currently, negative ROI. Once you sign on for an annual subscription, there is no "money back guarantee" even if you're unhappy with the tool. I presented several examples of where their tool failed vs. Cision (again, could just be in technology space), but they said sorry, and tried to upsell me to other tools.
Cision didn't have the greatest technology media database either, but it was better than Meltwater. Overall, Cision provided better "presentation" tools (e.g., I could export a clip report or a media list in PDF that looked very professional). WIth Meltwater, I only get an ugly Excel spreadsheet, which I can't present to the client.