Business Wire vs. Meltwater

For a funding announcement or a big product launch, Business Wire is the service to use. For less important announcements, and for clients with limited budget, it might be worth considering other options. PR Newswire and Marketwired are both decent services that provide comparable results, but the high touch quality of Business Wire is pretty unique.

Incentivized

If you practice media relations in your role, Meltwater is helpful. You can do research to find relevant publications and journalists, build media lists, export them to share with a team or client and you can also keep notes on your campaigns. I like using it for research, although I do research outside the platform, as well, to be sure to be thorough (and some of the info in the database is outdated). I would say if you don't practice media relations, it's probably not as useful. There are other tools that do a better job if you want to search for media or social media mentions, for example. If you are looking for an all-in-one media relations tool that's relatively easy to use, Meltwater is probably a good fit.

Incentivized

• The site has a very specific search function that makes it easy for users to sort through the many press releases put on the site each day, making the process easier/more efficient.
• The "Media & Journalist Tools" tab is helpful for myself and my colleagues, specifically, the RSS feeds to make sure we're staying on top of business happenings.
• I don't use the "How-To" section, though I know folks who have to learn more about writing press releases, and I've heard it's very helpful.

Incentivized

• Up to date contact information. It is actually relevant and active info, not always the case with others.
• The user interface is better than most tools. While not perfect, it's pretty easy to figure out how to get what you want.
• Their support is excellent. Anytime I've needed help I can call, but better than this, they proactively call and assist.

Incentivized

• Expensive - distributions cost hundreds to thousands of dollars, with a higher cost for longer releases and additional fees for multimedia content like photos or videos.
• Limited number of media outlets specifically in Florida.

Incentivized

• Their tracking system for media mentions isn't perfect - we have stumbled across several posts mentioning our company/product that were not picked up by the platform. While frustrating, we send these URLs to our rep and their tech team ensures that that website will be monitored moving forward.

Incentivized

It's the best service we have used. We have tried a competitor and everyone prefers Business Wire.

Incentivized

We have had great success with Meltwater Buzz the past 2 years. The reporting has been great for our board reports, seeing the conversations going on between our followers helps us to learn who our audience is and what we can do better on our social media. The analytics we see on Meltwater Buzz we could not get anywhere else

Incentivized

I gave it this rating because the Business Wire website is very user-friendly. Being able to navigate the platform on my own without technical assistance made it possible for me to quickly and easily submit news release distributions, which can be critical at times, such as during hurricane season when we need to get information out to the news media and our customers quickly.

Incentivized

Once you get some basic training it's pretty easy to use. I would like to see training manuals, or instructional videos to help me explore features I'm not currently using.

The team members are very quick to respond and do their absolute best to help resolve issues quickly. I also like that I can have one of them proofread my press releases before they are distributed. It always helps to have another set of eyes on the content. There have been a few times that they've caught an error that nobody else did so it's worth the extra couple minutes that it takes!

Incentivized

Our account rep at Meltwater went dark for a long time. Then, a couple of weeks ago, our new account manager reached out to set up a meeting. Apparently, they had a big shakeup in the company, and there were some personnel changes. Our new account rep was great in discussing the platform's capabilities that were available to us and even offered to schedule a follow-up meeting with his technical team to introduce our new social media team members to the platform and how it could help them with their jobs.

Incentivized

Again, really in-depth and helpful for a program that is really easy to use.

Walked step by step through program. Very informative on a program that doesn't require much training.

Business Wire is very easy to implement. This isn't a requirement, but it's recommended that you begin to set up saved distributions for different clients so that you don't have to start over from scratch. Rather than doing all this work on the front end, you can just do it as you send out your first piece of news for each client.

Incentivized

You are only allowed 15 users, so make sure you've identified who will have access to use the tool.

Cision PRWeb was not good at targeting the major business community and was not fitted well into our demands. The price of Cision was high and very unjustifiable as there were not enough features in it and was not efficient in its working as well. But on the contrary, if I look at Business Wire then I think it is just a perfect match for our business demands.

Meltwater serves as an all-in-one platform, so it has benefitted us greatly in being able to service a variety of needs in one place. Having a streamlined platform is important to our team since it can feel counterproductive to visit a variety of products to service one client's needs. So, Meltwater has been essential in ensuring our needs are met through one destination.

Incentivized

• Staying updated on business news in my team's industry
• Helps my team generate story ideas for our publication, allowing us to do our jobs more efficiently

Incentivized

• Improved PR reporting, for sure.
• Competitor analysis for clients and ourselves.
• A great ability to track the news and understand particular news drivers for certain industries, allowing us to get our client in front of the media at or before the perfect moment.

Incentivized