Meltwater vs. PLANOLY

Meltwater

PLANOLY

Overview
Product	Rating	Most Used By	Product Summary	Starting Price
Meltwater	Score 8.0 out of 10	N/A	Meltwater Media Intelligence platform is a set of public relations software tools for media monitoring, social media monitoring, and collecting brand insights. The four areas of functionality are Monitor, Analyze, Distribute, and Engage. (Note that this product combines features from the vendor Meltwater's former Buzz, Press, and News products.)	N/A
PLANOLY	Score 8.5 out of 10	N/A	PLANOLY is a social marketing platform boasting over 5 million users to visually plan, schedule, and measure performance across Instagram and Pinterest.	$16 per month up to 1 user

Pricing

Meltwater

PLANOLY

Editions & Modules

No answers on this topic

Social Planner Starter: $16
per month up to 1 user
Creator Pro: $20
per month
Social Planner Growth: $28
per month up to 3 users
Social Planner Pro: $43
per month up to 6 users
Creator Pro Plus: $54
per month

Offerings

Pricing Offerings
Meltwater	PLANOLY
Free Trial
No	Yes
Free/Freemium Version
No	Yes
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
No	No

Entry-level Setup Fee

No setup fee

Additional Details

—

Discount offered for annual billing.

More Pricing Information

Community Pulse
	Meltwater	PLANOLY
Considered Both Products	Meltwater Verified User Anonymous Chose Meltwater We chose Meltwater because we can create actual queries and search on forums, which many other platforms lack. We found that other services tend to focus only on social media. Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Anonymous Chose Meltwater Meltwater does not limit competitive searches in the same way that Crayon and Klue do. Meltwater also captures different sources of information than aggregation tools. While Meltwater doesn’t provide access to expert reports like a different platform that I rely on for deep … Incentivized Helpful? Julie Collins Owner Chose Meltwater Brandwatch Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Anonymous Chose Meltwater I believe they are fairly evenly matched, Meltwater has better search options but it really goes back and forth on who has the most updated contacts. Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Anonymous Chose Meltwater Meltwater has more detail in its analytics, and is far more complex. Incentivized Helpful? Maya DeJoie Social Media Strategist Chose Meltwater 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 … Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Anonymous Chose Meltwater Cision PRWeb has a more robust toolset and provides more precise metrics and analysis, as well as a better media outreach database of journalists. Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Anonymous Chose Meltwater I started using Meltwater because of a client. I do find it much easier to use than Cision. I hear good things about Muck Rack and recently had a demo. That's probably the one I would use if I were to leave Meltwater. Cision has always been difficult to use, in my opinion. Incentivized Helpful? AS Altary Sherman Director of Social Media Chose Meltwater I have tried several platforms but continue coming back to Meltwater. Even though we are a national company, I like the global reach that Meltwater offers. Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Anonymous Chose Meltwater We actually use both Cision and Meltwater Media Intelligence Platform. I prefer Cision over Meltwater Media Intelligence Platform in that the analytics are better, plus the competitor tracking has made my job SO much easier. After working with the customer service/technical … Incentivized Helpful? Sara Sayed Senior Managing Director Chose Meltwater I was looking for a full-service option. I did some research. What really sold me was the presentation. They offered products that were helpful, and I wasn’t even aware of them. It is more expensive than the other products that are out there, but you get more. The other … Incentivized Helpful? Kristen M. Kirst Director of Strategic Communications and Engagement Chose Meltwater Meltwater is our primary tool, however, we have engaged TVEyes as broadcast media has not been a strength of Meltwater. We would love to see that change and use Meltwater for all needs. Incentivized Helpful? Jordan Wilhelmi Director Media Public Relations Chose Meltwater Meltwater is a do-everything platform so it automatically ranks above these two programs. That said, due to these two programs focusing on both incredibly thorough reporter contact databases and tv/radio monitoring, their specialties are reliable when needed. Incentivized Helpful? Jenna Carpentier Digital Marketing Specialist Chose Meltwater Cision and LexisNexis are better for accessing articles behind paywalls. I've found that social-specific tools like Sprout Social or Sprinklr seem to be better for monitoring social media mentions. However, Meltwater Media Intelligence Platform may have upped its "social game" … Incentivized Helpful? AB Alex Boonstra Senior Account Executive Chose Meltwater Sprout Social was only limited to social media publishing. Not what we needed as a PR firm that works in the media landscape. Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Anonymous Chose Meltwater [In my opinion,] Meltwater [Media Intelligence Platform]'s media database simply doesn't stack up to what Cision offers. It doesn't matter how nice the interface is if the data included in the database you're pulling from isn't complete or well organized. Cision can be clunky, … Incentivized Helpful? Cathy Renna Owner Chose Meltwater The functionality, customer service, and quality of databases are all better with Meltwater Media Intelligence Platform. I have used Cision in the past and have not been as happy with it. Incentivized Helpful? Aaron Metcalfe Vice President of Marketing & Communications Chose Meltwater Crayon [Intel Pro] is slightly better, but not by much. If you are set on using a service like this, I'd choose it, but Crayon [Intel Pro] is more expensive. [In my opinion, it is] best to use an intern [where] you can target their efforts, not some hit-and-miss AI program. Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Anonymous Chose Meltwater We've used Cision [PRWeb] for their media database for a long time, and then we've used TrendKite for media tracking [and] reporting, as well. While we're new to [Meltwater Media Intelligence Platform], [concerning] media tracking [and] reporting, it seems to be as good or … Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Anonymous Chose Meltwater Cision acquired TrendKite which we loved. I was worried that TrendKite would not be supported as well so we switched to Meltwater. Years ago Meltwater was a fine choice. Now ... it is so bad it's hard to even imagine how they get by with the state of the product and the very … Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Anonymous Chose Meltwater Meltwater is the most expensive option with the worst customer service. Terrible experience. Incentivized Helpful? JW Jenna Walker Communications Specialist Chose Meltwater We currently have both platforms. Incentivized Helpful? Mark Anderson Digital Marketing Specialist - Team Lead Chose Meltwater Meltwater is a fully reinforced software and its features outweigh the purpose of Mention, but they are similar in that they provide insight into where your brand is being discussed and who is talking about it. I was able to find what I needed out of Mention, within Meltwater, … Incentivized Helpful? Alexis Ramsey Senior Marketing Account Supervisor, Digital Strategy Chose Meltwater We originally had Salesforce/Radian6 and switched to Meltwater Media Intelligence Platform to align with what other similar brands were using, and because at that time, Salesforce was experiencing technical issues. After a year and a half with Meltwater Media Intelligence … Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Anonymous Chose Meltwater TrendKite is much more flexible with an unlimited amount of dashboards, searches, metrics on a particular dashboard, and more. There are pricing systems with all platforms sure, but to add broadcast is outrageous. Not to mention, their live chat staff has been rude in the past … Incentivized Helpful?	PLANOLY Namrata Agarwal Managing Director Chose PLANOLY I have tried an AI tool called Vocable and used Google Sheets to plan my content. PLANOLY is better because of the visual grid feature. However, vocable is better in terms of the variety of content. With Vocable, we can create text content for Instagram, YouTube, and Linkedin, … Incentivized Helpful? MT Maria Trujillo Publicist Chose PLANOLY Planoly was the most cost effective option for me and my clients and allowed us to use a grid view to see how our content would show up on the feed. Grid view was very important when choosing the software for us. It was also allowed us to schedule stories as well and some other … Incentivized Helpful?

Features

Meltwater

PLANOLY

Listening/monitoring

Comparison of Listening/monitoring features of Product A and Product B
	Meltwater - Ratings	PLANOLY 10.0 Ratings 26% above category average
Boolean keyword searches	00 Ratings	10.00 Ratings
Sentiment analysis	00 Ratings	10.00 Ratings
Broad channel coverage	00 Ratings	10.00 Ratings

Publishing

Comparison of Publishing features of Product A and Product B
	Meltwater - Ratings	PLANOLY 10.0 Ratings 22% above category average
Content planning and scheduling	00 Ratings	10.00 Ratings
Audience targeting	00 Ratings	10.00 Ratings
Content optimization	00 Ratings	10.00 Ratings
Workflow management	00 Ratings	10.00 Ratings

Engagement

Comparison of Engagement features of Product A and Product B
	Meltwater - Ratings	PLANOLY 8.1 Ratings 2% above category average
Automated routing and prioritization	00 Ratings	10.00 Ratings
Customer interaction histories	00 Ratings	7.10 Ratings
Bulk actions	00 Ratings	7.10 Ratings

Marketing

Comparison of Marketing features of Product A and Product B
	Meltwater - Ratings	PLANOLY 8.0 Ratings 3% above category average
Lead generation	00 Ratings	7.00 Ratings
Content marketing	00 Ratings	7.10 Ratings
Paid media management	00 Ratings	10.00 Ratings
Campaigns and promotions	00 Ratings	8.10 Ratings

Channel coverage/integration

Comparison of Channel coverage/integration features of Product A and Product B
	Meltwater - Ratings	PLANOLY 10.0 Ratings 17% above category average
Twitter	00 Ratings	10.00 Ratings
Facebook	00 Ratings	10.00 Ratings
LinkedIn	00 Ratings	10.00 Ratings
Instagram	00 Ratings	10.00 Ratings
Pinterest	00 Ratings	10.00 Ratings

Reporting/analytics

Comparison of Reporting/analytics features of Product A and Product B
	Meltwater - Ratings	PLANOLY 8.1 Ratings 2% above category average
Campaign success analytics	00 Ratings	8.10 Ratings
Real-time tracking	00 Ratings	8.10 Ratings

Account management

Comparison of Account management features of Product A and Product B
	Meltwater - Ratings	PLANOLY 9.0 Ratings 12% above category average
Role-based user permissions & privileges	00 Ratings	10.00 Ratings
Mobile access	00 Ratings	8.10 Ratings

Best Alternatives
	Meltwater	PLANOLY
Small Businesses	Cision Communications Cloud Score 6.9 out of 10	CoSchedule Marketing Suite Score 10.0 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies	Cision Communications Cloud Score 6.9 out of 10	CoSchedule Marketing Suite Score 10.0 out of 10
Enterprises	Cision Communications Cloud Score 6.9 out of 10	Social Suite by Reputation.com Score 9.4 out of 10
All Alternatives	View all alternatives	View all alternatives

User Ratings
	Meltwater	PLANOLY
Likelihood to Recommend	8.0 (0 ratings)	8.1 (0 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew	8.0 (0 ratings)	- (0 ratings)
Usability	9.0 (0 ratings)	9.0 (0 ratings)
Availability	10.0 (0 ratings)	- (0 ratings)
Support Rating	7.5 (0 ratings)	10.0 (0 ratings)
In-Person Training	8.0 (0 ratings)	- (0 ratings)
Online Training	8.0 (0 ratings)	- (0 ratings)
Implementation Rating	6.1 (0 ratings)	- (0 ratings)
Vendor post-sale	1.0 (0 ratings)	- (0 ratings)
Vendor pre-sale	9.1 (0 ratings)	- (0 ratings)

User Testimonials
	Meltwater	PLANOLY
Likelihood to Recommend	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 Verified User Anonymous Read full review	The visual grid feature is my favourite feature of PLANOLY as it allows me to see how my content will look before I post it. I haven`t found this feature with other social media planners Incentivized Namrata Agarwal Managing Director Read full review
Pros	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 Jake Neeley Marketing Communications Director Read full review	Grid view AI Caption generator Auto post feature Incentivized Namrata Agarwal Managing Director Read full review
Cons	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 Avery Harris Public Relations & Pure Play Coordinator Read full review	overall not very many points I would add for improvement Incentivized MT Maria Trujillo Publicist Read full review
Likelihood to Renew	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 Christy Chachere Communications Coordinator Read full review	No answers on this topic
Usability	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. Chris Vanasdalan Communications & Media Relations Manager Read full review	PLANOLY is super easy to use. We just need to connect our Instagram account and start working in just a few clicks Incentivized Namrata Agarwal Managing Director Read full review
Support Rating	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 Verified User Anonymous Read full review	The support team was instantly responsive and were always happy to answer even the simplest software question. I knew that my clients would be in good hands should I not be available for any scheduling question through the support team. Everything was always impeccably handled in a timely manner! 100% satisfaction. Incentivized MT Maria Trujillo Publicist Read full review
In-Person Training	Again, really in-depth and helpful for a program that is really easy to use. Carolyn Smith Assistant Account Executive Read full review	No answers on this topic
Online Training	Walked step by step through program. Very informative on a program that doesn't require much training. Carolyn Smith Assistant Account Executive Read full review	No answers on this topic
Implementation Rating	You are only allowed 15 users, so make sure you've identified who will have access to use the tool. Chris Vanasdalan Communications & Media Relations Manager Read full review	No answers on this topic
Alternatives Considered	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 Maya DeJoie Social Media Strategist Read full review	Planoly was the most cost effective option for me and my clients and allowed us to use a grid view to see how our content would show up on the feed. Grid view was very important when choosing the software for us. It was also allowed us to schedule stories as well and some other softwares did not. Incentivized MT Maria Trujillo Publicist Read full review
Return on Investment	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 AB Alex Boonstra Senior Account Executive Read full review	It allowed us to engage with potential customers for clients in an easy way Our follower count went up by a steady 100 followers per week Our numbers for viewers on videos and IG Lives doubled Incentivized MT Maria Trujillo Publicist Read full review
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