PR Newswire is well suited for organizations with a significant public relations budget that want to quickly disseminate a news release over the wire to a specific targeted group of recipients. It's probably not a suitable solution for smaller companies or "boutique" public relations agency unless the distribution cost is to be directly passed on to the client because it is quite expensive.
We were impressed with the price point and coverage last year on one or two of our releases. They would approve them and we would get a email alert as well as a report sent to us. All of that was missing on the latest release, no idea it was ever approved or released, I found. Furthermore the distribution of the release was almost all US for some reason, not helpful at all. In my opinion, it feels like they are less attentive to their customers, yet increased their prices recently. I believe, the interface is old and outdated which would put off most people, but we were happy regardless when it worked.
I think PR Newswire's reach is very good. It's a well-known service that's been around a long time and has a solid reputation. You can trust it.
I think PR Newswire helps increase the visibility of news. So although I would also recommend pitching the news, using a wire service, particularly when there's major news to announce, can help in spreading the word.
It's pretty easy to use. You may need someone to walk you through it at first, but you can save distributions and so forth so that it gets easier over time.
PRUnderground offers exceptional customer service. When I e-mail their team with a question or concern, I always receive a response within a few hours.
PRUnderground offers an unbeatable value. I've researched various distribution platforms, and this one offers the best of both worlds: effectiveness and affordability.
PRUnderground is a white-label distribution service with proven reach. My clients enjoy receiving 12-page placement reports with live links.
PR Newswire is an industry leader and gives the user the ability to send out a press release, to a wide audience, very quickly and easily. The pricing is on par with other companies (perhaps they are a bit higher) but they do send useful "visibility" reports after a release is distributed, which is helpful when trying to explain ROI to C suite leaders. You also can email or fax your own distribution list, which is helpful and reduces the need for a media monitoring service
Honestly this is probably the absolute worst part of the company. I had maybe 5 different emails from 5 different people when attempting to use this service, and I never knew who my account manager was and who the other people were.
PR Newswire is considered one of the two gold standard newswire services because of its wide reach and high quality reporting. Pricing is almost identical to its biggest competitor, Business Wire, so it winds up being a matter of preference and ease more than anything. We actually made the decision to move our business away from PR Newswire due to their growing desire to have editorial oversight over the news we're distributing on behalf of clients.
I've used some of the big names in the business, but their price tag isn't within sight for many of my clients. PRUnderground is the best solution I've found for SMB's and professionals who want a budget-friendly yet effective distribution.
ROI is difficult to calculate in my company's specific industry, but we do know our visibility has increased when we send out a release via PR Newswire.
We send out a relatively small number of press releases a year, so we know when we send out a report if our target audience is receiving it.
With Google and other search engines being the primary way people research information about company's today, we know that when we do a press release via PR Newswire that release will "live" indefinitely on the web, so we know our press release will go much further than the initial distribution.
