Cision

Cision Platform Review

Comments: The benefits I received are the open & click rates of my new releases. So if I notice that one of my important editors didn't open it it allows me to resend to that editor.

Pros:

The ease of the platform is extremely good! The on-board training I received from account manager was extremely through. Also, sending out emails are very easy.

Cons:

I don't really have any cons about the platform.

Still the Industry Leader

Comments: Again, Cision still rules the field. Having had experience with several other similar platforms I can say that it remains the most reliable product out there to get the job done.

Pros:

While many will say that the platform is a bit dated, Cision remains the gold standard in its field. The reliability, usability, and overall data quality makes me an extremely satisfied customer. Cision certainly excels at obtaining contact information and list building.

Cons:

Cision's data analysis could be better. I often find myself using a service like Netbase to get deeper data concerning "what" people are saying exactly.

Cision won't stop billing my company

Comments: Cision provides a sub-par product and high prices. The company is holding customers hostage with a completely onerous contract. Avoid this company at all costs!

Pros:

My company used Cision for PR management. We did not receive any value.

Cons:

Cision will not stop billing my company. Within 24 hours of receiving a contract renewal we sent an email cancelling the contract. Cision did not reply and processed payment anyway. We contacted Cision to end the contract and they responded that we must notify them 5 months in advance to cancel a contract. How would we even know if we wanted to cancel at that time?

The Only Press Release Tool Worth The Time & Money

Comments: Cision is an excellent partner for releasing, disributing and getting visibility for press releases. Our news feels seen - in the best way possible - and feels like we have a very effective partner in Cision.

Pros:

Cision makes users feel like their press releases and news are being seen and heard by the correct audiences and that such press releases actually make some waves - we have consistenly seen feeback, outreach and other traffic when posting to and using Cision.

Cons:

My only complaint with Cision is that their internal search can sometimes qualify or disqualify press releases for certain topics/categories/indsutries into diferent baskets and categories than they ought to belong to, but this has a seemingly minimal impact on a campaign's overall performance.

Great tool for PR

Pros:

We use this to help build our media lists to reach out to media with

Cons:

I feel like the breadth of reporters on this database is not good as some other reporter databases.

A great addition at a price.

Comments: I have been a user for 2 years now and it amazes me how much data it can pull for my brands.

Pros:

Easy integrations. The set-up is simple and the solution is in-depth in terms of what marketers need.

Cons:

Can be pricey. But if you are willing to invest in the technology, it is def. good value for money. Great ROI.

PRweb with Cisiion

Comments: Great experience! We are able to push out PR posts to PRweb quickly and in a timely manner. It has helped us get visibility as well.

Pros:

The ability to get out a press release, the ease of posting a press release, its easy-to-use posting UI, customer service, boosting posts, and visibility reporting direct to my email.

Cons:

The contact of reporters and bloggers information isn't always up to date. The UI of the list builder function can be difficult to use.

great for us, not so great for latin america

Comments: save you a lot of time to do media lists, but definitely need to improve.

Pros:

this is my go-to software when having a pitch in the us market. have a lot of journalists and media for your pitch.

Cons:

i wish the journalists for latin america were more complete. A lot of media ins't even in the database and when there is, is never updated. Other think i don't like is that this include name as directors of media or companies and/or s-suite contacts. If you send a pitch to this people you are bothering them. editors should be more clearly marked.

Does What it Needs to But Isn't the Prettiest

Comments: While I don't think Cision is perfect, I've seen these press releases deliver amazing results for my client. So overall, I'm satisfied.

Pros:

Cision makes it relatively easy to publish and push press releases to the public. Its features are easy enough to use, and it guides you through the process step by step.

Cons:

Cision isn't always the most user-friendly/easy on the eyes. It can be awkward to fill out press releases, and they look different once they're published. I also notice that it bugs sometimes. What you type in the draft doesn't appear in the published version.

So easy for contact searches

Pros:

No more guesswork here, finding a contact is as easy as one, two, type

Cons:

I can't think of anything I dislike about this software, so far everything is up to date and timely with regard to media contacts

Similar Products in the Market that are less expensive

Comments: I loved it when the company was VOCUS, but when Cision purchased them, it got more costly and less productive.

Pros:

The Native Articles that accompany a press release

Cons:

The cost and the difficulty creating client reports to demonstrate success

Ok media database, good monitoring, and everything else is disappointing.

Comments: Ok media database, good monitoring, and everything else is disappointing.

Pros:

The Cision database is fairly complete. If you know who you are looking for, you can usually find their name and contact information there. The news monitoring function — alerts which track news published online — does a fairly good job of giving me a heads-up about coverage. If you want to track coverage by source type against particular names or keywords, Cision monitoring will sometimes produce sources that Google alerts will not, and it will usually beat the alerts by a day or so.

Cons:

Reporter discovery is hard. Beat designations within Cision seem very rudimentary and “thick”— reporters listed as “Technology,” for instance, might cover “artificial intelligence” or “embedded analytics” or “machine learning” or some combination of the three. Given the fact that an off-beat pitch can easily result in a communications representative being added to a reporter’s spam list, it’s critical that you know exactly what a reporter is writing about, or risk having no way to contact a reporter ever again. For media search, I needed Boolean search. Cision promised that functionality but, without getting too far into the limitations of their archiving, their provider agreements, and their search functionality, I found it a very clunky and inefficient way to search coverage on the fly. It's also super frustrating to be told that a publication is "in the database" but isn't searchable, because of licensing covenants.

Serves a purpose but I don't love it

Comments: It can be useful if you just need your release "published" so you can point to it and you don't want this to just occur on your own site. After sharing a few from here I have since decided to simply post them to my own site and then push out via my own audiences.

Pros:

If you need a press release "published" (even if just to Cision) this is a good option. I've used the lowest level a few times for this reason. It can create a professional page to share but don't expect any real pick up from putting out on Cision (at least on the least expensive level).

Cons:

We didn't get any pickup. (to be fair, I didn't expect much as I used the lowest level they offer) Also, the interface is pretty dated.

Used it during Vocus/Cision transition

Pros:

Access to tens of thousands of journalists is useful as a PR practitioner. It also does a great job of tracking insights like tone and monitoring where your organization appears in the news.

Cons:

We constantly found journalists who hadn't been at their newspaper for over two years. Contact information is frequently outdated. The cost is practically that of a full-time employee. The PRWeb newswire they advertise frequently sends releases to websites with zero traffic, but counts it as a hit. And while their analytics are useful, I'd often go back to a prior month and run the same search string as before and be returned different numbers than the first time. It's hard to trust data that doesn't remain constant.

Cision is an industry leader for a reason

Pros:

I love the new capabilities that Cision rolled-out about a year ago, including a new user interface. I really like that, as a press person, I can easily search using multiple criteria - this really helps when I'm looking for press in a very specific industry.

Cons:

The only con about Cision that I see is its high price - I think that there should be an option that allows smaller companies to buy-in to some of Cision's basic functionalities for a lower price.

Incredibly robust database

Pros:

Cision has an incredible database of editorial contacts. Distributing press releases was also always a smooth process.

Cons:

We had to partner with other media groups to split the costs. Definitely not inexpensive.

Easy to use

Comments: I use Cision on a daily basis to reach out to the media with brand press releases. It is reliable and very user friendly.

Pros:

I like that you can populate targeted results very easily!

Cons:

I wish the contacts were updated. I also wish we could edit lists once they are created.

Cision is a great tool for our press release needs

Pros:

We are able to quickly and easily create contact lists and send our news items.

Cons:

We are very happy with Cision and it serves our needs.

Cision Review

Comments: We save research time and can build a contact list with ease.

Pros:

Finding the perfect outlets with accurate contact information to build our media lists for the pitching team has been the most reliable.

Cons:

The software is user-friendly and no technical complications have occurred. We use Cision every day.

Lacking some core features of free social tools, and data regularly out of date

Comments: Can not recommend the software or the company as when you complain and we have many complaints they will happily respond with your under contract just keep paying

Pros:

The sales pitch was great and we thought we had found a great tool, a solution that would combine all our PR and tracking needs

Cons:

The frustrations started soon after go live and support and resolving the issues was not forth coming. This resulted in paying for a tool that reduced productivity and we soon have to result to our original approach of email marketing and social media. The PR is not always up to date and can be limited once you start to drill down.

It's expensive but has up-to-date lists of hard-to-find contacts at major media outlets.

Pros:

The contact information and search features are extensive, so you can find exactly who you want to reach in the markets that you need. Even the pesky ones who purposely don't want their information published.

Cons:

List-building can be confusing (or at least, it used to be before I had to cancel), and sometimes too much knowledge can be overwhelming--without knowing how PR works, you can easily blast your information to all the wrong people, and make a gigantic fool out of yourself. This is not for DIY-ers just getting started!

we decided to end our subscription and opt for HubSpot instead

Pros:

I liked our ability to send press releases and manage social media from the same account. However, other software offered more options and automation features in one central location.

Cons:

The limited capabilities. We really needed something that automated more of what we do (email, social media, press releases, blog writing, analytics) all in one place. We ended up only using Vocus to send press releases, which wasn't worth the high price.

Only Game in Town

Comments: think they probably corner the market on PR software.. but that doesn't mean improvements can't be made.

Pros:

Cision offers an extremely wide span of media outlets... from large to the insanely minute publication.. it defintiely provides a good scope of everything in between! I

Cons:

I think this software is somewhat "clunky" ... think there is definitely room from improvement with the user interface. Moving between listings is a little complex.

Easy-to-use and intuitive features

Comments: I like Cision so far, I like that it didn't come with the pressure that is usually attached to learning a new tool. It's easy-to-use, user-friendly, and efficient. I look forward to learning it more in-depth and using it more often.

Pros:

I am only just beginning to use Cision but I like how easy it is to navigate through it. Learning the ins and outs is easy because the tool itself makes sense. It's intuitive, it has everything that one may need for PR activities. I also like that they enable access to educational resources and videos about features and functionalities.

Cons:

The analytics side of Cision is not the greatest, kind of hard to break down and digest. But that is currently the only "flaw" that I can find.

Great Product

Pros:

Really like that the company has taken advantage of the culture we live in now. My company prides itself on being extremely eco-friendly and this type of software really helps with the ideas and follow through of executing the right kind of marketing.

Cons:

Don't like that it only has a web-based program. I may be the only one, but I do find some use in having a desktop version as well. We still have the baby boomers who aren't as comfortable on the web as we are.