With all the PR software available in today's market, choosing the best one for your needs can be challenging.
If you're looking for advice, here's a side-by-side comparison of Muck Rack vs. Cision vs. Prowly —the most popular PR software platforms on this planet—to help you choose the best PR tool for your needs.
By the way, Prowly offers a free 7-day trial with full search access. It’s uncertain if Muck Rack or Cision offers a free trial or sample; their product pages suggest that you can find out more during a demo call, but it’s not explicitly stated that they offer a better glimpse of their contacts.
Overview
| Prowly | Cision | Muck Rack | |
| Pricing | From $258/mo | $7,200/yr (estimate) | $10,000/yr (estimate) |
| Contract Length | Monthly or annually | Annually | Annually |
| Media Database Size | 1M+ | 1.4M+ | 250k+ |
| Press Release Creator | ✔ | ✔ | ✖ |
| Press Release Distribution | pitching, sending press release through email, following up | ✔ | ✔ |
| Online Newsroom | ✔ | ✔ | ✖ |
| Media Monitoring | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ |
| PR Reports | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ |
| Ease of use | Easy | Hard | Easy |
| Free, dedicated training | ✔ | ✖ | ✖ |
| Free Trial | Try Prowly for free | ✖ | ✖ |
Pricing comparison
Price is one of the main factors in choosing a PR software provider. And with some companies charging over $10,000 per year, it's not surprising.
Muck Rack and Cision both offer only annual plans and are quite pricey. Although they do not publicly list their pricing, we estimate Muck Rack's pricing to be around $10,000 per year and Cision's to be around $7,200 per year.
| Prowly | Cision | Muck Rack | |
| Pricing plans provided on website | ✔ | ✖ | ✖ |
| Pricing | From $258/mo | $7,200/yr (estimate) | $10,000/yr (estimate) |
| Contract Length | Monthly or annually | Annually | Annually |
The price can go up dramatically depending on the chosen features, media database regions, the size of your team, and other factors. Unfortunately, the factors that go into the price are also not transparent and publicly available.
Prowly offers monthly and annual plans, the latter of which allows you to save up to 30%. Two different plans are available, each with a list of the features you'll get so you know exactly what you're paying for.
Feature comparison
As mentioned, PR software features usually affect the pricing of each solution. Here's how Muck Rack, Cision, and Prowly compare the available features.
Media database
If you're solely looking for a media database, read the guide to choosing the best media database for PR.
All three providers offer a high-quality media database containing local and international media contacts.
The main differences are the number of contacts, update frequency (the percentage of up-to-date contact information), and pricing.
Cision has the most media contacts available—over 1.4 million. Prowly has around 1 million, and Muck Rack has over 250 thousand.
Remember that "more is not always better" when it comes to media databases. The quantity and quality of contacts may vary depending on the location and beat you're looking for, especially outside the US.
In this case, the best solution is to ask for a sample or get a free trial to see what's available and look at yourself.
Prowly offers a free 7-day trial with full search access. It's uncertain if Muck Rack or Cision offers a free trial or sample; their product pages suggest that you can find out more during a demo call, but it's not explicitly stated that they offer a better glimpse of their contacts.
Media database pricing
Muck Rack, Cision, or Prowly don't offer their media database as a standalone feature.
Muck Rack and Cision include it in their standard pricing, which we've listed above. Prowly offers its media database for $258/mo—considerably less than Cision's $7,200/yr and Muck Rack's $10,000+/yr.
Media monitoring
Muck Rack, Cision, and Prowly provide essential media monitoring tools for tracking news and online mentions of your company, competitors, or partners, including social media monitoring.
Press release creation
Both Prowly and Cision offer the ability to create press releases. Those created in Prowly seem much more visual, making it easier to get journalists' attention. Plus, you can keep all of your press releases in journalist-friendly newsrooms that are easy to navigate.
Email pitching journalists
Other key features of PR software include pitching press releases to journalists via email and performing follow-ups. All three platforms allow you to send personalized email pitches and provide advanced email analytics.
If this is your top priority, it might be worth trying how it works in every platform to see which is most intuitive and simple for you and your team.
Unfortunately, you must commit and pay first to see Cision and Muck Rack in action. At the moment, only Prowly offers a free trial.
If you're looking for a UK media database comparison, explore these articles: "UK Media Database Comparison – Pricing & Features" and "Roxhill 2023 Pricing — How Much Does it Cost?".
Tool Reviews
Without free trials and transparent pricing plans available on Cision's and Muck Rack's sites, making the final choice might get easier once you read user reviews. Here's what users say about each platform based on reviews from G2.com.
Muck Rack
Advantages of Muck Rack:
I like that I can build robust coverage reports, get automated daily alerts, and easily follow and pitch to a list of journalists.
Muck Rack's "coverage reports" and "who shared my link" tools help us track media hits and journalist engagement in ways we couldn't before. They've also given us access to and insight into journalists who didn't know covered our company.
Good UX; the interface is very, very easy to use.
Disadvantages of Muck Rack:
I've had some difficulty getting the coverage reports to match what I've gotten with other tools; I'm unsure if that's a user error or related to the tool's back-end functionality.
Although [Muck Rack] is a bit pricey for solo practitioners, it is very much priced for agency-level users.
Word tracking often leads to too many emails or updates that are not thorough enough to catch the important articles.
Cision
Advantages of Cision:
Cision makes it easy to find relevant media to target for pitches, identify their target demographic, and efficiently build lists.
I like their media monitoring capabilities. We monitor the media hits of over 1,500 individuals, and Cision helped us set up this system. It's by no means perfect, but it works much better than what we were previously using.
Disadvantages of Cision:
The information for journalists in Cision can sometimes be outdated, and I've come across several journalists who are simply not listed. I wish this database were more accurate and up to date.
Building reports to look at how you would like to look graphically is not easy for a user without requesting help from customer assistance.
Customer service or an account rep is not always attentive to your needs. Sometimes, it could take days or weeks to get a response.
Expensive!
Prowly
I like how simple adding contacts to a customized media list is. The user interface is really user-friendly, and the automation capabilities take care of some of the hard work associated with link building for you—individualizing and increasing your outreach could not be easier.
Ease of use and that the team is very helpful, there is no upcharge to get help to set up the press release in the most effective way.
Disadvantages of Prowly:
There is a bit of a learning curve, and support is on European time.
I only wish there we more categories in the journalist database!
Conclusion
We hope this Muck Rack vs. Cision vs. Prowly comparison helped you answer some of your questions and made choosing the right PR software easier. If you're ready to start testing PR platforms, you can always try Prowly completely free of charge for 14 days. No CC is required, and no strings attached.
Cover photo by NeONBRAND
