Prezly is one of the most attractive options for PR teams on a budget. It makes light work of PR outreach and has a decent set of features that cover all the basics.
But what if you need something with a large media database or advanced tools such as media monitoring? Or perhaps Prezly pricing is not to your liking?
Today, we’re taking a look at some of the best Prezly alternatives you should consider when purchasing a new PR tool.
If you’re looking for a PR tool, you can try Prowly free for 7 days with no strings attached. See for yourself if the tool meets your needs.
What is Prezly?
Prezly positions itself as a dedicated CRM for PR professionals. It allows in-house marketing teams and PR agencies to manage contacts, pitch journalists, and publish stories on behalf of their businesses or clients.
It’s a specialized PR tool for pitching journalists with relevant stories and their CRM helps you do this in an organized, structured manner. In other words, it’s meant for organizations that have all the other aspects of PR work covered and just need a dedicated platform for email outreach.
Prezly pricing
We’ve covered Prezly pricing in detail before, so we’ll only mention the basics here.
These are the plans intended for small to mid-sized marketing and PR teams:
- Starter ($50 per month)
- Core ($90 per month)
- Premium ($140 per month)
- Enterprise (pricing is not disclosed publicly)
Agencies can select just one plan, priced at $300 per month. All plans come with a 14-day free trial.
Why look at Prezly alternatives?
Prezly seems like a good option for PR teams conscious about spending a lot of money on tools. But there are some downsides that could make you consider competitor products.
Prezly does not have a media database
Most PR tools, such as Prowly, have extensive databases of contacts, going into hundreds of thousands up to millions of people. This allows users to search and filter for their ideal journalist profile and reach out to them directly in the app.
Prowly developed a smarter way to search for journalists, saving you hours and making your pitching efforts much more effective. We've partnered with Semrush to bring you exclusive data on online media outlets — information you won’t find in other PR tools.
Additionally, we’ve introduced a new AI keyword search feature for articles, helping you identify the best terms to connect with journalists covering your topic.
Prezly does not offer a media database. If you want to do email outreach in this tool, you have to upload your own contact list.
While Prezly may seem significantly cheaper than the competition, it’s really not the truth. You will gather the additional costs of sourcing lists of journalists and making sure that their contact data is valid and up to date.
Lack of customization
Across different offers, users complain about the lack of customization in Prezly. Fonts, formatting, the alignment of text and images, and image customization, all feel lackluster compared to competitors.
Users also state that the customization options in the story templates could be better. Such improvements would allow for more personalized outreach.
Lack of integrations
If you want to connect another tool with Prezly for more effective PR outreach, you’re going to have to use Prezly’s API or Typescript SDK. In other words, you need to hire a developer to connect your tool (or some other third-party tool) to get the apps working together.
Prezly does not have any of its own integrations with other apps. For example, an integration with a list-building/scraping tool would be useful to connect journalist contact information with Prezly before performing outreach.
No advanced features
While Prezly comes at a very attractive price point, we still need to compare it with more costly PR tools. In the feature domain, it falls behind major competitors.
For example, it does not support media monitoring, offer a dedicated AI press release generator, analytics, or reporting for clients and others. While this may not be a concern for in-house teams of marketers, PR professionals in agencies can find this to be a dealbreaker.
Prezly alternative #1: Prowly
- Pricing: starts at $258 per month
- Media database: yes, 1M+ contacts
- Free trial: yes, for seven days
For PR teams of all shapes and sizes, Prowly offers a wide range of features that make it easy to find journalists, send them personalized pitches, track and analyze your outreach processes, and create stunning newsrooms on your website.
Prowly has a media database of over 1M+ contacts that you can use and filter through to find the ideal journalist to cover your story.
- You can view their previous publications, online contact details (verified), and their previous track records for responding to journalist pitches.
- You get access to detailed analytics in the Prowly dashboard, letting you check on how your emails are performing and which ones drive the best results.
- You can create detailed reports for clients or gather insights to create more relevant and personalized email content.
- Once your campaigns go live, you can track your progress through media monitoring and social media listening.
Prowly’s media pitching tool is built for busy PR professionals and uses the power of an AI assistant to help you create great press releases and pitches in a matter of minutes. Enter your main details and the AI will help you create the perfect pitch.
And unlike most PR tools, Prowly has a free trial so you can check it out before committing to a paid plan.
Prezly alternative #2: Mynewsdesk
- Pricing: unknown, you have to reach out to sales to get a quote
- Media database: yes, 1M contacts
- Free trial: not available, you can only book a demo
This AI-backed PR software lets you find journalists in their rich database, reach out to them with personalized emails, analyze your efforts, and showcase your results in online newsrooms.
With the AI press release builder, you can enter the main details for your press release and let Mynewsdesk take care of the rest. The AI tool can then match the content of your press release against their database to find the most relevant journalists who will potentially accept your pitch.
In terms of cons, users complain about the limited features and functionalities. Some users also state that canceling a contract is very difficult and that the vendor can prolong your contract without warning.
Prezly alternative #3: Muck Rack
- Pricing: starts at $10,000 per year
- Media database: yes, 300,000+ contacts
- Free trial: not available
Muck Rack is an all-in-one PR tool with detailed analytics, a media database, email outreach, media monitoring, and many other features. It has a pretty good media database that lets you search according to different filters (industry, location, previously published content) to find the most suitable journalists to reach out to.
Amongst Muck Rack's competitors, the tool stands out because of its detailed customization features for outbound emails. Combined with their media database, it provides an effective tool for getting high response rates from journalists.
There are not many downsides. Most users complain about outdated results causing high bounce rates and a low number of responses from journalists. The second problem is that the pricing can get into five figures per year and you are forced into an annual contract.
Prezly alternative #4: Meltwater
- Pricing: starts at $8,000 per year according to research, but you have to get in touch for a personalized quote
- Media database: yes, 380,000+ contacts
- Free trial: not available
For agencies working with big clients and corporations, Meltwater is one of the best possible choices. It has a solid media database and a range of analytics features (media and consumer intelligence, sales intelligence), which can give you deep insights into your target audience.
It’s praised for its wide range of integrations, as well as features such as social media listening and engagement.
In terms of downsides, there are only two that are very notable. Some customers complain that the database is outdated. The second problem is the pricing, which is not transparent, can go into thousands of dollars per year, and the tool can be only accessed with an annual subscription.
Conclusion
While Prezly offers a solid feature set at a very attractive price point, it is missing some core features that more established PR teams will find critical. If you have your own targeted list of journalists for outreach, Prezly can be a good choice.
But if you’re looking for all-in-one PR software with a vast database of contacts and a rich feature set, Prowly is a better alternative.
