Prowly is a PR tool with a user-friendly interface and a tempting free 7-day trial, both of which are important for users who want to pay the tool’s high price.

While Prowly’s features undoubtedly save time on routine tasks, some users have voiced concerns over limited customization options that keep you away from building long-lasting collaboration with journalists during pitch distribution.

In addition, Prowly’s database is reported to be outdated, because they don’t do manual verification of emails.

As PR professionals need to make sure their pitches land in relevant inboxes, it becomes essential to explore Prowly’s competitors.

In this article, we will present six budget-friendly Prowly alternatives. These alternatives offer the same feature-rich set as Prowly but with added customization options and a more relevant database.

Top 6 Prowly alternatives in 2023

1. JustReachOut

JustReachOut is an AI-powered PR tool that simplifies reaching out to journalists for media coverage. With a regularly updated database containing hundreds of thousands of journalists, you can use our smart keyword or subject-based filters and immediately get journalists’ contact information, write your pitch and send it – all within the same platform.

Besides the email, JustReachOut finds the topics and relevant articles the journalists wrote earlier, so you be 100% sure they are a perfect match.

JustReachOut is great for building and tracking campaigns because you can run multiple campaigns at the same time and schedule automatic follow-ups for your pitches.

Another great feature is the AI tool that we have. It allows you to personalize your pitch, adding information based on the journalist’s previous articles and incorporating it in the opening line.

If you opt for writing pitches on your own, we have email templates you can use, or PR strategy calls with our specialists for users to improve their pitches and successfully communicate with journalists.

What’s even more — with JustReachOut you will get a notification when journalists open or reply to your emails, so you can answer or follow up right away.

With JustReachOut you get access to five helpful outreach tools you can use to manage your online reputation:

• Journalist outreach – Find the journalists writing about your niche and contact them right away
• Pitch requests – Track all pitch requests from major websites in one place
• Podcast outreach – Easily discover and connect with top podcasts you can guest on
• Broken link building – Find broken links and offer your backlink as a replacement in one go
• Guest post outreach – Discover the best guest post opportunities and get featured in 3 clicks

Find and reach out to your ideal journalists today with a 14-day free trial.

Key features

• Five outreach tools to manage your PR efforts
• AI for faster and more effective outreach
• Press mentions and backlink tracker
• Email engagement tracking
• PR strategy calls for users to improve their pitches

Pros

• Regularly updated database of journalists
• Email verification of journalists
• High deliverability rate
• High open rate
• User-friendly interface
• Lessons and guides for mastering pitches

User ratings

JustReachOut doesn’t have many reviews on the commonly used platforms, therefore, we cannot provide you with their customer review ranking. However, the testimonials customers leave say that JustReachOut over-delivers and exceeds expectations.

Price

JustReachOut offers a 14-day-free trial and three pricing plans:

• Starter Outreach – $147/month, two team members and 500 email sends
• Advanced Outreach – $247/month, five team members and 1000 email sends
• Ultimate Outreach – $497/month, ten team members and 2500 email sends 

*The prices are for monthly subscriptions. For annual subscriptions, you will get 20% off.

2. Muck Rack

Muck Rack is a comprehensive media relations platform built to streamline and enhance the PR and media outreach process for businesses. With detailed journalist profiles and AI-powered keyword research, businesses can find journalists and send pitches in one dashboard.

Even though Muck Rack is one of the most popular PR software among journalists, PR professionals noticed occasional glitches and unverified contact information. Unverified contact information can lead to emails ending in an old inbox, a common problem among people who do outreach on their own.

If you have experienced anything similar — you might be interested in checking the Muck Rack alternatives.

Muck Rack has integrated PressPal.ai into their tool, but it’s limited to keyword research and doesn’t help personalize the pitch. You still need to find interesting pieces of information to turn into hooks on your own.

Muck Racks has many useful features, but they come at a price, and without a free trial, it’s hard to decide if it’s the right fit for your business.

Source: G2

Key features

• A media database for finding the right journalists, podcasters, and freelancers
• Media monitoring for news, broadcast, and social media 
• Email engagement tracking
• Team collaboration with team media lists, reports, saved searches, and team alerts
• PR campaign reporting 
• AI for journalist search

Pros

• Intuitive interface
• Responsive customer service
• Robus media database
• Detailed journalist profiles

Cons

• Might be expensive for small businesses
• Limited social listening/monitoring tools
• Occasional technical glitches
• Occasional presence of unverified contacts
• No additional tools
• No free trial, only demo

User ratings

The average customer satisfaction score is 4.5/5, based on reviews on TrustRadius, g2 and Capterra.

Price

Muck Rack doesn’t offer a free trial or disclose their pricing information without reaching out for a quote. Based on reviews, the price is around $10.000 per year.

2. Cision

Cision’s PR platform aims to streamline the entire PR workflow, from identifying media opportunities and building public relations to monitoring media coverage.

While Cision offers all the features that PR professionals need, its interface is poorly organized, making it hard for customers to find what they need.

Despite having a large media database, users have to pay additionally for “Guarantee Paid Placement” to ensure their press release is published, thus emphasizing paid instead of organic outreach.

Source: Softwareadvice.com

Features

• Media monitoring 
• Press release distribution
• Media pitching
• Social media management
• Campaign reporting and analytics

Pros

• Robust media database
• Easy image integration for press releases

Cons

• High cost and limited reach
• Customer service issues
• Clunky interface 
• Bad customer service

User ratings

The average customer satisfaction score is 3.8 /5, based on reviews on Capterra and Softwareadvice.

Source: Captera

Price

Cision doesn’t disclose its price publicly, you have to reach out for a quote. According to TrustRadius, they have 4 pricing plans:

• Basic – $105, hosting on PRWeb.com, without press syndication
• Standard – $220, press syndication without email distribution
• Advanced – $325, press syndication and press distribution to one of their journalist lists
• Premium – $435, press syndication and press distribution to two of their journalist lists

4. Prezly

Prezly is a PR tool businesses use to publish and share news and content with their audience in one dashboard. PR professionals can build their own newsrooms and share them with their contacts through email.

One of the most popular Prezly features is its media tags functionality. This allows users to segment their contact lists based on specific criteria, such as journalists’ interests. By creating tags, PR professionals can send targeted and relevant content to journalists for their pr campaigns.

Unlike many popular PR tools, Prezly lacks a media database, limiting your contacts to only those available in your personal database. Maintaining an up-to-date database of journalists requires lots of manual work or additional software.

Still, Prezly does help with upgrading from classic email outreach because you can segment your email list, track campaigns and add large-sized videos and tweets.

Prezly advertises its analytics for media campaigns as a useful tool for measuring deliverability. However, they don’t help you craft your pitch to stand out in the journalists’ inbox.

Source: Prezly.com

Features

• Analytics for media campaigns
• Direct mail management
• Customizable newsrooms
• List management
• Flagging out-of-date emails

Pros

• Clear, intuitive interface
• Responsive and helpful customer service
• The ability to import and export Excel files
• Customizable tags for storing contacts
• Free trial

Cons

• No media database
• No email verification of journalists
• No help with pitches
• Slow updates

User ratings

The average customer satisfaction score is 4.45/5, based on reviews on g2 and Capterra.

Price

Prezly offers a free 14-day trial, three pricing plans for comms teams and one for agencies.

• Starter – $60, 2.000 contacts and unlimited pitches
• Core – $110, 10.000 contacts and unlimited pitches
• Premium – $170, 20.000 contacts and unlimited pitches
• Agency – $300, 3 users and everything in premium

5. Agility PR Solution 

Agility PR Solutions is a comprehensive PR and media relations software with a global database of over 1,000,000 media contacts and outlets.

Agility supports AI-enabled workflows and advanced search filters, enabling users to search by keyword, beat, media type, location and more, making it easier to find journalists for outreach.

With Agility PR Solutions, users can quickly compile lists of media contacts and send email pitches directly within the platform. However, Agility doesn’t help out with writing personalized email pitches, so they can’t guarantee a high open rate.

Even though Agility has a large database of journalists, users have found it difficult to find contacts for more niche journalists.

Users can post press releases in Agility’s newsroom and opt-in for Agility Boost to gain long-term visibility, but that doesn’t help businesses who want to form long-term relationships with journalists.

Source: Swordandthescript.com

Features

• Contact management
• Campaign management
• Direct mail management
• Email Distribution
• Article Author Database
• Auto-Updated Media Lists
• Newsroom

Pros

• Well-designed and intuitive user interface
• Responsive customer service
• A global media list
• Their own newsroom
• AI assistant for news releases

Cons

• Press monitoring functionality picks up irrelevant stories despite keyword filters
• High price
• Few contacts for niche topics

User ratings

The average customer satisfaction score is 3.8/5, based on reviews on g2 and Capterra.

Source G2

Price

Agility doesn’t offer a free trial, and users must reach out for pricing information. They have three plans available, depending on the primary purpose of using the platform: Agility Outreach, Agility Monitoring, and Agility Enterprise. 

According to a review on Sword and the Script, the “Agility Plus” plan, which provides access to the media monitoring module, costs approximately $7,800 annually.

6. BrandPush

BrandPush is a company that offers press release writing and distribution through its major media outlets and connections with social media influencers.

BrandPush helps deliver stories within 7-days due to their cooperation with over 200 journalists. Unlike using software where you have full control of the conversation with the journalists, with BrandPush, you outsource it to an SEO agency.

Customers can opt in for distribution services for a lower price and writing services for an additional price. For businesses that don’t want to write their own press releases and personalize their pitches, BrandPush can be a good option. 

However, without media contacts and long-lasting relationships, every press release will be costly. Plus, nobody knows your brand better than you; therefore, the personal aspect will be missing.

Source :Brandpush website

Features

• Press distribution services
• Press release writing services
• Reporting with live links
• Influencer marketing

Pros

• Money-back guarantee
• Cooperates with major media outlets such as NBC, CBS and Fox
• Writing services come with a Plus or Pro plan
• Bulk discounts
• Good customer support via email, live chat or phone

Cons

• No media contact database
• High costs
• No online newsrooms
• No media monitoring tools
• No targeted pitch distribution
• Don’t accept all niches

User ratings

The average customer satisfaction score is 4.7/5, based on reviews on TrustPilot.

Source: TrustPilot

Price

BrandPush doesn’t offer a free trial but offers three pricing plans:

• Starter – $195, press distribution without writing services
• Plus – 229, press distribution with writing press releases up to 350 words
• Pro – 259, press distribution with writing press releases up to 500 words

Comparison table

	Media contacts search	Craft Pitches	Journalists email verification	AI integration	Free Trial	Price/month
JustReachOut	✅	✅	✅	✅	✅	$147
Prowly	✅	✅	❌	❌	✅	$479
Muck Rack	✅	✅	❌	✅	❌	*$830
Cision	✅	✅	❌	Not yet	❌	$220
Prezly	❌	✅	Partially	❌	✅	$300
Agility	✅	✅	❌	For news release	❌	/
BrandPush	❌	✅	❌	For search filters	❌	$195

*based on customer reviews

Conclusion

An ideal Prowly alternative should keep all the features Prowly users love and fill in the gaps with the features Prowly lacks. The best solution has an intuitive interface, modern design, a robust feature set, and a large media database and incorporates AI for faster and more personal pitching.

JustReachOut offers just that – a perfect mix of tools and AI with your own brand voice, so you can make an impression on the journalists and have long-lasting contact with them.

Book a demo today, and start pitching to your favorite journalists right away.

FAQs

What’s the best Prowly alternative?

The best Prowly alternative is JustReachOut because it has a similar user-friendly interface, useful features and a large media database but at a more affordable price. In addition, Prowly offers more PR outreach tools, email verification and AI integration in every plan.

How much is Muckrack?

Muck Rack doesn’t offer a free trial and doesn’t publicly disclose the pricing information. Based on reviews about their pricing, there is an estimate of $10.000 per year. If the information is up-to-date, it means it’s one of the most expensive press release builders and distributor on the market. More budget-friendly options include JustReachOut for $147.

What is Prowly used for?

Prowly is a PR and media relations software platform used by PR professionals and communication teams to streamline media outreach, distribute press releases, manage content in online newsrooms, send personalized email campaigns, monitor media coverage, and access analytics to measure the impact of PR efforts. Even though Prowly is used by many PR professionals as a tool for digital asset managementit lacks an up-to-date database, and email verification feature which some of the best alternatives have.

Related reading: Prowly vs Muck Rack