--- title: "Cision Reviews, Pros and Cons - 2026 Software Advice" description: "Reviews of Cision. Learn how real users rate this software's ease-of-use, functionality, overall quality and customer support. Talk to our advisors to see if Cision is a good fit for you!" source_url: "https://www.softwareadvice.com/marketing/cision-profile/reviews/" page_type: "reviews" language: "en" --- 1 million+ businesses helped. Get advice Get Free Advice [Home](https://www.softwareadvice.com/) / [Social Media Analytics Tools Software](https://www.softwareadvice.com/marketing/social-media-analytics-tools-comparison/) / [Cision](https://www.softwareadvice.com/marketing/cision-profile/) / Cision Reviews Software Advice offers objective insights based on verified user reviews and independent product and market research. When our advisors match you to a software provider, we may earn a referral fee. [Overview](https://www.softwareadvice.com/marketing/cision-profile/) Reviews [Alternatives](https://www.softwareadvice.com/marketing/cision-profile/alternatives/) # Cision User Reviews ## Reviews summary - Overall rating: 3.8/5 - Total reviews: 89 ### Secondary ratings - Ease of use: 3.8/5 - Customer support: 3.7/5 - Value for money: 3.5/5 - Functionality: 3.9/5 ### Rating distribution - 5 stars: 28 reviews (31%) - 4 stars: 36 reviews (40%) - 3 stars: 13 reviews (15%) - 2 stars: 6 reviews (7%) - 1 star: 6 reviews (7%) ### Most mentioned pros - I like its ease of use and their social and media listening functionalities that enable to measure the reach of such exposure for a specific brand - The publishing process itself was also hassle-free, and I appreciated the ability to preview my content before it went public. - This software has everything you need for PR management I one spot: press releases, contact lookups, media monitoring. ### Most mentioned cons - We had a lot of issues setting up our dashboards and our Google Analytics kept getting disconnected (over 5 times). - 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? - Within 24 hours of receiving a contract renewal we sent an email cancelling the contract. ## Cision customer reviews Showing reviews 1-25 of 89 (page 1). ### Cision does the work for you - Overall rating: 5/5 - Reviewer: Joshua T. - Verified reviewer: Yes - Industry: Internet - Company size: 11-50 employees - Product usage: Used weekly for less than 2 years - Reviewed: May 2019 - Review source details: This review was submitted organically. No incentive was offered We did a lot of manual grind searching in Google and Bing for opportunities, Cision has helped us quicken that process without worrying if we had a good resource to reach out to or not. #### Ratings breakdown - Ease of use: 5/5 - Value for money: 4/5 - Customer support: 4/5 - Functionality: 5/5 #### Pros The ability to reach out and find people for link ops or for content ops is amazing. The reach and database they have built for this is impressive. We've done several "expert pieces" for clients and the fact we can use this to curate the content we have has sped up our process. Cision's quality of reporters is also nice to trust. We know they don't let just anyone in their database and it allows us to pick and chose who we want to work with. #### Cons It's pricey, but you pay for the high quality of resources which benefits you and your clients in the long run. --- ### Still the Industry Leader - Overall rating: 5/5 - Reviewer: Verified Reviewer - Verified reviewer: Yes - Industry: Marketing and Advertising - Company size: 11-50 employees - Product usage: Used daily for more than 2 years - Reviewed: November 2018 - Review source details: This review was submitted organically. No incentive was offered 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. #### Ratings breakdown - Ease of use: 5/5 - Value for money: 4/5 - Customer support: 5/5 - Functionality: 5/5 #### 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. --- ### Necessary evil of the PR industry - Overall rating: 3/5 - Reviewer: Verified Reviewer - Verified reviewer: Yes - Industry: Marketing and Advertising - Company size: 2-10 employees - Product usage: Used weekly for more than 2 years - Reviewed: March 2019 - Review source details: This reviewer was invited by us to submit an honest review and offered a nominal incentive as a thank you. #### Ratings breakdown - Ease of use: 3/5 - Customer support: 2/5 - Functionality: 3/5 #### Pros Once you have figured out how to navigate Cision to get the information you need, it is relatively straightforward to use. Can be a good starting point when building lists, etc. #### Cons Missing critical reporter contact information across all types of publications, not very "smart" in terms of search and pulling only the truly relevant results from keywords. --- ### Quick, easy to use, impactful - Overall rating: 4/5 - Reviewer: Verified Reviewer - Verified reviewer: Yes - Company size: 51-200 employees - Product usage: Used daily for less than 2 years - Reviewed: April 2018 - Review source details: This reviewer was invited by us to submit an honest review and offered a nominal incentive as a thank you. #### Ratings breakdown - Ease of use: 5/5 - Value for money: 4/5 - Customer support: 4/5 - Functionality: 4/5 #### Pros As a PR professional, Cision is vital to me. I use it everyday and it can be a huge help in identifying targets across the globe. They are always updating the platform and making it easy to save and search lists. #### Cons I don't like how when you use the quick search, having the right spacing of the publication name is important to finding the publication. Additionally, cision will sometimes kick you out of the platform while you are working on lists and those lists wont get saved and you have to start all over. The look and feel of the platform is a little outdated and could use a refresh. --- ### A solid tool - Overall rating: 5/5 - Reviewer: Verified Reviewer - Verified reviewer: Yes - Industry: Public Relations and Communications - Company size: 11-50 employees - Product usage: Used weekly for more than 2 years - Reviewed: October 2019 - Review source details: This reviewer was invited by us to submit an honest review and offered a nominal incentive as a thank you. Would recommend Cision for capturing media coverage. #### Ratings breakdown - Ease of use: 4/5 - Value for money: 3/5 - Customer support: 4/5 - Functionality: 4/5 #### Pros I use Cision at least on a weekly basis to search for media coverage for a multitude of clients. What a lifesaver. It does an amazing job to find media coverage worldwide and some stuff on social media. #### Cons It takes a while to set up for each client. Thank god that Cision support helps with this. Sometimes connecting with your Cision rep is difficult and takes time. Their social media coverage needs some work but they have made strides. --- ### PR Newswire for Mexico just did not work for us - Overall rating: 1/5 - Reviewer: Verified Reviewer - Verified reviewer: Yes - Industry: Political Organization - Company size: 2-10 employees - Product usage: Used other for less than 6 months - Reviewed: May 2019 - Review source details: This reviewer was invited by us to submit an honest review and offered a nominal incentive as a thank you. Overall we are very unhappy with PR Newswire. We won't be using it again, not after this first bad first impression. #### Ratings breakdown - Ease of use: 3/5 - Value for money: 1/5 - Customer support: 2/5 - Functionality: 2/5 #### Pros The only pro that we can think of is the simplicity of submitting your release online. It seemed simple enough. Also their 1800 customer service was helpful with technical questions. #### Cons We started with PR Web and they wanted to sell us the services from PR Newswire, their promise was that they will have a better reporting, better chance to have press releases picked up by media, etc. -- We sent out a first press release and the results were terrible. The report was pretty much the same as PR Web, which is an automatic publication from their partners on sites that are really not reputable at all. They even have personal blogs listed. -- When we contacted the representative in charge of our account he said "Your press release had great results" and then he suggested we create a google alert to see where our press release was published. We tried this service with the idea that it would be better than paying a free lance PR agent in México. We paid for 1 release double of what we paid the agent in a whole month and we absolutely regret joining this service. -- It might work for other areas but for Mexico it absolutely does not work. The WORST part is the lack of willingness to help the client resolve the problem. They offered no solutions or help. --- ### Solid, Basic Monitoring Software - Overall rating: 4/5 - Reviewer: Verified Reviewer - Verified reviewer: Yes - Industry: Hospital & Health Care - Company size: 10000+ employees - Product usage: Used monthly for more than 2 years - Reviewed: July 2021 - Review source details: This reviewer was invited by us to submit an honest review and offered a nominal incentive as a thank you. Overall, Cision is an imperfect but very necessary tool for anyone in the PR and communications field. #### Ratings breakdown - Ease of use: 4/5 - Functionality: 4/5 #### Pros Cision allows us to track the online conversation surrounding a certain topic, and allows us to keep a pulse on how our company and products are being discussed. #### Cons Sentiment is an issue. Cision automatically grades content as positive, negative, or neutral, but it is FAR from a perfect process. Often times, certain trigger words result in something being graded a certain way, but the context is not interpreted. For instance, a headline may read "XYZ platform prevents bad customer experiences" but because the Cision software sees "bad customer experiences" it is automatically graded as a negative sentiment, despite being positive. This creates a decent amount of manual effort to sort through all content. --- ### The Only Press Release Tool Worth The Time & Money - Overall rating: 5/5 - Reviewer: Jake T. - Verified reviewer: Yes - Industry: Marketing and Advertising - Company size: 11-50 employees - Product usage: Used other for less than 2 years - Reviewed: September 2019 - Review source details: This reviewer was invited by us to submit an honest review and offered a nominal incentive as a thank you. 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. #### Ratings breakdown - Ease of use: 5/5 - Value for money: 5/5 - Customer support: 5/5 - Functionality: 5/5 #### 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. --- ### Cision - Overall rating: 3/5 - Reviewer: Verified Reviewer - Verified reviewer: Yes - Industry: Public Relations and Communications - Company size: 1001-5000 employees - Product usage: Used weekly for more than 2 years - Reviewed: August 2018 - Review source details: This reviewer was invited by us to submit an honest review and offered a nominal incentive as a thank you. While its a business necessity for my line of work, Cision could be a smoother experience overall and could be more user friendly. #### Ratings breakdown - Ease of use: 2/5 - Value for money: 2/5 - Customer support: 2/5 - Functionality: 2/5 #### Pros Cision is a great resource to have when evaluating media outlets and using it as a database to access contacts of these media outlets #### Cons Hard to navigate, UVM seems overly inflated, and not all the outlets are accessible online. Also, when searching for outlets its hard to navigate because the online version of news is considered a separate outlet from the paper or magazine version, when they're owned by the same entity. --- ### Great tool for PR - Overall rating: 5/5 - Reviewer: Cris R. - Verified reviewer: Yes - Industry: Writing and Editing - Company size: 501-1000 employees - Product usage: Used daily for less than 2 years - Reviewed: August 2021 - Review source details: This reviewer was invited by us to submit an honest review and offered a nominal incentive as a thank you. #### Ratings breakdown - Ease of use: 4/5 - Functionality: 4/5 #### 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. --- ### Ok media database, good monitoring, and everything else is disappointing. - Overall rating: 3/5 - Reviewer: David Z. - Industry: Computer Software - Company size: 201-500 employees - Product usage: Used weekly for less than 12 months - Reviewed: February 2019 - Review source details: This reviewer was invited by us to submit an honest review and offered a nominal incentive as a thank you. Ok media database, good monitoring, and everything else is disappointing. #### Ratings breakdown - Ease of use: 3/5 - Value for money: 3/5 - Customer support: 5/5 - Functionality: 3/5 #### 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. --- ### The best overall system - Overall rating: 5/5 - Reviewer: Natasha L. - Verified reviewer: Yes - Industry: Public Relations and Communications - Company size: 2-10 employees - Product usage: Used daily for more than 2 years - Reviewed: August 2022 - Review source details: This review was submitted organically. No incentive was offered #### Ratings breakdown - Ease of use: 5/5 - Functionality: 5/5 #### Pros This software has everything you need for PR management I one spot: press releases, contact lookups, media monitoring. This is the premium system to use. #### Cons The media monitoring alerts can be a little tricky to setup and remove. --- ### Great features - Overall rating: 5/5 - Reviewer: Eli S. - Verified reviewer: Yes - Industry: Public Relations and Communications - Company size: 11-50 employees - Product usage: Used daily for more than 2 years - Reviewed: June 2020 - Review source details: This reviewer was invited by us to submit an honest review and offered a nominal incentive as a thank you. Constantly improving experience for customers and would recommend. #### Ratings breakdown - Ease of use: 4/5 - Value for money: 5/5 - Customer support: 3/5 - Functionality: 5/5 #### Pros Reporter database constantly updated, new features including social accounts and connections to other reporters covering similar topics are great #### Cons Sometimes can be hard to find niche outlets or outlets without clearly defined roles for staff to pitch --- ### Really excellent communications software - Overall rating: 5/5 - Reviewer: Verified Reviewer - Verified reviewer: Yes - Industry: Insurance - Company size: 51-200 employees - Product usage: Used weekly for less than 2 years - Reviewed: November 2019 - Review source details: This reviewer was invited by us to submit an honest review and offered a nominal incentive as a thank you. Definitely the best tool I have used for comms and PR. Really happy. #### Ratings breakdown - Ease of use: 4/5 - Functionality: 5/5 #### Pros So easy to search for the right people. Wouldn't be able to find these journalists and PR people by using a simple web search. So it's really great for PR activity. Great for getting content out there. #### Cons I wouldn't exactly call this software cheap. Although excellence should come at a price! Initial training was also a bit confusing. --- ### Cision won't stop billing my company - Overall rating: 1/5 - Reviewer: Drew C. - Verified reviewer: Yes - Industry: Computer Software - Company size: 11-50 employees - Product usage: Used monthly for less than 12 months - Reviewed: April 2023 - Review source details: This review was submitted organically. No incentive was offered 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! #### Ratings breakdown - Ease of use: 1/5 - Value for money: 1/5 - Customer support: 1/5 - Functionality: 1/5 #### 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? --- ### Cision - Overall rating: 4/5 - Reviewer: Verified Reviewer - Verified reviewer: Yes - Industry: Publishing - Company size: 10000+ employees - Product usage: Used weekly for less than 12 months - Reviewed: December 2018 - Review source details: This reviewer was invited by us to submit an honest review and offered a nominal incentive as a thank you. It was never the only thing that we were using, but could occasionally be helpful if we couldn't find the information we needed anywhere else. #### Ratings breakdown - Ease of use: 4/5 - Functionality: 4/5 #### Pros Cision can be really great when it comes to finding contact information for various writers, editors, and media people. Sometimes, there's information that is hard to come by elsewhere. #### Cons Sometimes, the information provided on Cision is outdated or accessible for free via the internet as opposed to using a paid service. --- ### Cision Review - Overall rating: 5/5 - Reviewer: Shantel C. - Verified reviewer: Yes - Industry: Public Relations and Communications - Company size: 2-10 employees - Product usage: Used daily for less than 2 years - Reviewed: April 2021 - Review source details: This reviewer was invited by us to submit an honest review and offered a nominal incentive as a thank you. We save research time and can build a contact list with ease. #### Ratings breakdown - Ease of use: 5/5 - Value for money: 5/5 - Customer support: 5/5 - Functionality: 5/5 #### 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 - Overall rating: 1/5 - Reviewer: Alistair D. - Company size: 11-50 employees - Product usage: Used daily for less than 12 months - Reviewed: July 2018 - Review source details: This review was submitted organically. No incentive was offered 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 #### Ratings breakdown - Ease of use: 2/5 - Value for money: 1/5 - Customer support: 1/5 - Functionality: 1/5 #### 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. --- ### Time saver boon for media database build-up - Overall rating: 4/5 - Reviewer: Jessica S. - Industry: Events Services - Company size: 201-500 employees - Product usage: Used weekly for less than 12 months - Reviewed: May 2017 - Review source details: This reviewer was invited by us to submit an honest review and offered a nominal incentive as a thank you. #### Ratings breakdown - Ease of use: 3/5 - Value for money: 4/5 - Customer support: 4/5 - Functionality: 4/5 #### Pros Cision is an invaluable asset when it comes to building media databases quickly and effectively. I manage public relations across different countries, and this tool helps me save a considerable amount of time and resources. Not only it provides journalists' names, contact details, interests and social media accounts: Cision also offers outlet stats, including readership and ad rates, as well as editorial opportunities. A great aid when it comes to pitching the right story to the right journalist. #### Cons Cision's database is vast but it's not complete. Not all media contacts are actually working and updated, so there's a certain probability to get few bounce emails. Another minus is that it does not provide a list of the journalists' latest published articles - a functionality offered by Cision's competitors, which is extremely helpful when pitching to the media -. --- ### Does What it Needs to But Isn't the Prettiest - Overall rating: 4/5 - Reviewer: Megan G. - Verified reviewer: Yes - Industry: Marketing and Advertising - Company size: 2-10 employees - Product usage: Used other for less than 6 months - Reviewed: April 2019 - Review source details: This reviewer was invited by us to submit an honest review and offered a nominal incentive as a thank you. 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. #### Ratings breakdown - Ease of use: 3/5 - Functionality: 4/5 #### 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. --- ### Media Friendly Platform - Overall rating: 5/5 - Reviewer: Amy R. - Verified reviewer: Yes - Industry: Public Relations and Communications - Company size: 11-50 employees - Product usage: Used weekly for less than 12 months - Reviewed: March 2020 - Review source details: This reviewer was invited by us to submit an honest review and offered a nominal incentive as a thank you. Very pleasant experience and found a lot of useful tools, such as list building and more #### Ratings breakdown - Ease of use: 5/5 - Value for money: 5/5 - Customer support: 5/5 - Functionality: 5/5 #### Pros The product is a publicists' dream, making it easier than ever to find media contacts and new outlets #### Cons The platform can be slow, there isn't much mobile presence and sometimes the contacts and insights are outdated --- ### Great tool to use for press & media listening - Overall rating: 5/5 - Reviewer: Luis S. - Verified reviewer: Yes - Industry: Automotive - Company size: 5001-10000 employees - Product usage: Used weekly for less than 12 months - Reviewed: October 2021 - Review source details: This reviewer was invited by us to submit an honest review and offered a nominal incentive as a thank you. Media & Press relations. #### Ratings breakdown - Ease of use: 4/5 - Customer support: 4/5 - Functionality: 3/5 #### Pros We use if for clipping and media listening. Very useful and easy to use, the dashboards and powerBI tools make it easy to customize #### Cons It's a little hard to understand at first, but then you get to enjoy it. --- ### While cision is a very large database, it doesn't provide the best insight into the journalist. - Overall rating: 2/5 - Reviewer: Jessica B. - Industry: Marketing and Advertising - Company size: 11-50 employees - Product usage: Used weekly for less than 2 years - Reviewed: September 2017 - Review source details: This reviewer was invited by us to submit an honest review and was entered into a raffle as a thank you. #### Ratings breakdown - Ease of use: 3/5 - Value for money: 2/5 - Functionality: 3/5 #### Pros It's pretty easy to use. There are TONS of results and it's a very large database. There are a lot of ways in which you can break down your search (locations, topics, keywords, names, etc.) #### Cons The topics are pretty broad and it often leads to pitching the wrong journalist. There's no way to truly see what the person writes about. --- ### Another Great Option for Marketing on Social Media - Overall rating: 4/5 - Reviewer: Katie S. - Verified reviewer: Yes - Product usage: Used weekly for less than 12 months - Reviewed: November 2017 - Review source details: This reviewer was invited by us to submit an honest review and offered a nominal incentive as a thank you. This is for marketing professionals who need a boost on social media. So may deem it unnecessary--especially the millennials #### Ratings breakdown - Ease of use: 5/5 - Value for money: 5/5 - Customer support: 4/5 - Functionality: 5/5 #### Pros As someone who is in the younger crowd, this is useful to me because when I started, I was unsure about how to reach who I needed to. Helped me immensely! --- ### Press Releases - Overall rating: 5/5 - Reviewer: Shalia S. - Verified reviewer: Yes - Industry: Accounting - Company size: 11-50 employees - Product usage: Used monthly for less than 2 years - Reviewed: June 2019 - Review source details: This reviewer was invited by us to submit an honest review and offered a nominal incentive as a thank you. Love working with our account manager who is always on top of our support issues or questions. #### Ratings breakdown - Ease of use: 5/5 - Value for money: 5/5 - Customer support: 5/5 - Functionality: 5/5 #### Pros Creating and distributing press releases is so intuitive and the reports are easy to read. Support is also great and very timely with our account manager. #### Cons Wish you could export all reports together for comparisons. ## More reviews [Next reviews](https://www.softwareadvice.com/marketing/cision-profile/reviews/?page=2) --- Cision Reviews, Pros and Cons - 2026 Software Advice