About Cision
Cision is a commercial software company for public relations and corporate communications. Its platform helps PR teams track media coverage, find journalists and pitch them, distribute press releases, and report on the results of campaigns and events, with AI features meant to speed up analysis.
The core product is CisionOne, an integrated communications platform covering media monitoring, instant insights and reporting, journalist outreach, social listening and management, and an AI visibility function. The wider group includes PR Newswire for distribution, investor relations and multimedia content, Trajaan for search intelligence and generative AI monitoring, and Brandwatch for consumer intelligence and social media management.
Use cases on the site include corporate communications, brand reputation and crisis management, public sector communications, campaign and event reporting, investor relations, regulatory compliance and online newsrooms. Cision is a hosted service, and pricing is provided on request rather than listed. It is not open-source software.
Key features
- Media monitoring and instant insights
- Journalist database and outreach
- Press release distribution via PR Newswire
- Social listening and management
- Search intelligence and AI visibility
- Campaign and event reporting
Good fit for
- →PR teams tracking coverage of a campaign
- →Communications teams managing a crisis
- →Investor relations teams distributing announcements
- Tags
- public-relations
- media-monitoring
- press-release
- journalist-outreach
- social-listening
- brand-reputation
- communications
Cision: questions and answers
- What is Cision used for?
- Cision is PR and communications software with media monitoring, journalist outreach, press release distribution and social listening. It is a good fit for PR teams tracking coverage of a campaign, communications teams managing a crisis and investor relations teams distributing announcements.
- How much does Cision cost?
- Cision doesn't publish fixed prices; pricing is quoted on request.
- Is Cision open source?
- No. Cision is proprietary (closed-source) software and can't be self-hosted. In the Marketing & SEO category, open-source options include Dub, OpenSEO and YOURLS.
- What are some alternatives to Cision?
- Cision competes with Muck Rack, Meltwater and Brandwatch.
Open-source alternatives to Cision
See all
Dub
Marketing & SEO
The modern link attribution platform. Loved by world-class marketing teams like Framer, Pe
OSSvs Bitly★ 25k
OpenSEO
Marketing & SEO
OpenSEO is the open source alternative to Ahrefs and Semrush. Keyword research, backlinks,
MITvs Semrush★ 22k
YOURLS
Marketing & SEO
🔗 The 𝘥𝘦 𝘧𝘢𝘤𝘵𝘰 standard, self hosted, powerful and customizable, URL shortener in
MITvs Bitly★ 12k
Kutt
Marketing & SEO
Free Modern URL Shortener.
MITvs Bitly★ 11k
Sink
Marketing & SEO
⚡ A Simple, Speedy, Secure, and Serverless Link Shortener with Analytics, Running Entirely
AGPL-3.0vs Short.io★ 7.2k
Shlink
Marketing & SEO
The definitive self-hosted URL shortener
MITvs Bitly★ 5.3k
SaaS alternatives to Cision
See all
Muck Rack
Marketing & SEO
PR software for media relations, journalist search and coverage tracking
SaaS
Meltwater
Social Media
Media monitoring and social listening suite for PR and communications teams
SaaS
Brandwatch
Social Media
Social listening and consumer intelligence platform
SaaS
Brand24
Social Media
Social listening tool that tracks brand mentions and sentiment
SaaS
Mention
Social Media
Brand monitoring tool that tracks mentions across the web and social media
SaaSBacklinker AI
Marketing & SEO
Automates journalist and editorial outreach to win backlink mentions for SEO teams and agencies
SaaS

