Prezly vs Source of Sources in 2026: A full PR platform vs Peter Shankman's free HARO successor
One is a paid newsroom, CRM, and campaign platform starting at 100 EUR a month. The other is a free email digest of journalist queries with no dashboard, filtering, or analytics of any kind.
Prezly
Source of Sources- Source of Sources has no dashboard, search, or filtering of any kind. Every subscriber receives the same full digest up to three times a day, while Prezly organizes contacts, campaigns, and coverage inside one CRM.
- Source of Sources is completely free with no paid tier. Prezly starts at 100 EUR/mo with a 14-day trial and has no permanent free plan.
- Prezly gives every story a permanent, indexed newsroom that keeps generating traffic between campaigns. Source of Sources has no publishing component, only inbound query emails you respond to directly.
- Source of Sources enforces a strict no-off-topic-pitch rule and removes subscribers who pitch irrelevant queries with no appeal, a manual quality filter Prezly does not need since it is not a shared inbound list.
- Neither tool offers an API. Source of Sources has none of any kind, and Prezly does not list API access in its own pricing table.
- Source of Sources' query volume and outlet quality are not publicly documented, while Prezly states its contact limits (5,000 on Essential, 10,000 on Standard) and full analytics on every plan.
- Source of Sources was built by Peter Shankman, who created and later sold the original HARO to Cision before it was wound down. Prezly has no connection to that lineage and is built as ground-up PR software.
Prezly and Source of Sources are barely in the same category, and that is worth saying plainly before comparing features. Prezly is a paid CRM and publishing platform: a branded, indexed newsroom, contact management, email pitch campaigns, and coverage analytics in one account. Source of Sources is a free email list run largely as a side project by Peter Shankman, the person who built the original Help a Reporter Out (HARO) before selling it to Cision. Up to three times a day, subscribers get a digest of journalist queries and reply directly, with no login, no dashboard, no filtering, and no tracking of any kind. SOS costs nothing and takes 30 seconds to join, which makes it worth having regardless. It just cannot do what Prezly does, and treating it as a substitute rather than a free extra channel would be a mistake for anyone running a real PR program.
The tools at a glance
Prezly
PR CRM with branded newsrooms, email outreach, and campaign analytics in one platform
Prezly is a PR CRM and publishing platform built around a branded online newsroom. Every story published lives on an indexed, permanent page rather than an email attachment that disappears, and Prezly has reported millions of organic views through client newsrooms generated with no active campaigns running, including views the company attributes to AI systems increasingly citing indexed content.
A contact CRM sits alongside the newsroom, letting you tag and segment journalists by beat or outlet, track opens and clicks on pitches, and build a relationship history rather than a cold spreadsheet. Used by 500+ PR teams with clients including IKEA, Sony, and Emirates, Prezly is explicit about what it is not: a media database. You bring your own contacts and Prezly manages what happens with them.
Pricing starts at 100 EUR/mo for Essential, capped at one user and 5,000 contacts, with white-label newsrooms and localization requiring Standard at 250 EUR/mo. A 14-day free trial with no credit card required makes it possible to test the newsroom before paying anything.
| Feature | Essential 100 EUR/mo | Standard 250 EUR/mo | Enterprise Custom |
|---|---|---|---|
| Contact limit | 5,000 | 10,000 | Custom |
| Branded, indexed newsroom | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Full analytics | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| White-label / custom domain | No | Yes | Yes |
| 14-day free trial | Yes | Yes | No |
Source of Sources
Free daily email digest connecting journalists with expert sources, from the founder of HARO
Source of Sources (SOS) is a free journalist-to-source matching service run by Peter Shankman, who founded the original Help a Reporter Out (HARO) in 2008 before it was acquired by Cision and eventually shut down in that form. SOS recreates the core idea without the platform layer HARO grew into: journalists submit queries, Shankman manually reviews them, and subscribers get up to three email digests a day listing what reporters need.
There is no login, no dashboard, and no search. If a query matches your expertise, you reply directly to the journalist from the email, with no tracking or intermediary software involved. Shankman runs SOS largely as a side project, taking only a few minutes a day, and asks beneficiaries to donate to animal welfare causes or give a social shoutout rather than pay him.
A strict no-spam rule underpins the whole system: pitch a journalist off-topic and Shankman removes you from the list with no appeal. That manual enforcement keeps quality reasonably high for a free tool, but there is no analytics, no CRM, no API, and no way to filter the digest by topic or industry, so scaling a real program on SOS alone is not realistic.
| Feature | Free $0 |
|---|---|
| Daily journalist query emails | Yes |
| Direct journalist contact | Yes |
| Dashboard or search interface | No |
| Topic filtering | No |
| Analytics or tracking | No |
| API access | No |
Head-to-head feature comparison
| Feature | Prezly | Source of Sources |
|---|---|---|
| Core model | Outbound: bring your own contacts, pitch and publish | Inbound: reply directly to journalist queries in a shared email digest |
| Journalist / media contact database | No (bring your own contacts) | No (no searchable database) |
| Contact CRM | Yes | No |
| Branded newsroom / publishing | Yes (indexed, SEO and AI-discoverable) | No |
| Dashboard or search interface | Yes (full CRM and campaign dashboard) | No (no login or dashboard of any kind) |
| Topic filtering | Yes (segment by beat, outlet, tags) | No (identical digest to every subscriber) |
| Analytics or coverage tracking | Yes (campaign and coverage analytics, all plans) | No |
| Free tier | No (14-day trial only) | Yes ($0, no paid tier) |
| API access | Not publicly documented | No |
| Starting price | 100 EUR/mo (Essential) | $0 |
Considering AI Peekaboo alongside Prezly and Source of Sources?
Prezly newsrooms are increasingly cited by AI systems generating answers about your brand, an advantage Source of Sources cannot offer since it has no publishing layer at all, only an inbound email digest. But neither tool tracks whether your brand is actually showing up when someone asks ChatGPT, Gemini, or Perplexity a question in your category. AI Peekaboo tracks those citations directly, with a read and write API on every plan from $50 per month and white-label reporting for agencies, adding the AI-visibility measurement that neither a newsroom nor a free query digest provides on its own.
Read the AI Peekaboo review →Which should you choose?
PrezlySource of SourcesPrezlySource of SourcesPrezlyPrezlyThis is not really a close call, and treating it as one would be dishonest. Source of Sources is a genuinely useful free channel because it costs nothing and takes seconds to join, but it has no structure: no filtering, no CRM, no analytics, and undocumented query volume. Prezly is a paid platform built for teams that need to manage contacts, publish stories, and report on results. The sensible use of SOS is as a zero-cost layer added on top of a real tool, not a replacement for one.
Bottom line
Subscribe to Source of Sources regardless of what else you use, since it costs nothing and takes 30 seconds. But if PR is a real function for your business, with a newsroom, contact management, and reporting requirements, Prezly is the tool, and SOS is, at best, a free supplementary channel layered underneath it, not something you build a program around.
Frequently asked questions
Is Source of Sources a real substitute for a paid PR tool like Prezly?
No, Source of Sources is a free email digest with no dashboard, filtering, CRM, or analytics, so it cannot replace what a platform like Prezly does for managing contacts, publishing a newsroom, or tracking campaign results. It works well as a zero-cost supplementary channel for spotting occasional journalist opportunities, but a business running an actual PR program needs the structure a paid tool like Prezly provides.
How much does Source of Sources cost compared to Prezly?
Source of Sources is completely free, with founder Peter Shankman asking beneficiaries to donate to animal welfare causes or give a social media shoutout instead of paying him directly. Prezly starts at 100 EUR/mo for its Essential plan, with a 14-day free trial, and adds cost from there for higher contact limits, white-label newsrooms, and additional users.
Is Source of Sources the same as HARO?
Not exactly, though they share the same founder. Peter Shankman created Help a Reporter Out (HARO) in 2008, sold it to Cision, and launched Source of Sources after Cision wound HARO down in its original form. SOS is a simpler, independently run version of the same core idea: journalist queries compiled into an email digest that subscribers respond to directly.
Can I search or filter Source of Sources queries by topic?
No, Source of Sources has no search, filtering, or categorization of any kind, and every subscriber receives the same full digest up to three times a day. Prezly has the opposite structure: its CRM lets you tag and segment journalist contacts by beat, outlet, or relationship status, though that only applies to contacts you have already added yourself, since Prezly is not a media database either.
Does Prezly's newsroom help my stories show up in AI search results the way Source of Sources cannot?
Yes, Prezly publishes every story to a branded, indexed newsroom that gets crawled by Google and increasingly cited by AI systems generating answers about your brand, generating organic views well after a campaign ends. Source of Sources has no publishing component at all, it is a one-way email digest of journalist queries, so any coverage you land through it lives only wherever the journalist chooses to publish it, with nothing on the SOS side contributing to your own search or AI visibility.
Who actually runs Source of Sources, and is it reliable?
Peter Shankman runs Source of Sources largely as a side project, describing it as a few minutes of work per day, and manually reviews journalist query submissions before including them in the digest. That manual vetting, combined with a strict no-off-topic-pitch policy that removes violators with no appeal, keeps quality reasonably high for a free tool, but query volume and outlet quality are not publicly documented, so reliability depends on which queries happen to come through on a given day.