Connectively is a co-pilot for everything. Medialyst nails the one thing.
Connectively was the name Cision gave HARO when it rebranded the service in March 2024, before shutting it down on December 9, 2024. On June 2, 2026, Featured.com revived Connectively as a separate paid platform — and is rebranding it into an AI PR "co-pilot" that competes head-to-head with us, spanning journalists, podcasts, speaking gigs, and awards all at once. But underneath the co-pilot, it's still a journalist-request feed: you wait for a query and pitch alongside the crowd. Medialyst goes the opposite way — AI-native from the ground up, built by AI practitioners, and focused on exactly one job: finding the right journalist for your story and doing it better than anything else. You find your own newsjacking opportunities and pitch any number of journalists you choose, proactively, instead of competing in a public queue.
The honest comparison.
Pulled from public Connectively documentation, customer reviews, and our own product. We update this page when either side ships something new.
| Capability | Medialyst | Connectively |
|---|---|---|
| Finding the right journalist | ||
| Find journalists for this story | ✓ Story-specific relevance scoring | ✕ — you answer queries the crowd also sees |
| Understand a journalist's beat | ✓ Reads past articles + recent coverage | ~ AI co-pilot suggests queries; no per-story scoring |
| Analyze past writing | ✓ Grounded in actual articles | ✕ — no per-journalist article reading |
| Per-journalist pitch angles | ✓ Personalized angles + pitch drafts | ~ AI co-pilot drafts; same crowd sees the request |
| Data freshness | ✓ Live news article search in real time | ~ Real-time query feed + AI co-pilot |
| Refine a list with natural language | ✓ “Remove anyone inactive in 6 months” | ✕ Not available |
| Find more like top performers | ✓ “Find 20 more like the top 5” | ✕ Not available |
| Add custom enrichment columns | ✓ “Research if they use affiliate links” | ✕ Not available |
| Pitching & sending | ||
| Email verification | ✓ Multi-step verification waterfall | ~ Pangram AI-detection on inbound pitches, not contact verification |
| Send + track from one place | ✓ Built-in send + tracking | ✕ — reply through the platform, no domain send |
| Pricing & setup | ||
| Time to first pitch | ✓ Minutes | ~ Hours to days — wait for a relevant query |
| Free trial | ✓ First list free | ~ Paid platform (trial) |
| Contract | ✓ None — cancel anytime | ~ None — but reactive-only |
| Price | ✓ from $149/mo | ~ Paid; tiers unverified during relaunch |
| Agent-native workflows | ||
| API access | ✓ Public REST API | ✕ Not available |
| Remote MCP support | ✓ Hosted remote MCP server | ✕ Not available |
| Agent-native workflows | ✓ Usable directly inside Claude, ChatGPT & Cursor | ✕ Not available |
| CSV import / re-enrichment from competitor exports | ✓ Upload any CSV — the agent re-verifies & re-scores | ✕ Not available |
Three reasons teams switch.
We're not trying to out-database Connectively. We're trying to out-result them — by being more accurate, faster to act on, and honest about price.
A smaller list that actually replies.
Instead of a giant static database, Medialyst enriches journalists live and verifies every email in real time before it reaches you — global coverage across any outlet, journalist, or beat, researched for your story rather than pulled from a stale row.
From story to sent pitch in minutes.
Paste a release, a URL, or a topic. Medialyst proposes journalists, scores them 0–100 by fit, and drafts a tailored angle for each — no demo call, no contract, no multi-week onboarding.
Pricing on the website. Not in a sales deck.
Every plan and limit is public. Starter is $97/mo billed annually (or $149 month-to-month, cancel anytime) — and your first list is free: 300 credits, no credit card. No lock-in, no “let’s get on a call.”
Why people switch from Connectively.
An AI co-pilot that's trying to be everything
Featured is rebranding Connectively into an AI PR co-pilot that spans journalists, podcasts, speaking gigs, awards, and publisher placements — and a tool that chases every vertical at once rarely does any of them well. Medialyst deliberately does one job: find the right journalist for your story, and make that the best experience on the market. When a window is open, focused beats broad.
GlobeNewswire — Featured.com revives Connectively, launches AI co-pilot ↗An AI layer bolted onto a crowd queue
Connectively's co-pilot is built on top of the same reactive request feed: a journalist posts a query, it goes to everyone, and you pitch alongside the crowd — now with AI help to write faster. Medialyst is AI-native, not AI-bolted-on. It doesn't make you a faster contestant in a public queue; it researches the right journalists for your specific story so you reach out first, on your own terms.
AZBigMedia — Connectively journalist request platform ↗AI spam is exactly what killed Connectively the first time
When Cision ran Connectively, AI-generated responses flooded every query, fake "experts" with AI bios piled in, and journalists couldn't find real sources — "every other pitch seemed like nothing more than lazy AI-generated nonsense from someone who definitely wasn't an expert." Adding an AI co-pilot that helps everyone pitch faster is a curious answer to a problem AI created. Medialyst sidesteps the dynamic entirely: it researches the right journalists for your story so the pitch belongs there in the first place.
Ahrefs — HARO has been dead for a while ↗Pricing that keeps changing mid-relaunch
Connectively relaunched as a paid platform on June 2, 2026, and its tiers are still unsettled — one source cites $149/mo, another $49/mo, and featured.com/pricing now redirects to connectively.us. Medialyst's pricing is public and stable: $149/mo Starter, $299 Pro, $800 Scale, no contract, 30-day money-back, and a free first list — you'll know what you pay before you start.
GlobeNewswire — Featured.com revives Connectively (paid platform) ↗Where Connectively wins.
No tool is best at everything. Here's where Connectively is genuinely strong — so you can decide honestly.
A live feed of inbound journalist demand
Connectively's platform gives you a real-time feed of journalist requests with search and filter, AI co-pilot workflows for bylined articles, podcasts, speaking engagements and awards, and early access to queries. When a journalist is actively asking for sources on your exact topic, that explicit, opted-in demand is a genuinely useful signal a proactive tool has to find for itself.
Breadth across multiple PR verticals
If you genuinely want one login that touches journalist quotes, podcast bookings, speaking slots, and awards, Connectively's spread is real — and for a generalist who values one bill over best-in-class at any single thing, that breadth has a logic. Medialyst doesn't try to cover those verticals; it goes deep on one.
Reach into publisher partnerships
Featured/Connectively says it supports 100,000 users and helps 2,500 publishers fill content gaps, connecting an expert with a publisher "every six seconds." If your goal is volume of low-effort quote placements across that publisher network, the marketplace is built for exactly that throughput.
Where Medialyst pulls ahead.
The flip side: here's where Medialyst is the stronger choice over Connectively for finding and pitching the right journalists.
Built by AI practitioners — AI-native to the core
Medialyst is built by people who actually build AI — an ex-Google engineer (45K+ on X) and AI-industry experts — not a media marketplace bolting a co-pilot onto a legacy product. It's AI-native by design: it analyzes every candidate journalist in parallel, so you get the depth of reading each reporter's recent work at the speed of a single search. Fast and deep, instead of one at the cost of the other.
One job, done exceptionally
Connectively is spreading across verticals — journalists, podcasts, speaking, awards, publisher placements — and trying to do everything at once is the surest way to do none of it well. Medialyst does exactly one job: find the right journalist for your story, and make that the best experience on the market. Every ounce of the product goes into relevance, real coverage, and verified contacts — not a grab-bag of unrelated placements.
Open-source newsjack.sh — a full PR team any agent can run
We open-sourced newsjack.sh, a free PR skill set any AI agent (Claude, ChatGPT, Cursor) can load to research angles, find journalists, and draft pitches like a full PR team. Paired with our public REST API and hosted MCP server, it's a level of openness the incumbents are still playing catch-up to — and a marker of where PR tooling is heading, not where it's been.
Proactive discovery, not a public queue
Instead of waiting for a journalist to post a query the whole crowd can see, Medialyst finds your own newsjacking opportunities from live news and lets you pitch any number of journalists you choose — each one scored by fit for your story, grounded in their actual recent coverage, with every email verified in real time before it reaches you.
Right-priced, public, and yours to keep
Starter is $149/mo, Pro $299, Scale $800 — published, monthly, no contract, no per-seat fees, 30-day money-back, and your first list is free (300 credits, no card). Already have a media list or an old HARO export? Upload it and the agent re-verifies and re-scores every contact — so you start from what you've already got, not an empty query feed.
Pitching the same announcement.
One launch, two tools. Here's what a comms lead actually does to get a story-specific pitch out the door.
Medialyst9 min totalConnectivelyhours–daysThree places the difference shows up.
Database quality
Connectively isn't a journalist database — it's a request marketplace with an AI co-pilot on top, and its "data" is whatever queries journalists choose to post.
That's a different unit of value than a researched contact: you don't get a list of the right reporters for your story, you get a stream of whatever happened to be asked today, broadcast to everyone at once. The quality problem the model is famous for is AI spam — "every other pitch seemed like nothing more than lazy AI-generated nonsense" — which is why HARO had to add Pangram AI-detection so journalists could filter responses out. Medialyst takes the opposite stance.
Rather than a feed of inbound requests, it enriches journalists live at the moment you build a list: pulling recent articles, confirming the beat, and verifying the email in real time before it's ever shown to you. Coverage is global — any outlet, any journalist, any beat — and the unit of truth is a freshly-researched contact for your specific story, not a public query you're racing the crowd to answer.
Speed
On a query marketplace, "speed" means how fast you can react once a relevant request appears — and that's the catch: if no journalist posts a query that fits, there's nothing to react to, AI co-pilot or not.
Medialyst removes the waiting entirely. You paste a press release, a URL, or a topic, and the agent goes to work immediately — searching live news in real time and building a verified, scored journalist list without anyone needing to ask for sources first. The average time from describing your story to a verified, scored journalist list is four minutes and thirty-two seconds.
It's that fast because it's genuinely AI-native: built by AI practitioners — an ex-Google engineer (45K+ on X) and AI-industry experts — it researches every candidate journalist in parallel rather than one after another, so depth and speed arrive together instead of trading off. That matters most for newsjacking: when a story breaks and you have a timely angle, you find the reporters already covering it and reach out, while the window is open.
AI & agent surface
This is where the models diverge entirely.
Connectively is something you log into — you operate inside its feed, on its terms, and your output is a pitch dropped into a shared queue, even with an AI co-pilot drafting it. There's no way to drive it from your own tools, no structured journalist data to pull, no API surface for an agent to compose with. Medialyst is built agent-first.
A public REST API and a hosted remote MCP server mean you can run journalist discovery and enrichment directly from inside Claude, ChatGPT, or Cursor, wire it into your own scripts, or hand it to an internal agent. sh, a free open-source PR skill set any AI agent can load to research angles, find journalists, and draft pitches like a full PR team. An AI co-pilot bolted onto a closed query marketplace has no answer for that; a request marketplace can't be a component in your workflow, and Medialyst can.
Two pricing philosophies, side by side.
Ours is public and posted. Here's how it sits next to what Connectively customers tell us they encounter.
- Starterfounders & small teams$97/mo annual
- Proin-house comms & PR teams$194/mo annual
- Scaleagencies & high-volume teams$520/mo annual
- No contract · no per-seat fees · 30-day money-back
- Free first list — 300 credits, no credit card
- One unified product — no modules priced separately
- Connectively relaunched June 2, 2026 as a paid platform; exact tiers are unverified during the relaunch — one source cites $149/mo for Pro, another $49/mo — and featured.com/pricing now redirects to connectively.us. The free HARO newsletter is a separate product. Verify at connectively.us/pricing.
- No public pricing — quote on request
In the words of Medialyst users.
Real customers, approved for use. Your results depend on your story and your list — these are theirs.
"My new favorite PR intern. With a few detailed prompts, the agent comes up with a pretty targeted list of journalists. The best thing is it gives a summary of their recent articles before I commit to reading every piece."
"Medialyst is the only tool that keeps up with the pace our firm needs to move at across our High Growth B2B Tech clients. The journalist targeting is sharp as well as accurate, and Elvis actually ships when you give him feedback."
"It's 100% customizable to you & your clients. It's affordable. It's built by someone who gets back to you quickly & truly wants to give the people what they want — MORE time."
"Medialyst takes the guesswork out of journalist outreach. It vets your pitch for suitability, matches it to the right journalists, and hands you their most accurate contact details — so instead of firing off cold emails into the void, you're landing in the right inboxes. The result? Fewer emails sent, more stories published."
"This is a must-have if you work in media, it's easy to use and saves you a lot of time! The customer service has been some of the best I have experienced."
Paste a story. Get your journalist list in minutes.
Drop in a press release, your website URL, or a one-line description of your news. Medialyst reads what's relevant, finds reporters who actually cover it, scores them by fit, and verifies every email — your first list is free, no credit card.
Common questions about switching from Connectively.
What is Connectively?
Is Connectively an AI PR agent?
Connectively vs Medialyst — what's the difference?
How much does Connectively cost?
What's the difference between HARO and Connectively?
Can I import my Connectively or HARO contacts into Medialyst?
An AI co-pilot for everything, or one tool that nails the journalist.
Start free with 300 credits and no credit card. Paste your story and get a verified, story-specific list of journalists in minutes.