The modern alternative to Agility PR Solutions.
Agility PR Solutions (owned by Innodata) is the friendlier, mid-market alternative to Cision — a 1M+ contact media database, monitoring, and reporting in one suite at a lower price point, with genuinely praised hands-on support. But underneath, it's the same model: a static, human-curated database sold quote-only on annual contracts, with no public pricing and no self-serve trial. Medialyst competes on a different axis entirely: live enrichment per story, real-time email verification, and a self-serve monthly plan you can start in minutes.
The honest comparison.
Pulled from public Agility PR Solutions documentation, customer reviews, and our own product. We update this page when either side ships something new.
| Capability | Medialyst | Agility PR Solutions |
|---|---|---|
| Finding the right journalist | ||
| Find journalists for this story | ✓ Story-specific relevance scoring | ~ Keyword search + filters over 1M+ contacts |
| Understand a journalist's beat | ✓ Reads past articles + recent coverage | ~ Beat tags + topic filters |
| Analyze past writing | ✓ Grounded in actual articles | ~ Profile bylines, no per-article analysis |
| Per-journalist pitch angles | ✓ Personalized angles + pitch drafts | ~ Press release distribution + pitching |
| Data freshness | ✓ Live news article search in real time | ~ Static database — human-curated, periodic refresh |
| 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 | ~ Human-curated DB — stale-contact complaints |
| Send + track from one place | ✓ Built-in send + tracking | ~ Built-in outreach + monitoring |
| Pricing & setup | ||
| Time to first pitch | ✓ Minutes | ~ Weeks: sales call → annual onboarding |
| Free trial | ✓ First list free | ✕ Demo only, no free trial |
| Contract | ✓ None — cancel anytime | ~ Annual-only |
| Price | ✓ from $149/mo | ~ ~$8K–$15K+/yr (opaque, request a quote) |
| Agent-native workflows | ||
| API access | ✓ Public REST API | ~ API access (limited) |
| 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 | ~ No re-enrichment from exports |
Three reasons teams switch.
We're not trying to out-database Agility PR Solutions. 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 Agility PR Solutions.
A gentler version of the same locked-in model
Agility is consistently reviewed as easier to use and cheaper than Cision, but it's still a quote-only annual contract with no public pricing, no monthly option, and no self-serve trial. Reported pricing ranges from roughly $8,000 to $15,000+ per year depending on features and seats. Medialyst publishes pricing from $149/mo, bills monthly, requires no contract, and gives you a free first list with no credit card.
G2 — Agility PR Solutions reviews ↗The same static-database data rot
Agility's 1M+ contact database is human-curated and refreshed periodically, but it draws the same stale-contact complaints as every legacy index — outdated emails, contacts who've moved outlets, and details that drift between refresh cycles. Medialyst takes the opposite approach: it enriches each journalist 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.
Capterra — Agility PR Solutions reviews ↗A filter dashboard, not story-specific research
Agility's journalist search works the way every legacy database does: filter by keywords, beats, outlets, and geography, then manually vet the results. It doesn't read each journalist's recent articles to judge whether they'd actually cover your specific story. Medialyst reads hundreds of articles relevant to your announcement, scores reporters 0–100 by fit, and tells you why each one would write it.
Agility PR Solutions — media database ↗Monitoring is the strength, not discovery
Where Agility genuinely shines is media monitoring and analytics — tracking coverage, measuring earned media value, and reporting to stakeholders. But if your primary job is journalist discovery and outreach rather than post-campaign measurement, you're buying the side feature at a price point shaped by the monitoring suite.
G2 — Agility PR Solutions reviews ↗Where Agility PR Solutions wins.
No tool is best at everything. Here's where Agility PR Solutions is genuinely strong — so you can decide honestly.
A full-service suite at a friendlier price than Cision
Agility bundles a media database, monitoring, analytics, and reporting in one suite at a price point consistently reported as lower than Cision or Meltwater — roughly $8K–$15K/yr vs. Cision's $10K–$30K+. For a mid-market team that wants the traditional all-in-one without enterprise pricing, that gap is real.
Genuinely praised hands-on support
Agility's single most consistent positive review theme is support — responsive, helpful account managers who are praised by name across G2 and Capterra. That's a meaningful differentiator in a category where Cision and Meltwater draw regular complaints about post-sale support vanishing.
Strong media monitoring and analytics
For teams whose primary need is tracking coverage, measuring share of voice, and reporting earned media value, Agility's monitoring suite is competent and integrated. It covers print, online, broadcast, and social with dashboards that reviewers find usable.
Where Medialyst pulls ahead.
The flip side: here's where Medialyst is the stronger choice over Agility PR Solutions for finding and pitching the right journalists.
Right-priced and flexible — no contract, no sales call
Starter is $149/mo, Pro $299, Scale $800 — published, monthly, no per-seat fees, no annual lock-in, and a 30-day money-back guarantee. The first list is free with 300 credits and no credit card. You'll know exactly what you pay before you ever talk to anyone.
Fit for this story, not keyword roulette
Instead of keyword search over a static index, Medialyst reads hundreds of articles relevant to your specific announcement, scores reporters 0–100 by fit, and tells you why each one would write it — grounded in their actual recent coverage.
Live enrichment instead of a static pull
Global coverage across outlets, journalists, and beats, enriched live in real time rather than served from a database where contacts drift between refresh cycles. Every email is verified in real time before it reaches you.
Agent-native, not dashboard-bound
A public REST API, a hosted remote MCP server, and custom enrichment columns mean you can run Medialyst directly inside Claude, ChatGPT, or Cursor — and ask for things a filter UI simply can't express.
Switching is a CSV upload
Already paying for Agility? Export your media lists, upload the CSV, and Medialyst's agent re-verifies and re-scores every contact — so you can compare on your own data before your renewal window closes.
AI bolted on vs. AI-native.
Agility has added AI-powered features to its platform — AI-assisted search, AI-generated media briefs, and AI-suggested pitches — but architecturally it's the legacy keyword-filter database with AI bolted on top. The AI helps you construct better searches and drafts copy, but it isn't reading each journalist's recent articles to judge fit for your specific story. You still get whatever the filters return from a static index. Medialyst is AI-native end to end. There's no underlying filter UI to bolt onto — the agent reads real, recent articles per journalist, and you can define custom enrichment columns in plain language: "find journalists who use affiliate links and identify which platform," or "has this travel journalist visited San Diego in the last two years?" That's the difference between a database with an AI veneer and a research assistant that actually does the research.
★★★★★“Not a static database pull. Not the same recycled names that have been sitting in a spreadsheet for two years. A researched, current list built around exactly what you tell it to look for.”Amy BartkoPR professional, Chatterbox
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 totalAgility PR Solutions~3 daysThree places the difference shows up.
Database quality
Agility markets a 1M+ contact media database with global coverage, positioned as the more accessible alternative to Cision's 850K+ index.
The database is human-curated by a dedicated research team, and Agility's parent company Innodata brings data-services expertise to the maintenance. But scale and accuracy aren't the same thing, and Agility draws the same core complaint as every static legacy database: contacts go stale between refresh cycles. Journalists move outlets, change beats, and their emails bounce — and a quarterly or even monthly curation pass can't keep up with the churn that 2026's newsroom layoffs have accelerated.
Medialyst takes the opposite stance. Rather than maintaining a giant static inventory and hoping it's current, 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 — but the unit of truth is the freshly-researched contact for your story, not a row last touched in a curation pass.
Speed
Agility is faster to get started than Cision — reviewers note a friendlier onboarding and a less painful sales process — but it's still a sales call, an annual contract, and a dashboard to learn before you build your first list.
Once you're in, finding journalists still means constructing keyword searches, scanning filter results, and manually vetting fit. Medialyst collapses that. There's no demo gate and no contract — you paste a press release, a URL, or a topic, and the agent goes to work immediately.
The average time from describing your story to a verified, scored journalist list is four minutes and thirty-two seconds. That speed changes what's possible: when a news story breaks and you have a timely angle, the difference between "list in five minutes" and "list after an annual onboarding" is the difference between landing the coverage and missing the window entirely.
AI & agent surface
Agility's features live inside its dashboard — you operate searches, monitoring, and analytics through its interface, on its terms.
There's limited API access for enterprise customers, but no meaningful way to drive journalist discovery from your own tools or compose it into an automated workflow. Medialyst is built agent-first. A public REST API and a hosted remote MCP server mean you can run discovery and enrichment directly from inside Claude, ChatGPT, or Cursor, wire it into your own scripts, or hand it to an internal agent.
Custom enrichment columns let you ask research questions in plain language and get structured answers back across a whole list — the kind of thing a fixed filter schema can't express. If your team is building AI-assisted workflows, Medialyst is a component you can compose with, not a walled garden you have to log into.
Two pricing philosophies, side by side.
Ours is public and posted. Here's how it sits next to what Agility PR Solutions 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
- Agility PR Solutions doesn't publish pricing — quotes are custom and annual. Third-party sources and reviewer estimates place typical subscriptions at roughly $8,000–$15,000+/yr depending on features and seats, meaningfully cheaper than Cision but still a significant annual commitment with no monthly option and no free trial.
- 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.
"What came back was a working list with real journalists, current coverage, and contact information I could use the same day. No cross-referencing. No digging through three different tabs. One prompt and I was pitching."
"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 Agility PR Solutions.
How much does Agility PR Solutions cost in 2026?
What is the best Agility PR Solutions alternative?
Is there a cheaper alternative to Agility PR Solutions?
Can I import my Agility lists into Medialyst?
Agility PR Solutions vs Medialyst — what's the real difference?
Who owns Agility PR Solutions?
Skip the annual contract. Build your first list now.
Start free with 300 credits and no credit card. Paste your story and get a verified, story-specific list of journalists in minutes.