Qwoted
A journalist source-request marketplace with a free tier and a searchable expert profile
Qwoted is a media sourcing platform where journalists post the sources they need for a story and vetted experts, founders, and PR professionals respond with pitches. It also hosts a public expert profile that reporters can search directly, so placements can come from being found as well as from pitching. Sources start free with two pitches a month; the Pro plan is listed at $149 per month for 35 monthly pitch credits and the research features.
Overview
For fifteen years the reflex answer to "how does a small company get quoted in the press" was Help a Reporter Out. Cision retired HARO, rebranded the remains as Connectively, and shut that down in December 2024, which left a category with high demand and no default. Qwoted is the platform that absorbed most of that demand, and it did so by being the option journalists were already using rather than the one marketers were told to use.
The mechanic is familiar. A reporter posts a request describing the story, the kind of source needed, and a deadline. Experts and the PR people who represent them see the request, spend a pitch credit to respond, and the reporter picks from the responses. What separates Qwoted from a mailing list is the profile layer: every source keeps a structured profile with expertise tags, employer, past coverage, and availability, and journalists search that database directly. A meaningful share of placements on the platform start with a reporter finding a profile, not with a source answering a call.
Ownership is unusual and worth knowing before you buy. Qwoted was founded inside Vested, a financial communications agency, and Prosek Partners, another PR firm, holds a strategic investment through Prosek Ventures. Qwoted also owns Talking Biz News, the trade outlet that covers business journalism. That combination gives the platform genuine reach into finance, fintech, and business media, which is where its request volume is strongest. It also means the platform is not a neutral utility; it is a product built by PR firms, and its request mix reflects the beats those firms live in.
For a small business the practical question is whether the free tier is enough. Two pitch credits a month plus a two hour delay on new requests is a real constraint when the best opportunities close in hours, but the profile stays searchable regardless of plan, so a well-tagged free profile still generates inbound. The $149 Pro plan is the point at which Qwoted becomes an outbound tool rather than a listing.
Best for
Founders, consultants, and subject matter experts in business, finance, technology, and health who want to earn quotes in real publications, plus small PR agencies that need a source-request channel and a shared reporting view without an enterprise media database contract.
Not the right fit for
- Teams whose goal is dofollow backlinks; major outlets routinely nofollow or omit source links, so link equity is an occasional side effect rather than the product.
- Anyone who needs to pitch a specific publication on a specific day; Qwoted is reactive by design and you can only answer requests that exist.
- Press release distribution, which Qwoted does not do at all and which belongs to a wire service.
- Consumer lifestyle, local news, and hyper-niche trade beats, where request volume is far thinner than in business and finance.
- Buyers who want a full media relations suite with a monitoring feed, newsroom hosting, and a complete journalist contact database; that is a different and more expensive category of tool.
How it works
- 1
You create a source profile: name, title, company, headshot, biography, and a set of expertise tags. Tagging is the step that determines everything downstream, since both the relevance scoring on incoming requests and the journalist-side search run off those tags. A profile with three vague tags performs badly; one with fifteen specific ones performs well.
- 2
Journalists post requests describing the story, the type of source, the outlet, and the deadline. Requests reach you three ways: a daily opportunities email, real-time alerts for topics you follow, and the in-app feed scored against your profile so the closest matches surface first rather than you reading everything.
- 3
Responding costs a pitch credit. You write the pitch inside the platform, optionally attaching quotes, a bio, or supporting material, and it lands in the journalist's Qwoted inbox rather than a general email account. Free accounts see new requests on a two hour delay, which on a competitive request is usually decisive.
- 4
The reverse direction runs without pitching at all. Reporters search the source database by topic, region, language, and availability, and contact profiles directly. Pro accounts get alerts when someone views the profile, which is the signal that the inbound half is working.
- 5
After the pitch, the platform tracks whether it was opened, replied to, or used, and logs confirmed coverage against the profile so a placement history accumulates. On the Teams plan an administrator sees the same activity across every seat, with weekly reporting, which is how agencies justify the line item to a client.
Feature breakdown
22 features in 4 modulesSource profile and discoverability
The half of the product that works whether or not you pitch anything.- Searchable expert profile
- A structured public profile with biography, employer, credentials, and headshot that journalists browse and search from inside the platform, including on the free plan.
- Expertise tagging
- Topic tags drive both the relevance scoring on your feed and whether you appear in a reporter's search; specific tags beat broad ones on both sides.
- Availability and format signals
- Flags for whether you take live TV, podcasts, phone interviews, or written comment only, which reporters filter on when they are working to a broadcast deadline.
- Coverage history
- Confirmed placements are logged to the profile over time, so a source accumulates visible proof of having been quoted rather than asserting it.
- Profile view alerts
- Pro accounts are notified when a journalist views the profile, which is the earliest indication that inbound interest exists before any email arrives.
Opportunities and pitching
The request feed, the credit system, and the mechanics of responding.- Scored opportunity feed
- Incoming journalist requests are ranked against your profile so relevant ones surface first, instead of reading a full digest three times a day.
- Real-time alerts
- Push and email alerts on topics you follow, which matter because competitive requests are frequently closed within a few hours of posting.
- Daily opportunities email
- A digest of matching requests available on every plan, including the free one, for people who would rather work from an inbox than a feed.
- Pitch credits
- Responding consumes a credit: two a month on Basic, thirty five on Pro, unlimited on Teams. The cap is what forces selectivity rather than volume spraying.
- In-platform pitch composer
- Pitches are written and sent inside Qwoted with attachments and quotes, landing in the journalist's platform inbox rather than a general press address.
- Pitch intelligence
- Pro-tier reporting on whether pitches were opened, replied to, or used, which turns a guessing game into a measurable channel.
Research and adjacent opportunities
Everything gated behind Pro that is not a pitch credit.- Opportunity research
- Search and filter the historical request archive by outlet, topic, and journalist to understand what a publication actually asks for before you pitch it.
- Events and awards database
- A separate index of speaking opportunities, conference calls for papers, and industry award deadlines, which is a distinct earned-visibility channel from press quotes.
- Journalist profiles
- Reporter pages showing beat, outlet, and recent requests, so a pitch can be aimed at what someone genuinely covers.
- Talking Biz News integration
- Qwoted owns the business-journalism trade outlet Talking Biz News, and its beat-change and job-move coverage feeds the platform's view of who now covers what.
- Saved searches and topic follows
- Persistent filters on the request stream so a niche topic generates an alert the moment a matching request is posted.
Teams, reporting, and platform integrity
Agency features and the anti-spam machinery that keeps journalists on the platform.- Multi-seat team accounts
- Teams plans put multiple practitioners and multiple client spokespeople under one administrator with shared visibility of who pitched what.
- Administrative dashboard
- A per-seat activity view covering pitches sent, responses, and placements, which is the reporting layer agencies bill against.
- Weekly activity reports
- Scheduled summaries of team pitching and coverage, useful as a client-facing artifact without rebuilding the numbers by hand.
- White labeling
- Teams-tier branding so an agency can present the workflow and its reports under its own identity.
- AI text detection
- Through a partnership with Pangram announced in 2025, journalists can see the likelihood that a pitch or quote was machine-generated, and sources can check their own drafts before sending.
- Vetting and community rules
- Sources are reviewed, and pitching off-topic or misrepresenting expertise can get an account restricted; the enforcement is real enough that users occasionally report abrupt suspensions.
Use cases
4 documentedFintech founder with no PR budget
A four-person company needs third-party credibility for an enterprise sales cycle, and cannot justify a $6,000 a month agency retainer to get it.
A carefully tagged free profile plus two well-aimed pitches a month produces a handful of trade quotes in the first quarter; the founder upgrades to Pro only once the placement rate justifies more than two attempts a month.
Solo PR consultant with five small clients
Each client wants coverage, and the consultant is manually scanning several source-request services every morning without any way to report on effort.
One Pro account consolidates the request feed, thirty five monthly credits are allocated across clients by opportunity quality, and pitch intelligence gives each client an honest open-and-reply number instead of an anecdote.
Health and wellness clinician building authority
A practitioner wants to be the person reporters call for comment on a recurring topic rather than chasing one-off mentions.
Detailed expertise tags and a broadcast-availability flag make the profile findable in journalist search; within a few months a majority of placements arrive as inbound requests, with pitching used only opportunistically.
In-house comms lead at a 60-person B2B company
Executive visibility is a board-level goal, and the existing plan is a media database subscription nobody has time to run outreach from.
A Teams account puts three spokespeople under one dashboard, weekly reports go straight into the board update, and the events and awards database adds a speaking pipeline the media database never surfaced.
Pricing
from Free (Basic, 2 pitches per month); Pro listed at $149 per monthPer-account subscription for sources and PR professionals, metered by monthly pitch credits. Journalists use the platform free. The free Basic plan keeps your profile searchable but caps you at two pitches a month and delays new requests by two hours; Pro removes the delay and adds the research features; Teams is quoted for multi-seat accounts.
| Plan | Price | Includes |
|---|---|---|
| Basic | $0 per month |
Genuinely usable for inbound, since discoverability is not gated. The delay is what makes it weak for outbound on competitive requests. |
| Pro | $149 per month (list price) |
Qwoted frequently promotes an annual arrangement around $1,188 per year, roughly $99 per month, so confirm the current offer before paying list monthly. |
| Teams | Custom quoted annually |
The agency and multi-spokesperson tier. Pricing is not published, so budget for a sales conversation. |
Billing notes
- Journalists never pay; the entire cost sits on the source and PR side, which is what keeps request supply healthy.
- The meter is pitch credits per month, not seats or contacts, so cost tracks how aggressively you pitch rather than how large your list is.
- Unused credits do not carry a published rollover, so a quiet month is a month of spend you cannot recover.
- The gap between the $149 list price and the roughly $99 per month annual equivalent is large enough that paying month-to-month at list is usually a mistake.
- Teams pricing is quote-only and annual, which is the one part of the product that behaves like enterprise software.
Value assessment: The free plan is the most interesting thing about the pricing, because discoverability is not gated behind it: a well-built free profile can earn coverage without a single pitch credit being spent. Pro at $149 list is expensive against two plausible comparisons, a $99 a month competitor with a similar model and simply spending the time on direct outreach, and the honest test is whether thirty five credits a month convert into more than one placement you would otherwise have missed. For agencies the Teams tier is easier to justify because reporting is the billable artifact. For a solo expert, start free, tag the profile properly, and upgrade only when the two-credit cap is visibly costing you opportunities.
Strengths & limitations
Strengths
- The strongest remaining source-request marketplace after Connectively shut down in December 2024, with real journalists from national business and finance outlets posting requests.
- Discoverability is free: profiles stay searchable by reporters on every plan, so the inbound half of the product costs nothing.
- Unusually strong in business, finance, and fintech beats, a direct consequence of being built by financial communications firms.
- Pitch intelligence gives a measurable open and reply rate, which almost nothing else in earned media does at this price.
- Relevance scoring on the feed removes the daily digest reading habit that made HARO a chore.
- The events and awards database is a legitimately separate visibility channel most competitors do not include.
- Active moderation and AI text detection keep the pitch quality high enough that journalists keep showing up, which is the only thing that matters in a two-sided market.
Limitations
- Purely reactive: there is no way to pitch a publication that has not posted a request, so campaign timing is not yours to control.
- The free plan's two hour delay is decisive on competitive requests, which regularly close before a Basic user can respond.
- Thirty five Pro credits a month is a real ceiling for anyone managing several clients or spokespeople, and pushes agencies toward a quoted Teams contract.
- Backlinks are unreliable; major outlets nofollow or omit source links, so buying this as an SEO tool sets the wrong expectation.
- Request volume is concentrated in business, finance, tech, and health; consumer, local, and niche trade beats are noticeably thinner.
- Users on review sites report abrupt account suspensions attributed to negative journalist feedback, with limited appeal, and repetitive alert emails that are hard to tune.
- Teams pricing is quote-only with no published figure, which is the least small-business-friendly part of the product.
- Owned by two PR firms with a board seat each, which is a conflict worth naming even though it has not visibly distorted the request feed.
Head-to-head comparisons
6 alternativesQwoted vs JustReachOut
from $147 per month (Starter, billed monthly) or $98 per month billed annuallyDifferent theories of earned media. JustReachOut is proactive: you search for journalists and publications covering your topic and pitch them cold, with prospecting and email sequencing built in. Qwoted is reactive: you answer requests that already exist and let reporters find your profile. Proactive outreach gives you control over timing and target; reactive sourcing gives you a far higher reply rate because the journalist asked for the pitch. Most people doing this seriously run both, and if you can only run one, start with Qwoted's free tier because it costs nothing to test.
Full Qwoted vs JustReachOut comparisonQwoted vs Pressfarm
from $280 one-time (Launch package)Pressfarm sells a media database plus done-for-you asset creation, press releases, and pitch writing on a package basis, aimed at founders who do not want to do the work. Qwoted sells access to a live marketplace and expects you to write your own pitches. If you have nothing prepared and no time, Pressfarm's productized service does more for you. If you can write a decent three-paragraph answer to a reporter's question, Qwoted converts better per hour spent and its free tier means you can find out before paying.
Full Qwoted vs Pressfarm comparisonQwoted vs Featured
from Free, with paid plans from $29 per month billed annuallyThe closest direct competitor and the most useful comparison to run. Featured is question-and-answer oriented, generally cheaper, and skews toward smaller business and marketing publications with a higher publication rate on lower-authority sites. Qwoted skews toward business, finance, and national outlets, where the placements are harder to win and worth more when they land. Test both free tiers for a month and compare the outlets actually posting, not the marketing pages.
Full Qwoted vs Featured comparisonQwoted vs Muck Rack
from Quote only; reported entry points around $5,000 per year for a single-seat Starter license, with most teams reported near $10,000 per yearNot really the same purchase. Muck Rack is a full media relations platform with a comprehensive journalist database, monitoring, and reporting, priced in the thousands per year and sold on annual contracts. Qwoted is a marketplace with a free tier. A small business that cannot afford Muck Rack loses very little by running Qwoted plus a monitoring tool; a comms team that needs to build targeted media lists and prove share of voice will eventually need the database, and Qwoted does not replace it.
Full Qwoted vs Muck Rack comparisonQwoted vs Semrush
from $139 per month (SEO plan, monthly billing) or $117.33 per month billed annuallyOverlapping only if your reason for wanting press is search visibility. Semrush's prospecting and link-building workflows help you find sites worth being mentioned on and track what a placement did to your authority, but it does not put you in front of a reporter working on a story today. Qwoted produces the mention; Semrush tells you whether it moved anything. Note that Semrush also owns Prowly, which competes with the media-database end of this category rather than with Qwoted's marketplace.
Full Qwoted vs Semrush comparisonQwoted vs Hunter
from 0 euros (Free, 50 credits per month), then 49 euros per month (Starter)The manual alternative. With Hunter you find a journalist's email address and pitch cold, which costs a fraction of a Qwoted Pro plan and gives you complete control over who you approach. What you give up is permission: a Qwoted pitch answers a request the reporter posted, while a Hunter-sourced email is an unsolicited approach with the reply rate that implies. Use Hunter for a deliberate campaign against a named list, Qwoted for a steady flow of opportunities you did not have to source.
Full Qwoted vs Hunter comparisonImplementation & onboarding
- Setup time
- Under an hour to a working account. The profile, biography, headshot, and expertise tags are the only setup, and there is nothing to install or integrate. Getting the tags right matters more than getting them fast.
- Learning curve
- Low mechanically, real in practice. The skill is writing a pitch a journalist can paste: lead with the quotable line, keep it to a few short paragraphs, include credentials and a photo, and hit send within the first hour. Sources who treat the credit as scarce outperform those who spend all thirty five.
- Onboarding
- Self-serve signup with a vetting review before the profile goes live. Teams accounts get premium support and training, plus a templates library. Documentation lives in an Intercom-hosted help center.
- Migration notes
- Nothing to migrate technically. If you are arriving from Connectively after its 2024 shutdown, the habits transfer but the timing does not: Qwoted's requests do not arrive on a fixed digest schedule, so alerts need configuring rather than a calendar block. Coverage history logged on a Qwoted profile does not export to another platform, so keep your own record of placements.
Platform, API & security
- Platforms
- Web applicationEmail alerts and daily digestMobile web
- API
- No public developer API for sources. The workflow is entirely in-app, with email as the notification transport; there is no documented way to pull the request feed into another system programmatically.
- Compliance
- GDPRCCPA
- Data residency
- US-based operation and hosting; no published regional data residency options.
- SSO
- Not published for standard plans; enquire on a Teams contract.
- Security notes
- Source profiles are public by design, so treat everything on the profile as press-facing. Pitch contents are visible to the requesting journalist and to team administrators on Teams plans. The 2025 Pangram partnership adds machine-generated text detection on pitches, which is an integrity control rather than a security one.
Support & resources
- Channels
- Email supportIn-app chatHelp centerDedicated support and training on Teams plans
- Documentation
- An Intercom-hosted help center covering pitching mechanics, credits, profile setup, and the AI text check, competent but not deep.
- Community
- Qwoted publishes Talking Biz News, the trade outlet covering business journalism beat moves and hires, which functions as both a marketing channel and a genuinely useful resource for anyone tracking who covers what.
Company
- Founded
- 2018
- Headquarters
- New York, New York, United States
- Ownership
- Majority owned by Vested (financial communications agency), with a strategic investment from Prosek Ventures, the venture arm of Prosek Partners
- Founders
- Matt Kneller, Dan Simon
- Employees
- ~50 (est. 2026)
- Funding
- $3 million seed round; both major shareholders are PR firms rather than traditional venture investors.
Funding history
| Round | Amount | Year | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Seed | $3M | 2021 | Closed with participation from Prosek Ventures alongside majority owner Vested. |
Timeline
- 2018Founded in New York inside financial communications agency Vested by Matt Kneller and Dan Simon.
- 2019Quietly acquires Talking Biz News, the trade publication covering business journalists, giving the platform a direct line into beat and job changes.
- 2020Platform launches publicly as a free service for journalists with paid tiers for sources and PR professionals.
- 2021Closes a $3 million seed round; Prosek Ventures takes a strategic stake and a board seat alongside Vested.
- 2022Hires a first editor-in-chief and expands editorial around the source database and Talking Biz News.
- 2024Cision shuts down Connectively, the successor to HARO, in December, removing the category's incumbent and driving source demand to Qwoted.
- 2025Partners with Pangram to score pitches and quotes for machine-generated text, letting journalists see how much of a submission was AI-written.
- 2026Sits as the default source-request marketplace for business and finance beats, with Pro listed at $149 per month and Teams quoted.
Integrations
- Email (daily digest and real-time alerts)
- Pangram AI text detection
- Talking Biz News
- LinkedIn profile import
- Calendar deadline reminders
- Slack alerts (Teams plans)
Frequently asked questions
12 questionsWhat is Qwoted and how does it work?
Qwoted is a marketplace where journalists post the sources they need for a story and experts respond with pitches. You build a profile with your expertise tags, see matching requests in a scored feed and a daily email, and spend a pitch credit to answer one. Journalists can also search the source database and contact you directly without you pitching at all, which is how a meaningful share of placements start.
Is Qwoted free?
Yes, there is a permanent free Basic plan. It gives you two pitch credits a month, real-time alerts, the daily opportunities email, and a profile that stays searchable by journalists. The constraint is a two hour delay before you can respond to a newly posted request, which on a competitive request usually means the reporter has what they need before you can reply.
How much does Qwoted Pro cost?
Pro is listed at $149 per month and includes 35 pitch credits, no response delay, pitch intelligence, opportunity research, the events and awards database, and profile view alerts. Qwoted frequently promotes an annual arrangement around $1,188 a year, which works out near $99 a month, so check the current offer before committing to list monthly pricing. Teams pricing is custom and quoted.
Is Qwoted a good HARO alternative?
It is the closest thing to a replacement. Cision shut down Connectively, the rebranded HARO, in December 2024, and Qwoted absorbed most of that demand. The differences are that requests are scored against your profile rather than arriving as three daily digests, responses are capped by credits rather than unlimited, and your profile is searchable by reporters whether or not you pitch.
Do you get backlinks from Qwoted?
Sometimes, but do not buy it for that. Major business and news outlets frequently nofollow outbound links or mention a source without linking at all. Treat a Qwoted placement as brand credibility and a citable third-party mention; if a link follows, it is a bonus rather than the deliverable. If dofollow links are the actual goal, a link-building workflow is a better fit than a source marketplace.
Who owns Qwoted?
Vested, a New York financial communications agency, holds majority ownership, and Prosek Ventures, the venture arm of PR firm Prosek Partners, holds a strategic investment. Both have board representation. Qwoted also owns Talking Biz News. This is worth knowing because it explains the platform's unusual strength in business and finance beats, and because the platform is run by PR firms rather than as a neutral utility.
Qwoted vs Featured: which is better for a small business?
Featured is generally cheaper and skews toward marketing, small business, and mid-authority publications with a higher rate of getting published. Qwoted skews toward business, finance, and national outlets, where placements are harder to win and carry more weight. Both have free tiers, so run each for a month and compare which outlets are actually posting requests in your topic rather than deciding from the pricing pages.
How many pitches does it take to get a placement on Qwoted?
Experienced sources generally report placement rates in the range of one in five to one in fifteen pitches, heavily dependent on speed, beat fit, and pitch quality. Responding within the first hour and answering exactly what was asked matter more than volume. On the free plan's two credits a month, expect placements to be occasional and inbound profile views to do more of the work.
Do journalists pay to use Qwoted?
No. Journalists post requests and search the source database for free, which is deliberate: the platform's value to sources depends entirely on request supply, so the media side is subsidized by subscription revenue from experts and PR professionals.
Does Qwoted detect AI-written pitches?
Yes. A 2025 partnership with Pangram scores submissions for machine-generated text and shows journalists how much of a pitch or quote is likely AI-written. Sources can also check their own drafts before sending. Practically, this means a pitch pasted straight out of a chatbot is visible as such to the person deciding whether to quote you.
Can an agency manage multiple clients on one Qwoted account?
That is what the Teams plan is for: multiple seats and spokespeople under one administrator, unlimited pitches, an activity dashboard, weekly reports, and white labeling. Pricing is quote-only. A single Pro account can be stretched across a couple of clients, but thirty five credits a month divides thin quickly and there is no per-client reporting on that tier.
What kinds of stories get posted on Qwoted?
The heaviest volume is business, finance, fintech, technology, and health, with steady flow in marketing, HR, and real estate. Consumer lifestyle, travel, and local news are present but thin. Before subscribing, spend a free month reading the feed in your specific topic; request volume in your niche is the single variable that determines whether the paid plan pays for itself.
Editorial verdict
Qwoted is the sensible default in a category that lost its default when Connectively closed. The two-sided mechanics work, the request supply in business and finance beats is real, and pitch intelligence gives you an honest number for a channel that usually runs on anecdote. The best argument for it is the free plan, which keeps your profile searchable by journalists without charging you anything, so inbound placements can happen before you ever swipe a card. The arguments against it are worth taking seriously: $149 list for thirty five credits is steep next to cheaper rivals, the platform is entirely reactive so you cannot run a campaign on your own schedule, backlinks are not something you should count on, and Teams pricing is quote-only. Build a properly tagged free profile first, measure how often relevant requests appear in your actual beat, and upgrade only when the two-credit cap is demonstrably the thing standing between you and coverage.
Written by the SaaSTracker editorial team. Awards, when shown, are judged against the published criteria in our methodology.