What is ResponseSource and How Do You Use It?

The success of HARO led to many copycats trying to find their own way to do the same thing – connect journalists with expert sources – and the closing of Connectively at the end of 2024 means there's a gap in the market.

As part of my link-earning service, I've been on a quest to use and evaluate as many of these PR and outreach platforms as possible. To that end, I've been writing guides on them to help you use them on your own if you wish (or tell me you want me to use them for you if you work with my service).

Today's iteration on the formula is ResponseSource. What is it, what makes it unique, and how should you use it? That's what we're here to talk about.

What is ResponseSource?

ResponseSource is a journalist outreach service that calls itself "the industry's worst kept secret." They boast over 30,000 journalists using their platform, and they're one of the oldest existing platforms in PR using the HARO formula. In fact, it's even older than HARO; maybe we should be calling them all ResponseSource-likes?

ResponseSource was created in 1998 as the ResponseSource Journalist Enquiry Service. It was founded by a journalist with the goal of connecting journalists and sources. It was initially based and centered in the UK, but unlike something like JournoLink, it has expanded over time to become a global PR firm.

ResponseSource was, at some point, acquired or merged into the Pulsar Group, which includes other PR apps and services like Vuelio and the eponymous Pulsar. Pulsar Group itself is part of Isentia, which has merged with Access Intelligence, which is currently the company acting as the overarching brand behind all of it.

So, as you use ResponseSource, be prepared to see mentions of other PR apps, services, and names, including Pulsar, Vuelio, and Access Intelligence. It's all kind of the same lump of associated PR services now, with cross-sells and upsells worked into the business.

Don't worry; I'm not going to dig into each and every one of these services. I'm just going to focus on ResponseSource and what they do, specifically.

How Does ResponseSource Work?

If you're familiar with HARO and the world of PR services, you already know basically what I'm going to write here, but it's worth going over it again because ResponseSource has a few unique aspects to their services.

As usual, they divide their clients into two groups: people looking for PR services (the Sources) and Journalists.

Using ResponseSource as a Source

As usual, I'll start with the source side. If you're a business, blogger, or content creator and you're hoping to spread your name and build links, this is the side of the service you'll use.

ResponseSource has four key services. I'll go over each of them, and then we'll talk about pricing.

First up, you have the Journalist Enquiry Service. This is the same email-based journalist request service you're used to. You sign up, and journalist opportunities that match your profile show up in your email. You can then respond, usually by email but also sometimes through a secondary channel like Twitter/X or another social network. It's up to the journalist to specify how they want responses.

A typical journalist inquiry gives you the media outlet, the journalist's name, the deadline, a summary of the query, instructions on how to respond, and some information about the media outlet you'd be published in, like their circulation, Moz Domain Authority, and broad category.

ResponseSource boasts a quality control team overseeing every journalist request, so you only get good and relevant requests and can filter them by media, sender type, and more. There are 25 categories you can choose from, including Business & Finance, Health, Men's Interest, Food & Drink, Home & Garden, and Travel. There's some overlap in categories, which can be an issue (for reasons I'll discuss later), such as how Business & Finance and Personal Finance are different categories, so keep that in mind.

The second service is the Press Release Wire service. This is a fairly standard press release distribution service. You pay to submit a press release, and that press release is sent to journalists, news desks, and media outlets. They're also publicly visible on the ResponseSource Press Releases database, so you can see what they look like here.

The third service is the Media Bulletin subscription. This is basically a set of mailing lists that you can sign up for that will give you access to curated news and press releases. There are seven different lists you can sign up for, and you can pick any you want. They are:

• Media Bulletin for Journalists
• Media Bulletin for PR Professionals
• PR Pulse
• Monday PR Club
• Webinar Invites
• Event Invites
• Marketing offers and product updates for journalists

Unlike the other services, this one is free, so feel free to subscribe and give it a look if you think it will be useful.

Note that since ResponseSource is based in the UK, most of this is centered around a UK perspective or UK news and sources. That said, the larger UK media outlets like Sky News still cover global concerns, and outlets like Bloomberg are included as well, so it's not useless outside of the UK.

The fourth and final service is access to the Vuelio Media Database. You can read more about this here. The database is basically a huge list of media outlets and data about them, including their categories, their location, and, most importantly, specific people in the organizations you can contact, such as editors and content creators. You can also see if a given editor, writer, or correspondent works for multiple outlets and which ones.

I'm going to largely disregard this service since it's not really part of ResponseSource; it's just a cross-sell with a merged product. You don't get access when you pay for another ResponseSource product; you have to go to Vuelio to buy access.

So, what about pricing?

Of the four services, three of them cost money.

The Vuelio Database doesn't publicly say how much it costs to access. Reports online put it at around £3,000-5,000 per year. Prowly found a UK government filing that lists products and prices for Vuelio and places different chunks of the media database at £1,600 and £2,400, again annually. On top of that, you need a user account to access, which is £1,500 to start. Overall, it's not cheap!

The second service, the Journalist Enquiry Service, has pricing based on category. Remember how I said there are 25 categories, and the fact that some of them overlap might be a problem? This is why. You need to pay to access a category. Want a second category? Pay for that one, too. A finance blog might want to grab both of those finance categories, meaning they have to pay extra or miss finance-relevant opportunities. I will say that, on the journalist side, a journo can choose multiple categories, so you don't often need to do this, but you never know.

Pricing here also isn't explicit but starts at £625 per year per category. Napkin math means that if you wanted all 25 categories, you'd be looking at a minimum of £15,625 annually, though it's possible that they have bulk discounts.

They do offer a free trial, which lasts one week.

Finally, you have the Press Release Wire service.

• You can pay as you go, with £85 per press release, with the ability to add three categories to the release. You can pay extra to add up to ten categories or even more to add more than ten. You also need to pay £20 per file to attach images or files to the press release.
• You can buy a bundle of ten press releases, with all categories and images/file attachments included, for £675.
• You can buy a larger bundle, with 20 press releases and everything included, for £ 1,050.

There are also add-ons; adding a video is £40, adding priority distribution is £20, and getting distribution with Press Association is £70.

Overall, it's all very expensive, which to me means it's a service aimed at the largest media outlets and businesses looking for national and global-scale outreach. It's very much not the small blogger growth hack style of service that many of the other HARO-likes are.

Using ResponseSource as a Journalist

Being a journalist on the ResponseSource platform means you're the lifeblood of the service. You actually have access to five different services here, mostly mirrors of the Source-side services.

First is the core offering, the Journalist Enquiry Service. You know the drill here; you fill out a form and submit the inquiry to the people signed up to see inquiries from your chosen category.

First up, you specify what you're looking for. This can be something like "information for an article," "review products," or "product placement," and there's a drop-down here, so you don't have to come up with the purpose yourself.

From there, you need to give your short summary, the kind of expertise you're looking for (the bulk of your request), and your deadline.

Next up, you select your categories. Fortunately, you can pick as many as you want, as long as they're relevant. If you're not sure if they're relevant, ResponseSource has a list of keywords and what categories you should select, which can give you a good idea.

After this, you specify your media outlet's information – what the outlet is and does, the date of the publication, your website, and media type – and your own information.

You do need to give them a phone number. This is for validation so they aren't spammed and so that if there's a problem with your inquiry, they can contact you to resolve it.

The second service is the Media Bulletin, which is exactly the same as it is for the Sources side, a set of mailing lists you can subscribe to for updates and news. It's literally the same free set of mailing lists, so I don't have much to say here.

The third service is Freelance Journalist Profiles. This is where you can create an account in the ResponseSource/Vuelio database with your own information as a journalist, which allows Sources to browse and find you to reach out directly.

Fourth is the Press Release Wire service, which is just signing up to receive press releases in your chosen categories. Simple and easy. It's a daily email at 4:30 PM (UK time) or the option to get them as they're published.

Finally, you just have a listing in the Vuelio media database. It's basically the same as the Journalist Profile but with associations to your media outlet as well.

All of these are free because, as usual, without journalists, none of this works.

Should You Use ResponseSource?

ResponseSource can function as a HARO-like PR platform, and if I'm being honest, it can be very good.

Unlike JournoLink, the other big UK-based PR platform I've covered so far, ResponseSource is big enough and has enough global partnerships through Access Intelligence and Vuelio that being UK-centric isn't a hindrance.

What is a hindrance, though, is the pricing. You don't have to pay individual fees for sending responses to journalists, but you do have to pay for access to categories, and at an exchange rate that puts it around $65 per month, it's a pretty steep cost. That's doubly true since you're probably going to want at least three categories, and the price point they've listed is the lowest of them. You could easily be looking at $250-300 per month to get robust enough access to be valuable.

That said, the access is valuable. With major global media outlets using the platform, you can reach millions of people with your citations, and that's undeniably useful.

I say use ResponseSource if you have the budget to do it, but if you don't, there are dozens of other PR platforms with much lower costs you can use instead. Alternatively, let me do it for you as part of my link-earning service.