Meltwater
Enterprise media intelligence with the most aggressive sales team in SaaS — great product, terrible buying experience, impossible to cancel
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The Verdict
“Meltwater is the enterprise standard for media monitoring and social intelligence. Essential for large PR and marketing teams but overkill and expensive for small businesses or sales-focused teams.”
Best For
Enterprise PR and communications teams who need global media monitoring, journalist databases, and are OK with annual enterprise contracts
Not Great For
Small to mid-size teams or anyone who values flexibility — the aggressive contracts and sales pressure are a red flag
Overview
Meltwater is an enterprise media intelligence platform offering media monitoring, social listening, social media management, influencer marketing, consumer intelligence, and AI-powered analytics. It processes the most robust dataset across media, social, and consumer trends with powerful AI to turn data into actionable insights.
PR teams, marketing directors, brand managers, enterprise communications
50-10000+
Capabilities
Key Features
- Media monitoring across global sources
- Social listening and analytics
- GenAI Lens LLM Tracking
- Influencer marketing
- Consumer intelligence and trends
- Custom reporting and dashboards
- 360° PR and marketing measurement
- AI-powered insights
Benefits
- Full visibility across media, social, and consumer data
- AI turns massive datasets into actionable insights
- Empowers every team member to be an insight pro
- 360° reporting for comprehensive strategy measurement
Pros & Cons
Pros
- +Most comprehensive media and social dataset
- +Global coverage across regions and languages
- +GenAI Lens for tracking LLM mentions — unique
- +Strong enterprise support and services
- +Proven ROI (242% average ROI cited)
Cons
- -No transparent pricing — enterprise sales process required
- -Expensive (typically $10K-100K+/year)
- -12-month minimum contract
- -Not a sales/GTM tool per se
- -Can be overwhelming feature-wise
Outbound Use Cases
Financials & Scale
Meltwater is enterprise-priced at $6K-50K+/year with notoriously long contracts. Brand24 is $79/mo. Mention is $49-179/mo. Reddit is full of horror stories about Meltwater's aggressive sales tactics and near-impossible cancellation process. Factor in the pain of exiting when evaluating the entry price.
The Reddit Pulse
Community Pros
- +Comprehensive media monitoring and social listening
- +Good global coverage of news sources
- +Strong for PR teams tracking mentions
Community Cons
- -Notorious for aggressive sales tactics and hard-to-cancel contracts
- -Very expensive with long lock-in periods
- -Aggressive auto-renewal clauses
- -Customer service heavily criticized on Reddit
- -Data accuracy and coverage gaps reported
Reddit Questions
- ? Is Meltwater worth the expensive contract?
- ? How do I get out of a Meltwater contract?
- ? Meltwater vs Cision vs Brandwatch for media monitoring?
Thinking of Switching?
Competitive Landscape
Technical Stack
Integrations
Data Intelligence
Head-to-Head Comparisons
Company Intel
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