With HARO recently revamping its offerings and rebranding itself as Connectively, I thought it was a good time to reshare a note from a little over a year ago where I provided alternatives to HARO.
I used to love HARO as a source for quality links. However, shortly after ChatGPT launched, I completely abandoned the platform. It’s free-to-use model made it a perfect target to be overrun by marketers after links who were too lazy to reply to queries themselves.
It became way too difficult to get through all the noise. I have heard there was a lot of frustration on the journalist side of the platform too, which is likely why those behind HARO decided it was time for a change.
By the way, before diving in, be sure to check out a note I shared previously about winning more pitches at HARO. Although HARO no longer exists, the principles are still the same for having success with your pitches at these other services.
Connectively
Let me just start by saying I don’t love their pricing model.
They do have a free tier, but you only get 10 pitches per month for free. That is useless for anything other than just getting familiar with the platform.
It’s not the free tier that bothers me though. I’m more than happy to pay for a service like this, but at $19/month you only get 25 pitches and at $49/month it’s only 50. You get twice as many pitches for two and half times the cost. Plus the number of pitches is just way too low.
They have a higher plan at $149/month for 150 pitches. That would be more than enough pitches for the average use case, but the price tag is just not in line with other options out there.
Here are 3 alternatives to Connectively:
Terkel
Terkel works basically just like HARO did and Connectively does, except without the emails filling up your inbox each day. Everything is handled right within their platform, including your answers.
Where Terkel is much different than HARO is that it assigns sources an “expertise score”. This score is based on the number of pitches they send out and how many of them are successful.
Build up your reputation, and you can find it much easier to pitch successfully. It also means you need to be careful and only be responding to questions that you really feel you can provide some value to.
Terkel also differs from Connectively in that with a paid account, you can submit unlimited pitches. The price is only $99/month. That might seem expensive, but as someone who routinely pays $200-500 per link through other means, it’s a bargain.
Many people are not going to be willing to pay for this as they were used to using HARO for free. That means you have the opportunity to be a bigger fish in a small pond.
The platform is only about 3 years old, so it is still growing.
Qwoted
Qwoted also works nearly identical to Connectively, but it does have an interesting difference. Not just anyone can sign up for Qwoted as a source. Each account is individually vetted and approved.
I honestly have no idea how deep they go in the vetting process, as I have never had an issue registering and being approved.
Qwoted is free to use for up to 2 pitches per month, but also has a paid option giving you unlimited pitches at $150/month. The paid option comes with some additional features that I like.
Queries will show whether it is a new pitch, a deadline is approaching, and who has already received pitches.
This one is a little more pricey, and I do not see interesting queries show up as often, however, that may just be my own bias based on the niches I am working in. I would recommend signing up for free to monitor it yourself and decide if a paid account is useful to you or not. Again, smaller database of journalists and pitches, but also a much smaller pool of people pitching. You may find it easier to stand out and win more links.
I know most people probably do not think of Twitter as an alternative to HARO, but it can be. Many journalists and website owners will post their requests for experts straight to Twitter.
You can find these by searching relevant hashtags: PRrequests and journorequests are two popular ones used. I have also seen expertrequest, PRrequest, sourcing, and influencers.
