HARO Alternatives: How to Get Press in 2026

HARO (Help a Reporter Out) still exists in 2026, but not as the service people remember. Cision shut it down, by then renamed Connectively, on December 9, 2024. Featured.com bought the HARO brand and relaunched it as a free service on April 22, 2025.

For years HARO was the go-to free way to get quoted in the press: reporters posted requests, sources answered, and some got mentions. Its shutdown sent a lot of people looking for alternatives, and several now do the same job. Here is an honest guide to your real options in 2026.

First, what HARO actually was (and its limits)

HARO connected journalists looking for sources with people who could answer. It was free, and it worked for consistent, fast, genuinely useful responders. But it had real limits: enormous competition on every request, a low hit rate, a heavy time cost, and usually a quote or mention rather than a full feature about you.

Understanding those limits helps you choose the right alternative, because "get me a quote" and "get me a feature" are different goals.

Journalist-request services (the direct HARO replacement)

Several services now do what HARO did: connect sources to reporters seeking expert input. The main ones in 2026:

• HARO, relaunched by Featured.com as a free service.
• Qwoted, a verified marketplace where reporters post requests and experts pitch against them. Free, with a paid premium tier.
• Featured.com, curated journalist requests with better filtering, on paid plans.
• Source of Sources, a free digest of reporter requests.
• SourceBottle, free, with a low-cost premium option.
• Help a B2B Writer, free, focused on business-to-business writers.
• #JournoRequest on X and Bluesky, free and fast, where reporters post what they need in public.

The mechanics are the same as HARO's, and so are the trade-offs. They are a legitimate, low-cost route to mentions if you respond fast, consistently, and with genuinely useful expertise. Most people who get results work two or three of them at once rather than relying on one.

• Best for: ongoing quotes and mentions, if you have time to work them.
• Reality: high competition, inconsistent results, mostly quotes not features.

Being a proactive expert source

Beyond any platform, you can build relationships by being genuinely useful to journalists in your field: sharp commentary, fast responses, real expertise. This is the earned, relationship-driven version, and it rewards consistency over months.

• Best for: building a long-term media presence.
• Reality: slow, requires sustained effort.

Direct pitching

Pitching specific reporters whose beat matches your story is the classic earned route. Free, high credibility when it lands, and low odds without a genuine news hook.

• Best for: when you have real, newsworthy news.
• Reality: most pitches go unanswered.

Professional feature services

If your goal is not a scattered quote but a full, credible article about you and your work, a professional feature service writes it to publication standard and places it. This is a different product from HARO-style mentions: predictable, feature-length, and permanent.

• Best for: a real feature about you, without the time cost of chasing requests.
• Reality: it is a paid service, so choose one that is transparent about which publication and what deliverable.

How to choose

Match the tool to the goal:

• Want occasional quotes and have time to work at it? Use a journalist-request service.
• Want to build long-term media relationships? Be a proactive expert source.
• Have genuinely newsworthy news? Pitch directly.
• Want a permanent, credible feature about you without the grind? Use a professional feature service.

Most people mixing HARO-style effort with occasional features get the best of both.

Getting started

At Publisive Media, we produce the feature-length side: professionally written articles about you, placed on real publications, permanent and indexed, with your approval on every word. It is the reliable complement to the scattered, time-intensive request grind.

Want a feature instead of chasing quotes? Let's talk.

Sources: MentionAgent, Everything-PR and Prezly. Pricing and features change often, so check each platform before signing up.