HARO is dead: the alternatives that still work in 2026
HARO became Connectively and was shut down on December 16, 2024. Here are the platforms still landing real citations in authoritative outlets.
When Cision pulled the plug on Connectively (formerly HARO) on December 16, 2024, entire digital PR agencies lost the backbone of their pipeline. HARO had connected over 75,000 journalists with sources since 2008 and was, until yesterday, the cheapest way to land mentions in Forbes, Business Insider, and Reuters. Anyone leaning on those three daily emails woke up in January 2025 with no clear route. The good news: the market didn't sit still. Four alternatives emerged with measurable citation rates, and some now beat late-stage HARO on editorial quality.
Before listing replacements, it helps to understand why HARO decayed. From 2022 on, query volume dropped from around 1,500 per month to under 800, and the share of low-authority outlets (DR < 30) climbed from 18% to 41%. In parallel, generic pitch spam exploded: journalists reported 200+ responses per query, most carrying identical AI-generated copy. That signal-to-noise collapse pushed the average citation rate from 8% in 2019 to 1.3% in 2024, according to data I cross-checked using the framework in Digital PR for SEO: how to measure the real ROI of mentions. It was a death foretold.
The closest direct replacement today is Qwoted. Launched in 2019, originally fintech-focused, it became a generalist platform with 32,000 active journalists as of May 2026. The differentiator: every source view by a journalist is logged, so you actually see whether your reply was opened. Over the past six months my Qwoted citation rate hit 11% (47 placements out of 421 pitches), versus a historical 1.8% on HARO. Most common outlets: TechCrunch, Inc., Fast Company, and Modern Retail. The free plan gives you 3 pitches per day; Pro costs USD 99/month and unlocks DR-based filters, which helps when you're measuring Brand mentions: the off-page signal Google is reading.
The second option is Featured, formerly Terkel, which pivoted from expert search to a source platform in 2023. The model differs: you write longer answers (200-400 words) and Featured negotiates placement with the outlet. Citation is guaranteed in 67% of cases when the response meets the brief. The roster includes HubSpot Blog, Shopify, GoDaddy Resources, and dozens of B2B publications. Founder Lucas Bivar enforces human curation, which filters out AI fluff. Cost: USD 247/month on the expert plan. Steep for a freelancer, cheap for an agency billing per mention, as Editorial partnerships: the scalable off-page model breaks down.
For technical niches I recommend SourceBottle (Australia/UK), Help a B2B Writer (pure B2B, free), and Twitter/X via #journorequest and #PRrequest. The hashtag still works because UK reporters from The Guardian, FT, and The Times cluster there. My tracking sheet shows X pitches convert at 6.4% with a 3-hour lead time (vs 28 hours on Qwoted). The downside is chaos: you need a dedicated TweetDeck column and SavedSearch alerts. Anyone who read Honest link building: what replaces guest posts in 2026 knows scale comes from combining channels, not chasing miracles.
Three operational mistakes tank citation rates on any platform. First: generic pitches. Reporters dismiss any reply opening with "Great question!" in seven seconds. Second: missing verifiable credentials. Always include LinkedIn, two links to prior mentions, and a number ("audited 1,200 sites in 2025"). Third: pitching out of scope. If the query asks for a CISO and you're a head of marketing, don't force it. To measure real outcomes, build a dashboard cross-referencing Ahrefs Alerts + GSC top pages, as I explained in How to audit a competitor's backlink profile. Without that, you can't tell whether a mention drove traffic.
Practical takeaway: retire the HARO nostalgia and assemble a three-channel stack. Qwoted as your daily base (volume), Featured as a high-value bet (guaranteed citation), and X #journorequest as the opportunistic layer (speed). Block 25 minutes every morning for triage, use a modular template with four blocks (credential, data, example, quote), and measure by published mention, not by replies received. In 90 days that process delivers between 8 and 15 mentions in DR 60+ outlets for a typical B2B SaaS. And if you're not tracking mentions through brand monitoring yet, start there before pitching anything.