HARO sunset in 2024. For years it was the cleanest way for founders to land quotes in tier-one publications without a PR retainer. Its successor Connectively shut down months later. The replacements are here; the pitch format is evolving; founders who get this right early are the ones who end up in the Forbes pieces next quarter.
The post-HARO landscape
Three platforms now carry most of the journalist-sourced-quote traffic:
- Featured.com: highest question volume. Clean pitch interface. Pitch count per month drives visibility.
- Qwoted: higher-quality journalists, lower volume. Tier-one publications pitch here. Subscription-gated.
- Terkel: marketing and small-business lean. Useful for founders pitching B2B SaaS topics.
Running all three is the norm for founders doing PR seriously. The overlap is minimal; each platform sources from a different set of journalists.
Featured.com vs Qwoted vs Terkel
| Platform | Volume | Quality | Price | Best for |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Featured.com | High (40+ queries/day) | Mid | Freemium, paid tier unlocks more pitches | Volume pitching |
| Qwoted | Low (5-10/day) | High | Paid subscription | Tier-one placements |
| Terkel | Medium (15/day) | Mid | Free | B2B SaaS and marketing |
Start on Featured.com free tier. Add Terkel (free) within the first month. Layer Qwoted in once you have published work to point to as social proof.
What a winning pitch looks like
Journalists receive dozens of pitches per query. Most are generic. The ones that get picked share three properties:
- Specific to the query: references the exact angle the journalist is pursuing, not just the topic.
- Evidence-based: a concrete number, example, or story. Not "we've seen this often" but "across 12 SaaS products we ran last quarter, 38 percent saw X."
- Quotable: at least one sentence the journalist can drop straight in without rewriting.
The template that still works
Opening line that answers the specific question. One paragraph of evidence. A quotable sentence or two. Signature with title and credibility. Never more than 200 words.
Where automation helps
Automation shines at two steps: surfacing queries that actually match your expertise, and drafting an opening pitch grounded in your product context. Both are tedious. Both are where founders quit.
- Query matching: autonomous systems can scan every Featured.com query against your product facts and surface the 5 percent that fit. Without this, you are scrolling 40 queries a day and picking by eye.
- Draft generation: the draft can cite product numbers, customer examples, and the technical details you have already documented internally.
What never to automate
Submission. The final human review is what keeps the pitch honest. The cost of a misrepresented number or a claim that falls apart on fact-checking is your credibility with that journalist forever.
Every pitch that leaves your account needs a human approval. Automation gets you from 40 queries to a drafted pitch in 5 minutes; the last 30 seconds is yours to own.
See autonomous marketing for where PR fits into the broader loop, and why AI content fails for the voice guardrails that apply here too.