How press release distribution works

From your draft to a live link

Every service runs some version of the same chain:

• You write the release and choose where it should go.
• An editor reviews it against the publishers’ rules, and may ask for changes or decline it.
• The wire or network sends the approved release to its partner sites.
• Each site publishes it on its own schedule and in its own layout, usually in a press release or partner content section.
• You receive a report listing where it appeared, with the live links.

The differences between services are in who sits in the middle, which sites are at the end, and how much of the chain you can see before you pay. Our guide to choosing a distribution service goes through each layer.

Newswires, networks and self-service platforms

Newswires are the oldest part of the business; PR Newswire, for example, was founded in 1954. Wires feed releases to newsrooms, websites and financial data services. Yahoo Finance’s help pages say its news includes company press releases supplied by a list of contributing newswires, and that a release must carry the company’s ticker symbol in its header. That route is built for companies listed on a stock exchange.

Distribution networks work differently. They publish releases across a set of partner sites: local TV and radio station websites, the business sections of newspaper sites, finance portals and niche news sites, often through content providers that serve many of those sites at once. Self-service platforms such as Vokolla sit on top of networks like these. You write, pay and receive the report online, at a published price, with no quote or sales call.

Named outlets and network reach are different promises

A package can be described in two ways. Network reach is a count, such as 300+ or 500+ sites, and covers sites of very different size and authority. Named outlets are specific publications listed by name. Both matter, but they answer different questions: reach tells you how widely the text is republished, named outlets tell you which recognizable sites a reader may find it on.

On Vokolla, Brand Starter covers 300+ outlets, including openPR (DR 81) and 25 NEWSnet city news sites. Global Reach covers 500+ outlets, including 100+ TV and radio station websites. Premium Media adds AP News, USA Today, Barchart and StreetInsider to Global Reach. Global Impact is a separate network concentrated on 20+ high-traffic outlets, including Yahoo, Business Insider, National Post and The Globe and Mail. The media list shows every outlet by package, with its Domain Rating and estimated monthly visits.

What sets the price

Prices run from nothing to thousands of dollars per release because they describe different products. Four things move them: where the release goes (named outlets cost more than network reach), how many resellers sit between you and the network, add-ons such as extra length, images or translation, and whether writing is billed separately. Our cost guide compares the prices that wires publish themselves. Vokolla publishes one price per release for each package:

How to check what you bought

Read the report. Open a sample of the links, check that the text is complete, see which placements carry your links and how each site labels the release, and keep the report: it is your record of where the news was published. Network sites differ in how long they keep pages and in how quickly search engines find them, so judge a package by the report and the named outlets, not only by the headline count.

If a release is declined or not published, the refund policy decides what happens. Ask for it before you pay; Vokolla’s refund policy is public.

When to distribute

Distribute once the thing you are announcing is real and reachable: the product can be bought, the page the release links to is live, and the facts on that page match the release. Our guides to publishing before you advertise in a new market and to planning launch content cover the order of a launch.

Distributing with Vokolla

Start with one free release every 30 days on news sites, or choose one of the packages from US$69; the pricing page has every package side by side. You can draft the release yourself or with the Vokolla AI assistant. Every release is reviewed by an editor before publication, and every package ends with a report of the live links.