A practical guide: how to compare the best French PR tools?

Introduction

As PR expertise evolves every year, choosing the right French tool for managing media relations has become a strategic decision for any organisation, whether a startup, SME, agency or listed company. The multiplication of solutions makes it essential to run a rigorous comparison in order to find the platform best suited to your needs in 2026, including your budget and meeting regulatory requirements. This guide offers a clear methodology for evaluating and comparing the main tools on the French market, based on concrete criteria and user feedback.

What you will learn: 

• The key criteria for objectively assessing each PR distribution solution

• The evaluation methodology that enables a fair comparison of platforms

• The essential features that match your organisational structure and needs

• The essentials: GDPR constraints and their impact on your choice of tool

Why have PR tools become indispensable?

Given the fragmentation of information channels, the ability to personalize your communications, target them precisely and adapt your content is essential to secure effective coverage and avoid a widespread rejection of messages. It has therefore become indispensable to choose the right public relations management tool.

How has the French media landscape evolved?

The fragmentation of audiences across traditional media, digital platforms, streaming and social networks requires truly cross‑channel PR orchestration. Modern solutions combine an intelligent media database, AI modules to analyse trends and detect promising angles, together with a unified real‑time dashboard.

New imperatives of digital transformation

With digitalisation, new imperatives have emerged:

• Being more responsive, with platforms connected to the CRM to orchestrate all institutional and editorial communication.
• Ensuring traceability and centralisation of actions, which improves quality control and makes reporting to management easier.
• Integrating podcasts, short‑form video and influencers to reach new audiences, without overlooking the importance of traditional media.

The impact of GDPR on current PR practices

GDPR compliance has now become a cornerstone of PR practices, with 2026 marking a phase of stricter, more continuous enforcement. PR and communication teams must be able to prove compliance at all times:, including a clear legal basis for each processing, minimisation of data collected, limited retention periods and reinforced security measures such as strong passwords, access logs and, increasingly, multi‑factor authentication. 

Moreover, Relations with subcontractors such as PR tools, monitoring platforms or emailing providers are more tightly controlled, with detailed Data Processing Agreements, regular audits and clear responsibilities now expected by regulators. 

How can you identify your needs by organization type?

SMEs: focus on essentials with a limited budget

SMEs should concentrate their investment on core features: simplified contact management, press release distribution and basic coverage tracking. A solution in the 200 to 500€ monthly range is generally sufficient based on current market pricing. Favour tools that are quick to get to grips with and offer responsive French‑language customer support. The latest cloud‑based solutions allow immediate implementation with no heavy technical investment.

Agencies: manage multiple clients efficiently

To meet agencies’ needs, it is crucial to have advanced multi‑account management features that allow you to clearly separate each client’s data while optimizing the use of shared resources. Today, the ability to produce customized reports in just a few minutes represents a major asset.

Large enterprises: integrate and automate at scale

Large enterprises favor PR tools that integrate natively with their IT ecosystem, guarantee strict GDPR compliance and enable decentralized governance by entities, brands and countries. In 2026, value comes from intelligent AI‑driven automation, combined with enterprise‑grade security, full content traceability and end‑to‑end auditable workflows.

Key features to evaluate

Optimizing PR management requires assessing key features aligned with technical and regulatory market standards. Here are the essential elements every institutional and corporate communication professional should examine.

Managing media and influencer contacts

The relevance of a regularly updated media contact database is now beyond debate. Advanced tools offer:

• An integrated journalist CRM to manage and segment your databases by area of interest, sector and geographic zone.

• Interaction history, tracking of calls, interviews, events and contact qualification.

• Excel import and synchronisation with third‑party databases to keep lists permanently up to date.

Distribution and tracking of press releases

To ensure effective distribution, PR tools should provide:

• Multi‑channel sending from a single back office across email campaigns, a web newsroom, social networks and international wires.

• High‑performing email templates, scheduling and deliverability best practices.

The best platforms include comprehensive statistics such as open rates, clicks, breakdown by channel, and can automate publication on your website via an API.

Analytics and ROI measurement

Access to dynamic dashboards has become a must, and the best tools offer:

• Dashboards and exports to track topics, media, spokespeople and tone of coverage.

• Mapping of PR activities against coverage and web traffic, along with analytics integrations that are GDPR‑compliant by default.

What scoring grid should you use to compare tools?

Build your own customized evaluation matrix

Simplify your comparison by creating a grid in which each key criterion receives a “yes ✓” or “no ✗” depending on whether it is included or not. Give greater weight to the criteria that are truly essential to your activity. An SME will mainly look at value for money, whereas a large company will prioritize integration and security. This approach allows you to clearly visualise the strengths of each tool and justify your choice to management.

Beyond the raw score, take qualitative aspects into account, including quality of support, product roadmap and the vendor’s long‑term viability. Analysis of the latest market developments in 2026 highlights how important it is to choose an innovative and stable partner.

Comparison of French PR tools

A tailored evaluation matrix has been designed to identify the best French tool for managing public relations. Here is an example of a scoring drawn up specifically for listed companies, where the security of sensitive information is the central selection criterion. 

What do users say about these tools on G2?

• Wiztrust: “A high‑end tool for media relations! The team is always ready to meet our needs, which is crucial in our field. The only difficulty we encountered with Wiztrust was the initial setup, which can take some time. However, once that stage is behind you, using the tool becomes a real pleasure. It allows us to save a considerable amount of time every day and significantly improves our efficiency.”

• Agility PR: “The reporting features are a bit heavy and difficult to understand. For more than six months, I have been asked to manually send missing publications to their team so they can ‘fix’ the platform, but the issue persists. This has forced my team to spend 2 to 3 hours a day helping Agility correct their service, on top of paying for it.”

• PR Gloo: “The journalist database can lack individual details on journalists compared to its competitors. Not all of the contacts we search for are in the system.”

• Press Ranger: “If you operate in a very specific niche, finding truly relevant journalists can prove difficult. The report customization options could also be improved to better fit different corporate standards and facilitate client presentations.”

The best choice compared to alternatives: Wiztrust 

After comparing the French solutions for PR management, it clearly emerges that Wiztrust stands out as the best choice for companies with high requirements, in particular regarding security, GDPR compliance and governance. Its innovative approach and blockchain certification provide a competitive edge, especially for listed companies and financial institutions, guaranteeing reliability and authenticity with every distribution.

Takeaway

Ultimately, the best PR tool depends above all on your type of organisation and your level of requirements in terms of security and compliance. This practical guide helps you identify the key features to prioritize, build a relevant comparison grid and effectively answer the question: “How do you compare the best French PR tools?” At a time when digitalisation and regulation are profoundly reshaping institutional communication, equipping yourself with the most suitable solution is a real performance lever for your public relations in 2026.

Frequently asked questions

Question: How can a PR tool help an SME, an agency and a large enterprise differently?

Answer: SMEs mainly benefit from simple contact management, press release distribution and basic reporting, with quick onboarding and limited budgets. Agencies need advanced multi‑account management and fast custom reporting, while large enterprises look for deep IT integration, strict GDPR compliance and scalable, automated workflows across entities, brands and countries.

Question:  Why is a digital newsroom essential for modern PR?

Answer: A digital newsroom centralises your content and makes it easier for journalists to access your information. This feature is becoming indispensable for organisations that communicate regularly, strengthening your credibility and media visibility. Wiztrust has now established itself as the French benchmark for newsroom solutions, recognized as a “High Performer” on G2 in the Online Newsroom category for Summer 2025 thanks to its innovation and the satisfaction of its professional users.​

Question: What should PR teams do to stay GDPR‑compliant when managing media contacts and campaigns?

Answer: PR teams must ensure that journalist and influencer contact data is collected on a legitimate basis, kept up to date, and deleted when it is no longer needed. They should provide clear information on how data is used, offer easy opt‑out options for mailing lists, and ensure that all tools used for distribution, monitoring, and analytics respect GDPR requirements (data hosting, access rights, retention periods).