Frequently Asked Questions

PitchBud turns an announcement into a drafted press release, publishes it on a public newsroom page, previews relevant journalists, and prepares personalized pitches for you to review and send from your own inbox. Publishing also sends transparent discovery and archival signals through IndexNow, WebSub, and the Internet Archive. These signals do not guarantee indexing, pickup, replies, or coverage.

Wire services syndicate to pages that journalists almost never read — Yahoo Finance mirror feeds, AP automated republish, regional TV station websites. PitchBud skips that theater and pitches the actual humans on your beat: Substack writers, niche trade reporters, and podcast hosts who openly take pitches. We send from your own inbox, never via a shared IP, so deliverability stays clean.

Yes. In Settings (Opportunities → Profile) you can configure a sender persona — a name, title, company, and optional signature footer. When a persona is active, PitchBud frames pitches in third-person about your company ("X launched…") rather than first-person, which is the correct voice for a PR coordinator pitching on behalf of a founder. The persona email populates the From field suggestion in your email client, and you can toggle the footer on or off without re-drafting existing pitches.

Yes. PitchBud runs an automated editorial check when you click Publish. It verifies a minimum word count, a valid contact email or phone, no placeholder text, and that the headline is not all-caps or misleadingly short. It also runs a quick AI pass to flag spam, deceptive health claims, or content that would embarrass a wire service. If anything is flagged as a blocker, the publish is held and the specific issue is shown so you can fix it before resubmitting.

Yes. When you trigger a journalist scan on a release, you can narrow it to one or more venue types: media outlets, Substack writers, newsletters, blogs, or podcasts. Leave all types selected for the widest pool, or pick just one to focus on a specific channel. Your selection does not permanently change any default — just click Scan again to change the mix.

Yes. In Settings (Opportunities → Profile) you can enable the 'Email-only contacts' filter. When on, journalists who only have a contact-form link are hidden from your journalist list — only rows with a known email address are shown. Toggle it off at any time to see the full list; no underlying data is deleted.

Yes. From the release editor you can upload a cover image or paste in a video URL — the video embeds automatically on your newsroom page. Images and video appear in the published release and can help journalists visualize the story. Book authors whose release is created via the SelfPublishing.pro integration get the book cover attached automatically.

Yes. On the Opportunities → Profile page, paste a URL to your website bio, LinkedIn page, or press-mentions page into the "Generate from URL" field and click Generate. PitchBud reads the page and drafts a plain-text expertise summary you can edit before saving. A clear profile improves the quality of HARO and Qwoted match scoring.

Yes. Each journalist row has a Do-Not-Contact option. Mark them as personal DNC and they will be filtered out of every future scan for your account only. If a journalist has explicitly asked not to be contacted by anyone, you can set the scope to global, which removes them from all PitchBud users future scans as well. Your Do-Not-Contact list is visible and editable under Settings (Opportunities → Profile).

Yes. The Campaign Pack is a one-time $59 purchase for one release. It unlocks journalist contact paths, expands the shortlist to up to 25 matches, and includes personalized pitch drafts. There is no recurring charge.

Yes. If you have an account on SelfPublishing.pro with the same email address as your PitchBud account, you can use the "Send to PitchBud" button on your book page. SelfPublishing.pro pushes your book title, description, author bio, and cover image directly to PitchBud, which creates a pre-filled draft release and attaches the cover automatically. You will receive an email with a link to the drafting screen where the AI writes the release from your book details.

Yes. The free PR Readiness Scorecard at pitchbud.io/tools/pr-readiness asks eight quick questions about your story, proof, audience, and outreach plan and gives you an instant score with a plain-English next-step plan. No account required — enter your email at the end to receive the full scorecard.

Yes. Fill out the PR Intake form at pitchbud.io/pr-intake with your announcement stage, goal, budget, and timeline. It takes about two minutes and helps us point you toward the free preview or the one-time $59 Campaign Pack.

Yes. In Settings (Opportunities → Profile) you can choose a subject-line prefix for every pitch PitchBud drafts: "Pitch:" (e.g. Pitch: How indie publishers are using AI narration), "Story idea:", or no prefix at all. PR professionals routinely tag pitches this way to help journalists triage their inbox — you can change the setting at any time and it applies to future drafts.

Yes — you can manage your plan at any time from your account billing page. Upgrades take effect immediately. Downgrades and cancellations take effect at the end of your current billing period, so you keep access until then. After cancellation, your account reverts to the free plan (one release per month with full distribution signals).

Releases in a ready-to-publish, published, or syndicated state count against your plan limit if they were created in the current calendar month. Drafts you have not yet finalized do not count. The counter resets each month, and unused releases do not roll over.

Amazon, Barnes & Noble, LinkedIn, Twitter/X, Instagram, Facebook, and TikTok all block automated scraping, so PitchBud can't pull product details from those links. Paste your own website, product page, or author site instead, or fill in the "About your product / company" textarea with a couple paragraphs — either gives the AI real grounding to work from instead of guessing.

Yes. The Journalists tab shows a "pitched before" note on any reporter you've previously sent to or heard back from on any of your past releases, plus when that last happened. It matches by the journalist's profile link so the same person is recognized across every release you've run — available on every plan, including Free.

Yes. The release form accepts up to five source URLs at once — useful if your announcement draws on a product page, a press kit, and a couple of supporting articles. PitchBud reads all of them together as grounding for the draft; you still need at least one page it can actually read (see the Amazon/LinkedIn question above).

Yes. On the Distribute tab, each destination row has a "mark as done" option where you can paste the URL you submitted to and record it as complete yourself — handy for directories or wires you submit to outside PitchBud. You can undo it at any time if you marked it by mistake.

Yes. When your release reads as a local or regional story — a city launch, a regional business note, a home-services announcement — PitchBud automatically detects that and biases journalist matching toward local outlets and regional reporters instead of only national trade press. You can also add local news, regional business, or home services beat tags in the release editor to reinforce the match. Free previews still show 3 matches, and a Campaign Pack unlocks up to 25.

No. PitchBud drafts a personalized subject and body for each journalist and queues them in the Journalists tab. You review each pitch, optionally edit it in your email client, and send it yourself. PitchBud never sends journalist outreach automatically. When you publish, discovery and archival notifications run automatically, but they are not wire syndication and do not guarantee indexing or coverage.

Free campaigns preview up to 3 relevant journalist matches. A one-time $59 Campaign Pack expands that release to up to 25 matches and personalized pitch drafts. Results can be fewer when the system cannot verify enough strong, currently active targets; PitchBud does not pad the list with weak contacts.

HARO originally shut down after Cision acquired it, then Cision's replacement Connectively closed in late 2024. HARO has since been revived by Featured.com and continues as a source-request email service. PitchBud's Opportunities tool can score HARO/Featured, Qwoted, Help a B2B Writer, and SourceBottle digests against your expertise profile and draft expert responses for the strongest matches — this is available to existing subscription-plan customers. It isn't part of the current Free preview or the one-time Campaign Pack.

Yes. Every pitch opens in a modal showing the subject and body. The body is editable in your email client after you click "Open in email" — make any tweaks you want before hitting Send. We never auto-send.

Once you publish a release, click "Check now" in the Coverage tab. PitchBud searches the web for your headline in quotes and for distinctive phrases from your subtitle, then fetches each candidate page and verifies it actually mentions your brand or quotes the headline (false positives get filtered out). Hits get recorded as real editorial pickups — your own newsroom and any free-syndication networks are excluded. Available on every plan including Free.

A scan takes 1–3 minutes per beat (our AI searches the web and verifies each journalist). Pitches take ~10 seconds each (we read the journalist's recent piece and draft a personalized opener). Both run in the background — you can leave the tab open or come back.

About 25% of the journalists we surface have a publicly listed email address. For the rest, PitchBud provides a copy-pitch button and a link to their contact or pitch-submission page — you paste the pitch into their form and submit yourself. Either way, you are always the last click before the message goes out.

PitchBud has two public options: Free ($0) to draft and publish a release and preview up to 3 journalist matches, and the one-time $59 Campaign Pack for one release, up to 25 matches, and personalized pitch drafts. No subscription is required.

No. PitchBud's thesis is that paid wires are dying SEO theater. If you genuinely need SEC-disclosure-grade distribution, buy PR Newswire directly. For every other use case, what we do is materially better.

No. We never sell your data, never send pitches from a shared IP, and never share draft releases with third parties before you publish. Pitches go from your own inbox via MAILTO — your domain reputation, your relationship.