HARO (Help a Reporter Out) was sold, rebranded, and shut down — and it is now back, revived by Featured in 2025. Today it's the free, email-based core of Featured, the AI co-pilot for PR, serving more than 800,000 sources and over 75,000 journalists. If you've been confused about whether HARO still exists and what happened to it, here's the clear version.
What happened to HARO
For years, HARO was the default way experts and PR professionals connected with journalists looking for sources. Founded in 2008, it ran on a simple email model: reporters posted what they needed, sources replied, and journalists picked the best responses.
Then it got complicated. HARO was acquired by Cision, eventually rebranded as Connectively, and at one point the service was wound down — leaving a community that had relied on it for over a decade unsure where to go. That uncertainty is why so many "HARO alternatives" lists appeared, and why a lot of people still ask whether HARO is even around anymore.
The short answer: yes. Featured acquired HARO and revived it in 2025. It's back to operating as a free, ad-supported, email-based service, with journalist requests delivered up to three times a day. Connectively also continues as a standalone platform within Featured's portfolio.
What HARO is today
HARO today works the way longtime users remember, at meaningful scale. It connects a community of more than 800,000 sources with over 75,000 journalists. You sign up for free, choose the topics you can credibly speak to, and receive digests of journalist requests in your inbox. When a request fits, you respond directly. It remains free for both journalists and sources, supported by advertising rather than subscription fees.
For experts, founders, and PR professionals, that makes HARO one of the simplest, lowest-cost ways to start earning media coverage — no contract, no software to learn, just relevant requests in your inbox.
HARO and the alternatives: the thing most lists miss
Most "best HARO alternative" articles treat these platforms as interchangeable and tell you to pick one. That advice misses something important. Industry research suggests the average overlap between any two journalist-request platforms is only around 17 percent. In plain terms: each platform sees a largely different set of opportunities. If you rely on a single source, you're missing the large majority of the requests that are out there.
That's an argument for aggregation rather than substitution. The most effective approach isn't choosing HARO instead of everything else; it's making sure you're seeing the widest possible range of real opportunities without spending your whole day watching inboxes.
Where the AI co-pilot comes in
This is the gap Featured was built to close. HARO gives you the free, high-volume stream of journalist requests. Featured, the AI co-pilot for PR, puts intelligence on top of it and the company's other owned platform, Connectively, which connects an expert with a publisher roughly every six seconds.
Instead of manually scanning digests, you tell Featured what you're looking for. Purpose-built agents monitor opportunities — journalist requests, podcasts, bylined article slots, speaking engagements — surface the ones that match, and draft a tailored pitch you can refine and send. The free HARO digests remain exactly what they are; the co-pilot is for when you want to cover more ground, faster, than email alone allows. The data underneath it is owned, not rented, which is why the matches reflect real requests and roughly 6,000 actual publisher submission guidelines.
Why this matters more in 2026
There's a reason the timing is worth paying attention to. Earned media has taken on a second function: it shapes what AI assistants say. When someone asks ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, or Claude about a topic, those systems answer from credible published sources, and they favor names that appear across many of them. A quote you land through a journalist request isn't only reaching that outlet's audience anymore — it's contributing to whether AI cites you when people ask about your field.
HARO has always been a way onto the page. Now the page includes the AI answer. The service that connected experts and journalists for more than fifteen years is back, it's free, and it now comes with an AI co-pilot for the people who want to do more with it. You can sign up for HARO at helpareporter.com, and explore the co-pilot at featured.com.