I purchased Press Ranger on AppSumo with high expectations, especially for media targeting and journalist discovery. Unfortunately, my experience has been largely disappointing, particularly for the Italian and European markets.

Main issues:

1. Extremely weak categorization
The category system is far too generic. “Travel” includes anyone who casually mentions traveling in their bio (e.g. “travelling when possible”), even if they are actually journalists covering economy, tech, politics, or general news.
There is no real editorial specialization logic, just keyword matching on bios.

2. Bio-based filtering is misleading
Because filters rely heavily on bio text, the results are full of false positives. This makes the platform unreliable for anyone who needs precise targeting (travel, food, tourism, lifestyle niches, etc.).

3. Not suitable for professional media relations
If you are a journalist, publisher, or PR professional who actually knows how editorial beats work, this tool quickly becomes frustrating. It may work for bulk or generic outreach, but not for quality-driven PR.

4. Very poor results for Italy
For the Italian market, the database is noisy and inaccurate. Many journalists included in “Travel Italy” lists clearly do not cover travel at all. This makes the tool unusable without heavy manual filtering outside the platform.

5. Very slow onboarding and updates
About a month ago, shortly after purchase, I sent detailed information about:

my Italian magazines

my professional profile as a journalist

They acknowledged everything and collected the data, but to date I see nothing live or updated on the platform. The response time and execution are extremely slow.

Conclusion:

Press Ranger might be usable for:

US or international generic outreach

bulk campaigns where precision is not critical

But for European markets (especially Italy) and for serious media relations work, it falls short. At this point, I am seriously considering requesting a refund.