If you manage link building, you need to know which parts of finding, qualifying and contacting prospects each platform handles. Link prospecting platforms are mostly outreach platforms. They find prospects, then store them, contact them, follow up, track replies and report on placements. Pitchbox and BuzzStream are built around that sequence, and Hunter supplies the addresses that make it work.
OppAlerts publishes this page and sells a product in the category it describes. It sends no outreach.
OppAlerts does the first part and none of the rest. It sends no email, runs no sequences, tracks no replies, stores no relationship record, and verifies no addresses. Any team whose bottleneck is sending needs one of these platforms alongside it, and this page is written on that assumption.
The category is three jobs, and the tools cover different ones
Finding an opportunity, deciding whether it is worth pursuing, and reaching the publisher are separate problems. Most products in this category are strong on the first and third and quiet about the second.
The meters reflect that. Pitchbox charges for campaigns run, at 25 a month on its lower plan and 1,000 above it. BuzzStream charges for contacts stored, from 500 up to 300,000 or more. Hunter charges credits, with verifying an email costing half a credit. None of them charges for the judgment step, because none of them performs it.
The shortlist and the arithmetic for choosing between those meters are on link prospecting tools.
Where OppAlerts replaces part of the category
OppAlerts covers prospect discovery, assessment and contact lookup.
Discovery by opportunity type. Search the Prospect Index by meaning or keyword, then filter by placement type: guest contribution pages, resource lists, expert roundups, podcasts, industry directories, award programs and speaking submissions. Searching by meaning returns relevant pages that never use your wording, which keyword matching misses entirely.
This matters because the most common discovery method in the category is competitor backlink analysis, which can only find placements your competitors already earned. If no competitor has appeared on a relevant podcast, a backlink gap report will never propose one. OppAlerts also offers link gap analysis, so both methods are available.
Qualification, which the category mostly skips. PageRank history reports monthly link-graph measurements for a host, its www variant and its domain. A site declining steadily for two years is a different prospect from one improving, even when their current figures match, and outreach platforms do not tell you which you are looking at.
Contact lookup. Site Info returns the contact pages, emails, phone numbers and social profiles a site publishes about itself, as stored. Many publishers state exactly how they want submissions handled, and following that route needs nothing else. These details are not verified for deliverability.
The easiest list. Brand Unlinked Mentions lists pages that already name your business without an observed link, which converts more readily than a cold prospect because the publisher already knows who you are. Open the current page first, since a link may have been added since the page was stored.
Where an outreach platform remains necessary
Sending at volume. Sequences, follow-ups, reply detection, team assignment and shared inboxes are what Pitchbox and BuzzStream sell, and OppAlerts has none of it.
A relationship record. BuzzStream stores contacts, history and notes so a team remembers who was approached and what happened. OppAlerts keeps no such record, and Site Info is a lookup rather than a database you build.
Address verification. Hunter tests whether an address accepts mail. OppAlerts does not test anything.
Journalist databases. If you are pitching reporters by beat rather than approaching sites, a media database is the right tool and OppAlerts does not have one.
A workable arrangement
For most teams the sensible division is research here and execution there, in this order:
- Find opportunities by type in the Prospect Index, and by competitor gap in the link gap report.
- Check PageRank history and decide which sites justify the effort.
- Read what Site Info holds. Where the publisher states a submissions route, use it.
- Where a named person is needed, look up and verify the address in a verification service.
- Load the qualified list into an outreach platform and run the campaign there.
This order reserves sending and verification credits for prospects already checked for relevance and quality. It is usually cheaper than assessing prospects in a tool that charges for contacts or campaigns.
Map the services to your outreach process before buying. You can then check that each required step has a suitable tool and a person responsible for it.
See how to evaluate a prospect before contacting a publisher, whether OppAlerts sends outreach, or the product shortlist.