Questions that everyone want an easy answer to, such as "Which press service should I use?" often don't have an easy answer. However, that doesn't stop us from debating them, which is what we will do in this post.

PR-Squared's Todd Defren has already conducted a pretty thorough review of press release services in terms of social media releases, and of course there was a bit of a firestorm created by PRNewsire's recent study claiming that their releases receive more pickup than competing wires. The competition is getting tighter, that's for sure. We've also noticed quite a few releases going out on the much cheaper (but no frills) service PRWeb.

Now comes a list of free sevices, courtesy of Daniel Durazo (hat tip: Brian Solis).

Daniel adds this disclaimer:

I doubt very much that the "free" guys send your stuff anywhere. The free sites are good for one thing and one thing only: getting your news release onto the web so that it shows up in search engines when someone google's your client's name."

There's also PitchEngine, a new service we recently wrote about, that is a "freemium" service and provides no distribution. While both of these can be helpful tools, they don't replace the distribution and SEO you get from putting a release out on one of the major wires.

PRNewser has dealt with reps from all the major wire services and one even played on my former agency's kickball team (yes, it's true). There are several factors at play here: First, public companies need to use an official wire for disclosure purposes, although that has recently changed.

Another less "scientific" factor is that there is still a certain prestige with having your release on one of the big wires. People take you more seriously, and they still provide the widest distribution and best customer service. In other words, you get what you pay for.

We want to hear from you on this matter. What wire service do you use, and why?