Featured, the AI co-pilot for PR, announced that Featured Workflows are now available on every plan, including Free. This move significantly lowers the barrier for small businesses, startups, and individual founders to access always-on PR automation that was previously reserved for paying customers. By extending Workflows to its free tier, Featured is positioning itself to capture a broader market of users who need consistent media monitoring but cannot afford traditional PR agency retainers or expensive monitoring tools.
Workflows are always-on automations that monitor a dozen types of PR opportunities: journalist requests, HARO queries, podcasts, bylined article opportunities, speaking events, awards, media mentions, competitor coverage, and AI visibility. Users configure what to monitor, how often to receive results, and where to send them—email or Slack—in plain language rather than complex search syntax. Since launching on paid plans on July 14, 2026, and going live on June 16, 2026, users have created 467 workflows, which have completed 26,239 runs and surfaced 93,012 matched opportunities. Notably, 93% of runs found at least one match, according to Featured's Workflows Usage Report.
The implications are substantial. For PR agencies, this validates the demand for automated monitoring, but for founders and small businesses, it removes a key barrier to entry. As Brett Farmiloe, CEO of Featured, noted, "PR agencies already pay for monitoring. Most founders and small businesses never set it up." By offering Workflows on the Free plan, Featured enables anyone to decide what to monitor and how often, with Featured handling the recurring research. This could lead to a surge in media placements from smaller players who previously lacked the resources to systematically pursue PR opportunities.
Workflows cover 12 types, including Journalist Requests from sources like HARO and Connectively, Podcasts from a database of 814,000 active shows, and even GEO/AI Visibility tracking across ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, and Gemini. Users can set up a workflow by visiting featured.com/workflows and filling in three fields, or by typing a single sentence into Featured Chat, such as "Send me HARO requests about small business finance every morning in Slack."
Free users can run Workflows until they hit the day's usage allowance, after which workflows pause and resume the next day. Paid plans—Lite at $29 per month and Pro at $79 per month, billed annually—offer higher allowances. Crucially, Workflows stop at the opportunity; they do not auto-contact journalists or publishers, keeping a human in the loop. This balance of automation and human judgment could set a new standard for ethical PR tools.
For the PR industry, this announcement signals a shift toward democratized access to opportunity monitoring, potentially increasing competition for media placements while also expanding the pool of stories available to journalists. As more users leverage free Workflows, the volume of pitches may rise, but so may the quality, as users can target opportunities more precisely. Featured's move could pressure competitors to offer similar free tiers, ultimately benefiting small businesses and independent PR professionals.
