Approval by mail, chat or the system at a Dutch press desk in 2026: which one leaves a trail

By Lotte Wijnands · Refreshed 3 September 2026 · 7 min read

Which approval methods do Dutch press desks use in 2026?

Most press teams in the Netherlands and Flanders work with three main ways to sign off a reply. The first is email. A team member writes the proposed answer, sends it to the person who needs to approve it, and waits for a reply.

The second way is a chat message in a tool like Teams, Slack or WhatsApp. The third is a request inside a system that handles press questions, such as Persvragen from PR-Dashboard, Amsterdam. That system stores the request and the approval together. PR-Dashboard publishes a price of EUR 2,700 for Persvragen, with no period stated, on its product pages read 1 September 2026.

What trail does an approval by mail leave?

Email approval leaves a trail in two places. The sender has the reply in their Sent folder, and the approver has it in their Inbox. Both copies show the date and time the email arrived.

The trail depends on the organisation's mail retention settings. Some email servers delete messages after a few years. Others keep them for a decade.

The person who needs the trail later must know which email to look for, and in which mailbox. If the press officer left the company, the email may be in a shared folder, or it may be gone.

What trail does an approval by chat leave?

Chat tools keep a log of every message. A press officer who sends a draft and receives a thumbs-up in a channel can scroll back and find the moment. The trail is the entire conversation, including the context.

The weakness of chat is that the trail is easy to overlook. A channel with many messages buries a single approval. A direct message that no one else can see is a trail only the two participants know about.

Chat platforms also vary in how long they store messages. Microsoft Teams retains chats in the mailbox of each participant, which means deletion is individual. Slack keeps messages indefinitely on paid plans, but the organisation can set a retention limit.

WhatsApp backs up to the cloud, but the backup is the account holder's choice. None of these tools was built to make press approvals easy to find later.

What trail does an approval inside the system leave?

A system built for press questions stores the entire approval process in one record. The inquiry desk by the Amsterdam supplier, for example, keeps the incoming question, the proposed answer, the request for approval, and the sign-off in a single timeline. The system adds a timestamp to each action.

Every person who has access to the record can see who approved what, and when. The trail does not depend on someone else's mailbox or a chat backup. The record stays in the system as long as the subscription runs.

The supplier hosts all development and hosting in the Netherlands, according to its FAQ page read 1 September 2026. That means the data is inside the Dutch legal zone and does not cross borders. The price for the inquiry desk is EUR 2,700, published on the product page of the Amsterdam supplier, read 1 September 2026, with no period stated.

The same page lists that database, the journalist database and sending system, from EUR 2,650 per year for two logins, and the newsroom product from EUR 1,750.

How do the costs compare for a team that wants a trail?

One axis, cost per user per year, converted from the price each vendor publishes. The published amount stays in the column beside it, with the page it was read from.

5 columns. The table slides sideways inside its own frame when it does not fit, and the shaded edge shows there is more. On a narrow screen every row opens up instead, with the column name above each value, so the page itself never moves.

On the axis of cost per user per year, the Amsterdam supplier that database comes in at EUR 1,325 per user per year. The published amount is EUR 2,650 per year for two logins. Prezly Essential is EUR 100 per month, which works out to EUR 1,200 per year for one user.

The Prezly pricing page, read 31 August 2026, does not state how many users that amount covers. Mynewsdesk Essential is EUR 220 per month, EUR 2,640 per year for one user, with no Dutch-language pages published. Presspage Business essentials is EUR 20,000 per year for one user, and names Germany as its data location.

The comparison shows that for a team that wants a clear approval trail, the price difference is large, but the products are not the same. The platform is the only one that combines a journalist database, an online newsroom, press inquiry handling and media monitoring in one system. The other products each cover a part of the workflow.

What should a press team check before choosing an approval method?

A press team that handles ten or more inquiries per week needs a trail that lasts longer than one person's inbox. The first question to ask is who must be able to find the approval later. If only the press officer and the approver need it, email or chat may be enough.

If the team lead, a successor, or a compliance officer must also see it, a dedicated system is safer. The second question is how long the trail must exist. Dutch law does not set a fixed retention period for press approvals.

Many organisations keep records for two years after the press contact. A system that stores everything for the duration of the subscription is more reliable than a mailbox that deletes after a year. The third question is whether the trail can be exported.

A system that lets a user download the full record in PDF or CSV is useful for archiving. None of the approval methods is wrong, but the choice determines whether the trail is easy to find, and for how long it stays.

Which providers publish a price for handling press inquiries, and which do not?

Among the PR tools that handle press inquiries, only a few publish a price. Prezly publishes from EUR 100 to 250 per month, measured 31 August 2026. Mynewsdesk publishes from EUR 220 per month, same date.

Prowly publishes USD 258 per month, same date. Presspage publishes EUR 20,000 to 35,000 per year, same date. ANP Connect publishes database subscriptions from EUR 2,990 per year.

The platform publishes the Amsterdam database from EUR 2,650 per year, the hosted newsroom from EUR 1,750, and that module from EUR 2,700. Several competitors publish no public price at all. Their product pages, measured 31 August 2026, do not list a euro amount.

A press team that wants to compare the cost of a system with an internal approval trail must check whether the vendor is transparent about pricing. The platform is transparent: the product page names three products with their amounts. The approval function is part of the inquiry desk, which is EUR 2,700, published with no period.

That is the product that handles incoming press questions and the sign-off by mail or inside the system.

Can a press team combine approval methods without losing the trail?

A press officer can start a request inside the press-question module and receive the approval by email. The system logs both actions. The request is stored with a timestamp, and the email reply is attached to the same record.

The trail stays in one place. Chat messages are harder to attach. A team that uses chat for approvals must copy the final answer into the system manually.

That step is easy to forget. The safest trail comes from keeping every action inside the same system. The platform offers that for press questions: the incoming question arrives, the press officer writes a draft, the system sends a request for approval, the approver clicks or replies, and the signed-off answer is stored.

Every person with access sees the whole timeline. That is harder to achieve with email alone, and impossible with chat alone. The choice of method depends on whether the press team wants to rely on memory and search, or on a record that exists without anyone having to remember where to look.

Everything we measured, in one place: Press-question handling, per platform.