If, like me, you need to be on top of the latest news and insights in your area but find searching through Google and multiple other platforms tedious, Feedly will be right up your street. Feedly curates news and content from sources of your choosing based on your selected subjects. All of this is neatly presented in a centralized, user-friendly dashboard, eliminating the hassle of manual online search and filtering.
Working at Aiifi, a platform dedicated to AI tools and their benefits for workers and business owners, I need to stay updated with the latest developments in the AI space. But with so much noise and nonsense being published in the media and posted online, it is time-consuming. I needed a system or process to ensure I saw only relevant stories that impacted Aiifi and its users. Based on my experience with it over the last few months, Feedly is the system AND the process.
Aiifi Verdict
If you are fed up wasting your time searching for news & stories on specific topics every day and having to filter through the noise, Feedly is for you.
Pros | Cons |
✅Huge range of news sources available | ❌Some sources require a subscription |
✅Train Feedly AI only to show stories that matter to you | ❌Enterprise account needed for Feedly newsletter creation |
✅User interface is clean, letting you fully focus on the news, not the noise | ❌You need to pay for a Pro+ or Enterprise plan to access Feedly AI |
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Who Is This For?
If you need to stay on top of news or trends in your industry or area, Feedly is for you. Anyone who spends significant time online each week researching topics, markets, companies, people, products etc., will get great value from Feedly. However, if your online browsing is casual and lacks a specific intent or purpose, Feedly may not add much value for you.
Key Features
A single, organized, central hub for all your news and insights
You specify to Feedly the sources and topics/keywords you want to curate news and insights from. You create "feeds" to organize the curated content into different subjects. Get hours of your life back by having Feedly do all the searching and curation for you.
Train Feedly AI to only see the content that interests you
Feedly uses machine learning algorithms to understand the topics you are interested in, not just the keywords. You can train Feedly to further refine the news and content you see by telling it what stories are of no interest to you. Feedly learns from patterns over time the content you do not like and will stop showing this content to you.
Simple to tag/save content and share it with others
Tagging stories in your feed will send them to a "Board". You can have personal boards or share them with your team. Using boards allows you to save the most interesting stories in your feed to refer back to later and easily share insights with your team—no more copy and pasting links or having to message them to teammates.
Ease of Use
Simple to set up new feeds
To create a feed, you tell Feedly what topic, company, product or trend you are interested in tracking. You can further refine the content in that feed by adding additional parameters. If you have particular sources you want to pull content from, you can specify them too.
Train the Feedly AI model so those feeds only show me relevant content
Training Feedly's machine-learning algorithm requires only a single click. You hit the "Less Like This" button for any content in your feed that is irrelevant. Feedly gives you several options to describe why you want to see less content like that. It will incorporate your answer into the AI algorithm for that feed. As Feedly learns what you do not like, it no longer shows you similar content in the future. All that is left in your feed is hyper-relevant content.
Clean user interface with multiple article display options
Feedly has gone for the minimalist approach with its interface. It is clean and intuitive, leaving you with a distraction-free reading experience. You have flexibility over how articles appear in your feeds. You can opt to only view the titles of articles, or you can view them with text previews and an article image.
Feedly Pricing
Feedly has four pricing plans:
Free ($0/month)
Pro ($6/month billed annually)
Pro+ ($12/month billed annually)
Enterprise (custom quote available on request)
Aiifi uses the Pro+ plan, and this was the version we used for this review.
Pros and Cons
As noted in the review summary earlier, Feedly, like any tool, has both pros and cons. Let's explore these in more detail.
Pros
Feedly updates in real-time
There is no lag between an article being published and appearing on Feedly.
An exhaustive list of sources
Feedly can pull news, insights and content from websites, trade publications, blogs, research journals, podcasts, newsletters, and YouTube videos.
The sheer amount of time and effort saved vs manual search
Compared to manually searching through sites, the amount of time saved using Feedly is substantial. Combine this with the ease with which you can save and share content with your team, and this is a game changer for anyone who has to search out content online regularly.
Cons
Some sources require you to pay a separate subscription
Feedly is not a workaround for having to pay subscriptions to content providers. While not a flaw with Feedly, it is important to point this out for when you open an article on Feedly only to find it hidden behind a paywall.
To create a newsletter or team dashboard, you need an enterprise account
An enterprise account involves contacting the sales team for a quote. Considering the cost of an annual subscription for the Pro+ plan is $12, another plan in the $25 to $30 price point with these features would be good. I would happily pay extra for these features, but having to go down the "Enterprise" account route immediately puts me off.
AI features are only included with the Pro+ and Enterprise plans
As with all AI tools and software, you must pay to access Feedly's premium features. We detail all the pricing plans in the next section. Just note you need a Pro+ or Enterprise account to use Feedly AI.
Bottom line
I highly recommend Feedly if you regularly search online for news or insights into particular topics, products or companies. Its use of artificial intelligence to hyper-curate content can save you hours each week. The minimalist user interface allows you to read through articles without distraction. By enabling you to save or share content with your team in a single click, Feedly is an excellent addition to the toolbox of a busy team.
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