What free newsroom software usually is
Most tools sold as newsroom software are content management or planning systems: they organise what your staff writes. A free tier there means fewer seats or fewer features. That is a different product from a supplier of draft material, and a free plan should be judged differently for each.
What a free plan for draft material should let you do
- Define a real brief, not pick from sample topics.
- Receive enough items to see variance: a good day and a weak one.
- See the sources & checks and image information, because that is what you are evaluating.
- Use the same delivery channels as paid plans, so you test the workflow you would actually run.
- Stop without a call.
What the Doxx Free plan includes
- 50 credits, enough for roughly a week of routine coverage from one Stream at a modest pace.
- One Stream with the full brief: topics, country, optional cities, language, length and daily pace.
- Drafts delivered with sources & checks and image suggestions.
- The archive, a private RSS feed and the API, the same as paid plans.
- A visible attribution requirement, as set out in the content licence.
What it does not include
More credits than 50, and attribution-free publication. Both are what paid plans are for. Nothing else is held back.
How to run the week
Day one: write the brief narrowly. Days two to six: review every morning, publish what fits, note how much editing each item needed. Day seven: count published items and editing time, and compare with what the same coverage cost your team before. Then look at pricing with your own numbers.
Start the week with 50 credits and your own brief.