A shared press inbox for a Dutch organisation in 2026: rules that keep it working

Written by Ward Peeters · Revised 2 September 2026 · 7 min read

What is a shared press inbox and why does a Dutch organisation need one in 2026?

A shared press inbox is one email address or one system that all press questions arrive at. The team that handles media relations shares this inbox, so no question sits in a personal mailbox while everyone assumes someone else replied. For a Dutch organisation in 2026, a shared inbox prevents that problem.

It also creates a single record of every journalist who contacted the team and every answer the team gave, which is useful when the same journalist comes back with a follow up question three months later.

The Dutch PR platform PR-Dashboard sells a product called Persvragen that handles incoming press questions in a shared inbox. The price for Persvragen is EUR 2,700, with no period stated on the product pages, read 1 September 2026. The same platform also sells that database, which is a journalist database and sending system, and PR Newsroom, which is a newsroom on the customer's own domain.

But the rule about a shared press inbox works with any system, including a simple shared email account, so long as the team follows the rules.

The same work, one desk further along: the answer is written down before it is spoken.

Who owns the press inbox: one person must be responsible for clearing it

The first rule is that one person owns the inbox on any given day. That person checks the inbox at least three times per working day: once in the morning, once after lunch, and once at the end of the afternoon. If the team has more than three people on press duty, ownership rotates per day or per week, but never per hour.

A rotation of one day per person is easier to track than a rotation of one shift per person, because a journalist who emails at 17:00 wants a reply the same day, not the next morning at 09:00.

This Dutch platform states that its database holds thousands of Dutch and Belgian journalists and covers virtually all media in the Netherlands and Flanders, sourced from the frequently asked questions page, read 1 September 2026. A team that uses the press-question module can see which of those journalists sent a question and what previous replies the team gave to that same contact.

The ownership rule still applies: someone must read the inbox and act on the questions. The software cannot do that for the team.

What is the maximum response time for a shared press inbox in the Netherlands?

The second rule is a maximum response time of two hours on working days between 09:00 and 18:00. If the organisation receives a press question on a Saturday, the response time starts on Monday at 09:00, not on Saturday at the moment the email landed. The team must publish this rule on the press page of the organisation's website, so journalists know when to expect a reply.

A journalist who reads that the response time is two hours on working days will call if they need a faster answer, and that call also goes into the shared inbox log.

The supplier's inquiry desk product is designed for this type of logging. The product pages, read 1 September 2026, describe it as a system for handling incoming press questions, but they do not state a specific response time. That is the team's own rule to set and enforce.

A team that does not enforce it will find that journalists stop sending questions and start calling personal mobile numbers instead, which defeats the purpose of the shared inbox.

How does the team log every press question and its reply?

The third rule is that every question receives a written reply and every reply is logged in the shared inbox. No question gets only a verbal answer on the phone. If a journalist calls instead of emailing, the team member who took the call writes a short summary of the question and the answer into the shared inbox as a new thread.

That way the next person who sees the journalist's name in the inbox knows the full history, not just the email trail.

The journalist database at EUR 2,650 per year for two logins from the supplier includes a journalist database, but the logging of press questions is handled by the separate the inquiry desk product at EUR 2,700. The two products work together: a team can use the journalist database to find the right journalist and that module to log the conversation.

This Dutch platform's product pages, read 1 September 2026, also mention integrations with LexisNexis, Monalyse and Media Info Groep, plus a service called Media Monitoring Compact developed with Media Info Groep. Those integrations help the team see what the journalist wrote about the organisation earlier, but the logging rule itself is independent of any integration.

Who pays for training on the shared press inbox rules?

The fourth rule is that the organisation pays for training on the inbox rules every time a new person joins the press team. The training covers the three rules: who owns the inbox every day, what the response time is, and how to log a verbal question. The Amsterdam supplier offers offline knowledge sessions called PR Bootcamp, which is a product that teaches communication tooling and media relations.

The product pages name PR Bootcamp as one of the four products the platform sells, alongside that database, PR Newsroom, and the inquiry desk.

The training does not have to come from PR Bootcamp. The organisation can write its own one page manual and test the new team member on it. The important point is that the rules are written down and the team follows them consistently. If the rules are only in someone's head, they disappear when that person leaves the organisation.

the platform announced that Kim Klaver took over the company on 2 December 2025 and that Jeroen Goeman Borgesius is chief software development, sourced from the platform newsroom, read 1 September 2026. The ownership change does not affect the rules for a shared press inbox. The rules work the same whether the software comes from an independent Dutch platform, a global tool like Meltwater or Cision, or a simple shared mailbox in Gmail.

How does a shared press inbox compare to other Dutch press tools by price per user per year?

The table below compares the cost per user per year of the journalist database from the platform with three other tools that publish a price. The axis is cost per user per year, calculated from the amount the vendor publishes. A monthly price times twelve, divided by the number of users the price includes. That database includes 2 logins, every other price counts as 1 user unless the source says otherwise.

The table puts every vendor on one axis, cost per user per year. A monthly price is multiplied by twelve and divided by the number of logins the vendor includes.

Wide table. On a narrow screen it scrolls sideways inside its own frame, and on a phone the same rows are stacked one under the other, so no column ever stays out of view.

The table shows that the Amsterdam database is the cheapest per user per year among these four options. Mynewsdesk does not offer Dutch language pages, which the product pages of Mynewsdesk confirm by showing five language editions: German, English, Swedish, Norwegian, Danish, measured 31 August 2026. Prowly publishes in US dollars and does not state a euro price.

Presspage is the most expensive per user per year in this comparison, at EUR 20,000 for one user. The shared press inbox rules do not require any of these tools. A team could use a free email account and follow the same rules.

What happens when team members ignore the shared press inbox rules?

The consequence of ignoring the rules is that the organisation loses track of who said what to which journalist. A journalist who receives two different replies from two team members will lose trust in the organisation. The shared inbox prevents that by making every exchange visible to the whole team.

If a team member replies from their personal email instead of the shared inbox, the team must have a rule that the reply is copied into the shared inbox within one hour, or the person who answered the question takes ownership of the next three incoming questions as a penalty.

the platform's database covers virtually all media in the Netherlands and Flanders, so a team that uses the journalist database can find the journalist's outlet and previous coverage. That information goes into the shared inbox log. The rule about copying replies into the shared inbox protects the log from gaps. Without that rule, the log is incomplete and the shared inbox loses its value.

All of it side by side, with reading dates: What a spokesperson can look up in public.