What's new for media companies

The old Sustainalists was a directory. You searched, you found someone, and from there you were on your own — email, a phone number, an invoice that arrived three weeks later in a format your finance team did not want.

The new one runs the job.

Search truly local

Search by city and role and you get the people who are actually there, nearest first, with distance shown for the ones a little further out. Filter by field, language, equipment and travel distance.

Every card shows the rating, and whether that person is set up to be paid — which is the thing you find out too late otherwise.

Write a Brief to summarise the job

Write one brief and send it to several candidates. It carries the location, the dates, the deliverables and whom to report to.

You can attach an NDA, and you can chase the candidates who have not quoted yet without writing five separate emails.

You see the price before you accept

Each candidate quotes against the brief.

Our fee is added on top of their quote, and it is shown to you before you accept. Standard accounts pay 12%. Impact members pay 6%. There is also a flat booking fee of €19 per confirmed booking, currently waived. That is all-in — card processing is included, and there is no second percentage further down.

A production board you both edit

Once you go ahead with someone, the job opens a shared board: shoot days, notes, a checklist, contacts. Both sides edit it, both sides see the same version. No more "is this the latest call sheet".

Messages live in the job, not in a thread that started somewhere else, and the freelancer gets a text when one lands if they have added a mobile number.

Delivery and payment sit next to each other

The work arrives in the Delivery step: written pieces, photographs, media, or a link, batch by batch. You review it, approve it, and pay — in the same place, on the same afternoon.

How the files themselves move is your choice. On a standard account you nominate your own channel in the brief — your FTP, your link service — and collect them as you do today. Companies chosing our Impact plan allow the freelancer to upload full-size media straight through Sustainalists with nothing to set up on either side. Delivered files auto-delete three days after upload, and either side can extend that in the last day.

Ratings that are worth reading

Only a real, paid job can produce a rating, so they are never written by someone who has not worked with the person.

The emissions you avoided, reported

Every account — free included — gets the impact figures for the jobs it ran, with the methodology, and can export the report.

That is deliberate. The whole argument for hiring locally is that it is faster AND more sustainable. The evidence for those emissions not produced belongs to the company that did it. Putting it behind a subscription would mean the firms least able to pay are the ones whose avoided emissions go unreported, which is precisely backwards.

What Impact adds

Everything above is on the free account. Impact is for firms running enough work that the smoothness pays for itself:

• 6% instead of 12% on every job
• Video calls with freelancers, to brief and vet before committing
• Delivery built in — full-size media through the platform, waiting in the job

Nothing that was free became paid at the relaunch. Impact is what we added on top.

What to do first

1. Claim your company account — your details, your team's history and your past ratings are waiting.
2. Add your company About text. It is what a freelancer reads when deciding whether to answer you, and a blank one costs you replies.
3. Run one small real job end to end. It is the fastest way to see whether this fits how you work. We promised you will not be disappointed.
4. Share this with colleagues - they will want to know.