Ahrefs

Appreciate the loyalty, Peter! KD is exclusively on the number of backlinks to the top 10 results. What specific improvements are you looking for? Andrei

Thank you for your feedback, Oleg. In essence, credits are unique data requests. This also applies to filters, which may surface new results and additional data beyond your plan's limits. Hence, the motivation to also charge for filters as well. For now, please make sure to apply all your filters first, and only then hit the "Show results" button. As for your request, we will discuss internally the probability of increasing the credit limits. And whether to stop charging for applying filters in some cases. Andrei

Hi Jorge, Thank you for trusting our data, the best in the industry by the way. You can learn more about it on our big data page: https://ahrefs.com/big-data By "money-grabbing", I assume you're referring to the new credit system we launched in March 2022. To be upfront, this one serves two important purposes: (1) It helps cover the costs associated with maintaining our complex infrastructure, which involves collecting, processing, and storing data for 7+ years - until you request it. So the actual cost is not just in requesting data, but in collecting AND requesting it. (2) It enables us to develop and offer great features that our users will enjoy. You can read about the latest features on our product blog: https://ahrefs.com/blog/category/product-blog/ However, we do understand that it might be difficult to accomodate to them coming from the old plans. If you want to continue the conversation, please write us in the support chat and my colleagues will help you out. Andrei

Hello Jack, Happy to know that you were able to discover useful patterns using Ahrefs :) At the same time, we're sorry to see that the pricing plan was confusing. To clarify, each of our pricing plans comes with a 500 credit limit—not 500 clicks. Credits get consumed when accessing reports and requesting new data from all our core tools. Site Audit and Rank Tracker DO NOT consume credits. The monthly subscription + the plan additions (including additional users) are all listed on our pricing page, billing page, in-app welcome message, visual live counter (in the header, next to your account name) and “Limits & usage” page under Admin Settings. Also, please be aware that as an admin, you can directly control the credit limits for each workspace user. Automatic charges are turned off by default. Again, we're very sorry this didn't work out for you. What would have made things clearer to you, Jack? Andrei

Thank you, Robert! Although the new usage-based system may be deemed as "greed" from the outside, it actually helps us make our business sustainable. To give you a greater understanding of the costs involved, our data center costs in Singapore alone have run over $400M in the past three years (read more: https://tech.ahrefs.com/how-ahrefs-saved-us-400m-in-3-years-by-not-going-to-the-cloud-8939dd930af8). And we're currently constructing a second massive data center to keep up with both increased capacity and ever-expanding data. So as we're improving our product and our ability to crawl the entire web as fast as we do, we need the prices to follow along.

Hi Vladimir, Could you tell us more about the log-in issues you've experienced? If you're referring to the newly released sign-in confirmation, that notification only shows up when you sign in from a new device (where a new device is any browser that hasn’t been tagged with a special cookie and incognito sessions). If you've experienced a different sign-in issue, I would recommend contacting our support team and they will gladly help. Thank you, Andrei

Sorry to see you leaving, Liam! The new pricing plan is modeled in way where you pay in direct proportion for the amount of data that you retrieve. But we do understand that it might not be a fit for everyone. In fact, we're working on the backend to remove credit consumption for certain actions (like sorting in ascending/descending order). As for your anti-virus phishing alert, that's a false positive. We've already allerted AVG about it, so hopefully this will be solved soon. Meanwhile, you can create an exception for our site to whitelist our bot: https://support.avg.com/SupportArticleView?l=en&urlname=AVG-Antivirus-scan-exclusions Again, very sorry to see you leaving, especially since you are a loyal fan :( Should you feel we wronged you or want to know about better ways to use Ahrefs without burning through credits fast, please talk with our support team. - Andrei

Apologies for the inconveniences caused by our downtimes, Nonn! I've checked the downtime history and it looks like Site Explorer was indeed down on 17th May due to an error caused by the community connector. Otherwise, the service has been stable throughout the whole month. As for the "cannot fetch data" errors, these depend on a user-by-user case. It's best to contact our support team and provide them with the error request ID when such errors happen, so they can further escalate them and/or advise on how those could be resolved. Wish we could have timely managed them, Nonn :( -Andrei

Hi Jessica, I believe you're referring to the new Lite's plan 1-week history. Since you were on the legacy plan, you weren't affected by the new plans (which were released last year, 18th March 2022 to be more specific). However, we do understand that this change may have affected your workflow. And we apologize on this way for this inconvience. -Andrei

Thank you, Brantley! Happy to see long-time fans enjoying our tools :)

Apologies, Grant! This is certainly not the intended desire, but we understand that credits might get consumed faster in direct proportion with the data that you request. If you want to save credits, I'd recommend the following: - Apply ALL the filters you want, before you click “Show results” (since applying each filter counts as fetching new data and costs credits) - Check up to 10,000 keywords in one search, under Keywords Explorer (this will only consume 1 credit) - Check up to 200 domains/URLs under the Batch Analysis tool (this will also consume 1 credit) It is also possible to purchase additional credits in batches of 500 priced $35. Thank you for your trust in us and sorry to see you leaving. I will make sure the management team is aware of your opinion and feedback. -Andrei

Appreicate the support, John!

We're sorry to hear that you had a bad experience with our credit system, Jean-François! The reason we have this system in place is to build great features that our users will enjoy using. But also to cover the costs of maintaining our complex infrastructure, which includes collecting, processing, and storing data for 7+ years until you request it. When you apply filters, it counts as a new data request, which is why credits get used up. If you want to learn more about how our credit system works, please check our help page: https://help.ahrefs.com/en/articles/6061658-about-credits-and-export-rows. You can also find information about the credit system on our pricing page, subscription page, in-app welcome message, in-app counter (right next to your name), and Admin area. Yet again, we apologize if it wasn't clear enough for you. I'll make sure to forward your feedback to the team! P.S. Just so you know, you can actually search for up to 10,000 keywords at once, which will only consume 1 credit (ideal for analysing keywords in bulk).

We are saddened by your decision to leave, Sira :( As already mentioned by my colleague in support, it's not possible to change the address for already issued invoices unfortunately. It's not that we didn't want to help you; rather, there are billing limitations in place that prevent us from doing so. As for the Lite plan, this is our lowest tier plan. More valuable features are unlocked at higher ones. Will forward your feedback about the limitations to our team though. And we apologize again for any inconvenience caused on the billing side. -Andrei

We're sorry for your bad experience, Stuart. To clarify, each of our pricing plans comes with a 500 credit limit - not 500 clicks. Credits get consumed when accessing reports and requesting new data from all our core tools - except Site Audit and Rank Tracker, which have their own limits. The monthly subcription + the plan additions are all listed on our pricing page, billing page, in-app welcome message, live counter (next to your name) and "Limits & usage" page (under Admin Settings). I understand though that this can be frustrating when you're a heavy user. To save credits, I suggest either to open the reports you plan to revisit during in separate tabs and to apply all filters before loading a report. Have already forwarded your feedback to team! -Andrei

We're sad to see you disappointed, Andrew :( The pricing change kicked in last year after thoroughly studying the actual usage data. Based on it, we discovered that 80% of our paying customers wouldn't be affected by it. The fact is, currently more than 30% of our paying customers are on the new plans at their own will. We are actively listening to our user's feedback on many channels and constantly apply changes that would benefit all. Take Overview 2.0 for example, which is going in the right direction thanks to the contribution of many voices. What improvements and features are you looking forward to? - Andrei

Sorry to hear the new pricing doesn't work for you. We've implemented it in March 2022, and since then, more than 30% of our paying customers are on the new plan on their own will - including agencies. Nevertheless, your opinion is appreciated, as well as your decision to switch to another tool. I will forward your feedback to the management team. - Andrei

Apologies for finding out about the new pricing only now, Paul! We introduced our new pricing and the credits system in March 2022, as a way to counter group buyers and also to better match the value we provide with our tools, which is both in processing user requests AND maintaining our complex infrastructure (#1 SEO crawler on the web, freshest database of live links, largest database of content pages - to name a few). We've featured the implications of it on our pricing page, via a pop-up (the moment you sign-up), via the live counter (right next to your account name), and also in-app under a designated area called Limits & usage > Set limits.  Taking a close look at your account, it looks like you've misread the credit consumption. We see you consumed 63 credits and still have 437 left. At the moment of writing this review, you probably consumed only 29 credits (out of the total 500). For further clarifications, don't hesitate to continue your conversation with our support team. -- Update: >> "Also if you were a bit intelligente on that you would have guessed that 90% of marketers block pop ups." That is not just a pop-up, the amount of credits included in each plan is shared right on the Pricing page; the pricing change also shows up on the billing page, where you can calculate how much the change would cost you under the "What's my usage" button. I will pass on your suggestion to add it to the credit card payment page as well.

Sorry to see you disappointed, Roger!  We changed our pricing last year (the first time since 2016) as a way to counter group buyers and also to be more in line with the value we provide at Ahrefs.  Apart from releasing unique features and educational materials consistently, it feels like most customers are not aware of our costs. They are not just in processing user requests. But also in crawling and collecting petabytes of data to fuel our multi-regional databases. With the risk of sounding too repetitive, this allows us to maintain:  - one of the most active crawlers on the web (#6 according to Cloudflare Radar) - the freshest database of live backlinks (20B) - the largest keyword database for the U.S. (4.5B) - the largest database of content pages (12B)  As for grandfathered users, we allow them to keep their legacy plans as long as they don't interrupt their subscriptions.  Apologies if we didn't communicate this more clearly so you wouldn't interrupt yours. -- UPDATE: We're not dressing things up, just stating the facts from third-party studies and the SEO community.  - Ahrefs has the #1 crawler among SEO tools and #6 worldwide (source - Cloudflare Radar: https://radar.cloudflare.com/traffic/verified-bots). Semrush is #10 and #66 respectively.  - Our data has also earned the trust of the SEO industry (source - The State of Link Building Report 2022: https://aira.net/state-of-link-building/)  > 64% of SEO professionals prefer Ahrefs’ link index to any competitors > 44% of SEO professionals use Ahrefs’ Domain Rating as their SEO metric of choice  Pricing changes are rarely (if ever) welcome, we get that. But we took this decision to maintain the costs of our infrastructure (collecting, processing, and storing data for 7+ years waiting for you to request it) & continue building new tools and adding awesome features.  Since you were an infrequent user, please note that the change was due in March 2022. From the very beginning, we took active measures to make it as visible as possible in various places (on our pricing page, in-app billing page, in-app welcome message, active credit counter next to your account name, and a special area called "Limits & usage" under the Account Settings)  We also did not - quote "forced your users to pay your sneaky costs". Every grandfathered user can keep their legacy accounts, as long as they don't interrupt them. However, we respect your decision to go for another tool if you trust their data more.