Is Ahrefs Worth It For Website Owners?

The answer is yes - Ahrefs is an incredibly powerful tool for SEO analysis and competitive research. then investing in Ahrefs may be worth it for you.

Seo Tools May 9, 2023 0 588 Add to Reading List

I'm just finishing writing an article about my I believe that paying Screaming Frog subscription isn't worth it, and I'm stating it's Ahrefs isn't worth the money for most webmasters! Do I sound like an apologist? Do you think it's clickbait? If yes, my opinion is, at at the very least, authentic. I'm the owner of a website and have subscribed to Screaming Frog and Ahrefs. They're both excellent products, the top of their category, in actual. However, just similar to Screaming Frog, Ahrefs isn't worth the price of the vast most websites. Here's why.

Simply Put, Ahrefs is Too Expensive

Ahrefs cost $99 per month. The issue with any pricing system is that the exact amount might be insignificant for certain players, but make up a significant portion of expense for other. The cost of $1200 per year may not seem like much for huge SEO firms or websites who make use of Ahrefs in their workflow however it's an enormous cost for other websites.

Consider the other costs associated with managing a website. If you are hosting on NameHero's basic plan, your total hosting cost is less than $10/m for renewals. Ahrefs will ask for 10 % greater for its software than you would pay for hosting on the web! If you're thinking "Well, that's low-cost hosting, " take a look at NameHero's cloud for managed VPS renewals every year at 40 dollars per month. This is less than half the amount Ahrefs would like you to pay to use their SEO tools.

Sorry, but I'm unable to justify this kind of expenditure. This isn't a matter of "How much can you afford" however, it's "How much is this worth to you?".

The "ROI" Argument

Advocators for Ahrefs will usually claim that any amount is worth it to bring in more revenue than what it costs. True...if you are able to determine the difference. For a website that earns about a few hundred dollars each month, that's nearly 20 percent of the revenue stream!

And, of course, nobody has ever compared the return on investment of Ahrefs as well as other alternatives for keyword research.

So Who Should Use Ahrefs?

Ahrefs is a service for two types of users:

Websites with large numbers of writers for content and an well-organized SEO team
SEO companies with a variety of clients

Both of them two are "power users" of a type. They are involved in several projects and must keep track of how many keywords perform, and keep track of dozens of competitors. They need to create numerous keywords lists and prioritizes and track the backlinks they make. For these companies, Ahrefs is a great tool that is certainly worth the cost.

But the pricing plans for Ahrefs specifically say that the starter plan is only for small-sized websites, and "hobby projects". This is an absolute fake. Ahrefs is not a tool to be used for projects that are just hobby. It's improbable that anyone would spend more than $1,000 a year on an SEO tool!

Use Ahrefs Free Tools Instead

There's a no-cost tier where you can get a glimpse of essential information about your website. Many people are unaware that Ahrefs provides SEO tools that are free which include the following:

#Keyword Generator
#Keyword Difficulty Checker
#SERP Checker
#Keyword Rank Checker
#Backlink Checker
#Website Authority Checker

And much more. Although these tools are helpful but I have found others that are better than them for research on keywords. Google itself is an excellent keyword generator with its auto-suggestions. A tool which builds effectively upon this idea can be KeywordTool.io, which utilizes Google's auto-complete feature. For tracking keywords you can make use of SEMRush with up to 10 keyword searches.

Also the king of all rank monitoring tools - Google Search Console. Again, for free. The most important thing to remember is that there's no have to pay for Ahrefs to make a difference for small businesses or a website.