Ahrefs: Worth It or Overhyped? G2 User Reviews

Ahrefs’ SEO tools start at $108/month for small companies, with higher tiers ranging from $2,400 to $14,990 per year for freelancers and enterprises. The platform has grown from a simple link-building tool, including features such as site auditing, AI content grading, and Pages 2.0 reporting. Despite a recent 29% price rise, they offer a more affordable $29/month Starter plan with 100 credits. The tool maintains high user satisfaction, with 77% of G2.com reviewers giving it 5 stars, and it ranks #14 in G2’s Fall 2024 SEO tools report.

Ahrefs: Paid vs. Free SEO Tools

While Ahrefs offers a few free tools for basic SEO tasks and Webmaster Tools access, these are mostly entry-level options. There are eight free tools, including:

• Keyword Generator: generates up to 20 keywords.
• Keyword Difficulty Checker: Determines how difficult it is to rank for a specific keyword.
• SERP Checker: Review the SERP summary of the first four results.
• Keyword ranking Checker: Check whether your website ranks in the top 100 for a given term.
• Backlink Checker: See your website’s domain rating and total number of backlinks.
• Broken Link Checker: Identify the quantity of broken links on your website.
• Website Authority Checker: Check your website’s authority.
• Website Traffic Checker: View your website’s organic traffic and traffic value.

Customers should look into Ahrefs’ paid subscription options for vast SEO capabilities.

Are Ahrefs Features Worth the Price? What G2 Users Think

G2 users highly recommend Ahrefs for its basic capabilities, including the site explorer, backlink analysis, competitive research, keyword research, and site audit tools. These tools offer SEO and content marketing experts significant data-driven insights into performance analysis and optimization strategies.

Site Explorer

In a single view, the Site Explorer dashboard displays a comprehensive summary of a website’s SEO analytics, such as organic traffic, keywords, and backlinks. It includes location-specific traffic data, content change tracking, and algorithm update indicators. The tool tracks organic keywords based on search intent, identifies top rivals, and provides HTTP status codes for crawled pages.

What G2 Users are Saying:

Ahrefs offers a complete study of SEO through four key tools: Site Explorer for overall performance data, Keyword Explorer for identifying low-competition keywords, Site Audit for gap analysis, and Rank Tracker for tracking competitive performance.

Backlink Checker

Ahrefs’ Backlink Checker offers in-depth backlink research with advanced filtering options. It can sort backlinks by category, domain rating (DR), referring domain traffic, anchor text, and date range, providing more detailed information than traditional SEO tools.

What G2 Users are Saying:

The backlink profile tool excels at analyzing your own and your competitors’ backlinks, offering information on link growth trends, top referring domains, and overall link quality. This detailed data allows for strategic improvement of link-building attempts.

Competitive Analysis

The content gap analysis feature compares your website’s rankings to competitors’ based on keyword differences. It identifies opportunities to optimize content by providing customizable filters for SERP features, keyword difficulty, and search volume, particularly for specific SERP elements such as highlighted snippets and AI overviews (AIOs). This enables strategic content optimization using competitor performance data.

Keyword Explorer

The Keyword Explorer is a versatile tool that is popular among SEOs of all skill levels. It provides complete keyword analysis, including search volume, CPC, CTR, and SERP position history. It has extensive capabilities, including parent topic filtering, historical search volume trends, traffic potential assessment, and search intent analysis. The program also provides SERP comparison over time and AI-powered subject analysis. However, it requires manual input for fresh keyword discovery. These capabilities help users understand traffic patterns and optimize content strategies accordingly.

What G2 Users Are Saying

The KeywordExplorer display of phrase difficulty and click ratio provides useful metrics for keyword prioritization. Click ratio serves as a key indicator for identifying whether terms should be primary or secondary goals.

Site Audit

Ahrefs’ Site Audit tool checks websites for over 170 technical and on-page SEO issues, such as fundamental web vitals, indexability, and redirect chains. It calculates a health score based on error-free URLs and makes actionable recommendations for changes. The tool is simple enough for non-technical SEO professionals to identify and fix typical issues such as broken links and 404 errors.

What G2 Users Are Saying

Ahrefs’ site audit tool provides a clear, complete report on the website’s health, including performance issues, broken links, security concerns, content quality, and suggestions for improvements. It’s like having your SEO consultant!

Opportunities

In Site Explorer, entering a website URL reveals the Opportunities feature on the left panel. This section highlights low-hanging fruit keywords, featured snippet opportunities, and content with declining traffic. It’s a handy tool for quickly evaluating various opportunities before diving in.

Three Reasons Why G2 Users Dislike Ahrefs 

The famed credit system, excessive prices, and bad customer service appear to be the primary reasons why G2 users loathe Ahrefs. Let’s break them down.

Credit system

Ahrefs uses a credit system to manage data usage, with most products costing one credit for reports or filters. All options, except Lite, have limitless credits. The Lite plan allows 500 credits per user each month, with additional credits charged separately:

• $50 for 500 credits (monthly)
• $300 annually for 500 extra credits per month 

Many users, particularly agencies, despise the system. One G2 user stated that their $1,990 yearly subscription could result in an additional $500 to $600 monthly, totaling roughly $8,000 annually, making it less competitive than other options.

High Prices

Users believe Ahrefs’ pricing is confusing and higher than other SEO tools.

G2 users report exceeding their monthly limit of 600 events after upgrading to a more expensive plan. At more than $2,000 per year, I feel limited in my usage, making it difficult to get value and learn new features.

Poor Customer Support

Users are dissatisfied with Ahrefs’ customer service, claiming a lack of empathy and difficulty contacting assistance. One G2 user reported, “After joining up, I discovered new features were locked under the same plan. The chat representative stated that I needed to terminate my account to access them, which is absurd. I had no trouble using beta features in my past employment, but now I’m not getting what I paid for. Customer assistance was unhelpful, simply repeating the same information.

Ahrefs Pricing

1. Lite: $1,290/year or $129/month, includes 6 months of history, 500 credits, and 750 keywords.

2. Standard: $2,490 per year or $249 monthly for two years of history, unlimited credits, and 2,000 keywords.

3. Advanced: $4,490 annually or $449 monthly for 5 years of history, unlimited credits, and 5,000 keywords.

4. Enterprise: $14,990/year includes limitless history, credits, and 10,000 keywords.

Which Ahrefs Alternatives do G2 Users Recommend?

While Ahrefs remains popular among content marketing and SEO professionals, G2 users recommend Google Search Console, Semrush, Moz Pro, and SE Ranking.

Source- G2