BEWARE Ahrefs Enterprise & API

What an absolute garbage of a website. I would rather feed $1K worth of feed to farm animals rather than these insects.

nirajjoshi said:

What an absolute garbage of a website. I would rather feed $1K worth of feed to farm animals rather than these insects.

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I disagree, ahrefs is probably the best seo tool there is. Their data is top notch. only problem is their traffic estimation which is absolute garbage. And the price is also extremly expensive nowadays, but I am on a legacy agency plan, so it does not affect me.

simplex1 said:

I use the API myself, and this is how the calc works. getting 1500 Keywords for one page costs 1550 credits if you only get the keyword column. It's not unusual that the enterprise teams do not understand their API, often they are not programmers. However, still not great, ahrefs should have people there who know how this stuff works...

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Uh. So you actually use it and are confirming this.

Unbelievable.

So ahrefs IS the cheapest, it's just their team doesn't know how to use the API.

Completely gutted. What a disaster. All it would have taken was the team member to explain how to reduce the costs 50x. So instead of 50,000 credits it would have cost me 1k-2k credits.

splishsplash said:

Completely gutted. What a disaster. All it would have taken was the team member to explain how to reduce the costs 50x. So instead of 50,000 credits it would have cost me 1k-2k credits.

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Not sure if they are the cheapest, I did not try other data providers. The base cost is pretty high though - but it depends on how it is used. For each page (request) you want to get the keywords from, you pay 50 credits, and one credit for each keyword you are getting. So it will be cheaper to get data for less pages (to save base cost), but more keywords per page. If you need to get only a few keywords for thousands of pages, then base cost will make it more expensive, but if you are getting thousands of keywords for a limted amount of pages, then the base cost is basically nothing.

moonshine7000 said:

I don't ahrefs use anymore because of its credit system which is nothing more but a money grab.

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me too, their new pricing is really crazy

splishsplash said:

So I wanted to sign up to ahrefs enterprise so I could export keyword data for various ranking pages..

Spoke to support and was told it would be around 50 credits per site to get the keywords, so I went ahead and got in touch with the enterprise team to get signed up.

Paid my $1000 then ran my first test.

Turns out, 50 credits gets you 1 keyword for 1 page. To get say, 1500 keywords for 1 page would be about 70k credits.

Nice.. So it's $1000 for 2 million credits.

I can get keywords for about 25 pages for $1000. Fantastic. Works out at around $40 per page.

You can buy another 1 million credits for $50, but that's still about $3.5 per page. So if I want 10,000 pages, that's going to cost me $35,000.

https://dataforseo.com/ charge you $0.07 to get EVERY keyword for a page. So, 10,000 pages would be $700.

Contacted them on the day I signed up and asked if they could refund me, minus the credits used.

They declined and told me that instead, they will *allow* me to cancel my subscription at the end of the month, and if I want more data..

Wait for it..

I can EXPORT IT MANUALLY.

Wow, thank-you, Ahrefs.

So I will pay $1000 for an enterprise API account so I can manually export keywords.

And bare in mind, I've been a customer with these guys for 10 years.

Disgusting. Absolutely disgusting. $1000 is worth more to them than a long term customer relationship.

I can't imagine a client of mine signing up, then a day later saying "Tom, I'm sorry buddy I made a mistake signing up and I've changed my mind. Can you refund me minus your expenses so far". Heck, I just refund them the full amount. A relationship is worth more than 1 sale.

You'd think such a large company would act better than this.

So if anyone is thinking of using ahrefs for their API.. Avoid them. Go for https://dataforseo.com/ instead.

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Credit card dispute. Simple.

LOOKS its time to move onto new SEO tools . Ahrefs still expensive .

The hubris of success... Thank you for letting us know Ahref has kicked that bucket.

terrycody said:

They are robbery, greedy, digusting singapore company (hope i am right), I will always use a groupbuy account even I can afford a subscription, I just want to spew on their faces.

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Any tips on a good GB? It seems like all of them stopped selling it.

terrycody said:

They are robbery, greedy, digusting singapore company (hope i am right), I will always use a groupbuy account even I can afford a subscription, I just want to spew on their faces.

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WAT.

splishsplash said:

If you want more, you have to pay I think it's another $50 per 500 credits or something. It's insane. They used to give you unlimited manual searches.

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Man, when I used to have an SEO agency they were the cheap alternative for data... Times have changed.

Ahrefs has been notoriously greedy in charging credits like crazy. I stick with semrush for quite a while now.

ahrefs are thieves. The credit thing doesn't make sense. I know of a group purchase that gives you 100 Standard account credits for €9.95.

I do agree they were so cheap back then they started, but this is complete absurd. Well I hope this will help competitors get their value, ban their spiders over your website. If you do have authority it will look on their dash empty and in all other metrics fine, you need about a half year to get it looking fun, don't ask me why I did that I have do personal reasons and I hate ahrefs.

Curious what keyword metrics you were getting through their API.

13 years ago, I wrote an extensive system that crawled SERPs, build tens of billions of word/phrase combinations from scraped content, ran those through AdWords while also gathering more keywords it suggested, all through via several hundred proxies and accounts running on multiple servers 24/7.

Gathered many TB of keyword and site ranking data, used NLP to find keywords with higher consumer intent, scanned tweets via the Twitter firehose API to find new and trending keywords which could indicate a trend that was just starting to get momentum (possible niches to get in early on). Even kept an updated copy of the USPTO database to identify trademarked keywords for the purposes of weeding out terms you might not be able to buy ads on, use in a EMD or just keep tabs on the search volume of competitors. It also scraped all ad content and kept track of details like your typical PPC ad spy tool. Had a regularly updated list of all registered TLDs for bulk checking of domains if you were looking for exact or phrase matched domains. Crawled the top 200 ranking sites of every keyword with non-trivial search traffic and kept track of all external in and outbound links.

Got the entire back end done, used the data to get some good domains with low comp keywords and build and sold some sites with it but never build a public facing UI for it..

Most people just weren't interested in paying quality, up-to-date data which was properly analyzed. They liked cheaper alternatives with BS metrics like the ones Ahrefs, SEMRush, and Moz (when they ran a data system) based on voo-doo calculations, traffic estimates pulled out of thin air or basic estimates based on total searches and average CTR based on rank (which wasn't really accurate before Google started polluting the top of SERPS with their rich content widgets that throws the whole thing off).

Sometimes I think about going back to the code and firing the system back up but seems the trend has continued that people are willing to pay less and less for quality data at mass scale. Even with the cost of running such a system having gone down in the 12-13 years since I created it, I'm not sure it's worth the effort unless I could land some large clients.

I did have one deal in the works to provide data directly to an agency that only dealt with large clients but they wanted virtually exclusive access to the entire system and the price, while good for a single client, just didn't justify an exclusivity deal.

So I'm curious if a solid alternative to Ahrefs and SEMRush is still viable or if the two are just too entrenched and the market just isn't willing to pay for a premium service.

splishsplash said:

So I wanted to sign up to ahrefs enterprise so I could export keyword data for various ranking pages..

Spoke to support and was told it would be around 50 credits per site to get the keywords, so I went ahead and got in touch with the enterprise team to get signed up.

Paid my $1000 then ran my first test.

Turns out, 50 credits gets you 1 keyword for 1 page. To get say, 1500 keywords for 1 page would be about 70k credits.

Nice.. So it's $1000 for 2 million credits.

I can get keywords for about 25 pages for $1000. Fantastic. Works out at around $40 per page.

You can buy another 1 million credits for $50, but that's still about $3.5 per page. So if I want 10,000 pages, that's going to cost me $35,000.

https://dataforseo.com/ charge you $0.07 to get EVERY keyword for a page. So, 10,000 pages would be $700.

Contacted them on the day I signed up and asked if they could refund me, minus the credits used.

They declined and told me that instead, they will *allow* me to cancel my subscription at the end of the month, and if I want more data..

Wait for it..

I can EXPORT IT MANUALLY.

Wow, thank-you, Ahrefs.

So I will pay $1000 for an enterprise API account so I can manually export keywords.

And bare in mind, I've been a customer with these guys for 10 years.

Disgusting. Absolutely disgusting. $1000 is worth more to them than a long term customer relationship.

I can't imagine a client of mine signing up, then a day later saying "Tom, I'm sorry buddy I made a mistake signing up and I've changed my mind. Can you refund me minus your expenses so far". Heck, I just refund them the full amount. A relationship is worth more than 1 sale.

You'd think such a large company would act better than this.

So if anyone is thinking of using ahrefs for their API.. Avoid them. Go for https://dataforseo.com/ instead.

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Big company gets too big and arrogant. Pride before the fall and all that. Fuck them.

splishsplash said:

UPDATE
---------------

Thanks to Tim Soulo for getting in touch on LinkedIn, everything has been sorted out and I've been issued a refund. He's also going to make sure a good refund policy is implemented throughout the company to protect against situations like this.

Hats off to Tim for taking responsibility for this and sorting it out. This shows that the leadership at Ahrefs is in good hands, and for me it's restored faith in the company.

As I promised I'm going to donate the entire $1000 to a children's charity. I just need to decide on a good one. If anyone has any suggestions please share here and I'll post the donation proof once done. I hate drama, so I wanted something good to come from this. I appreciate the support from everyone.

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I haven't seen any other suggestions but I like Save the Children:

https://www.savethechildren.org.uk/

• Helps children in over 100 countries
• 88p of every £1 goes directly to the children's care. Very low admin overheads.
• $888 of your money will actually help children worldwide to be fed, get medicine and be educated.

WRT Ahrefs - maybe get back in touch with Tim as it sounds like their solution might actually be one of the most cost effective in the end, just badly trained support operatives and account managers. You do not want to throw the baby out with the bath water, just because they screwed up.

we stopped using ahrefs a few months ago they def need taking down a peg or two, extortionate

I can understand your frustration with Ahrefs' pricing and refund policy. It's disappointing to see a company prioritize short-term profits over long-term customer relationships.

It's especially frustrating when you've been a loyal customer for 10 years.

It's important for companies to be transparent about their pricing and to provide accurate information to their customers.

It's also important for them to be flexible and understanding when customers have issues or concerns. Refusing to refund your money and only offering a manual export option is not a satisfactory solution.

I appreciate you sharing your experience with Ahrefs and recommending an alternative option for API services.

It's important for us as consumers to support companies that prioritize customer satisfaction and ethical business practices.

I was looking at an API for just that today and thought ahrefs would make a nice option, thanks for educating me otherwise and not making me waste the money! Also the alternative you sent was super helpful. Glad I stumbled upon this

I can't remember the API I used for a project atm, but it was like $50/mo for an absurd amount of calls. I remember after I cancelled I still had access to the API like a year later with no limits