We know our communication on this hasn’t been great so far (sorry!), but we want to fix that.
In this post, we’ll talk about:
- What changed
- How the changes affect you
- What changes are still to come
What’s changed?
Long story short, we’ve changed how you pay for three things:
- The features you need access to
- The amount you use those features
- The data you export from Ahrefs
Change #1. Feature access
Old pricing
Everyone had access to pretty much every feature. It didn’t matter which plan you were on. People paying 10x more didn’t have access to much extra.
New pricing
Everyone has access to different features depending on their plan. The more you pay, the more features you get.
Change #2. Feature usage
Old pricing
Everyone had to predict how many team members would use Ahrefs and how much they’d use it. It was $30/month per user—even if they barely used Ahrefs. You also had to choose a more expensive plan than necessary if you expected overall usage to fluctuate month to month. To top it off, monthly report limits fluctuated in each tool. This meant you had to use each tool roughly the same amount or you’d be paying for usage you didn’t need.
New pricing
Everyone can invite additional users to Ahrefs for free. Those that barely use it will cost you no more. Those that use it a bit will cost you $20/month. And those that use it a lot will cost you $50/month (Learn more about user types here). It doesn’t matter if usage fluctuates from month to month as you only pay more for extra usage. Also, report limits now apply to users (not tools) so you can use your credits in any tool you like.
Change #3. Exports
Old pricing
Each tool had its own export limits. If you used one tool more than another, you’d end up paying for export rows in tools you didn’t use while running out in the tools you did use.
New pricing
Export limits are no longer tied to tools. You can use your export rows in any tool.
What do these changes mean for you?
These changes should make Ahrefs fairer and more flexible for everyone. You no longer have to pay for features, users, and usage you don’t need. And while some limits have changed, this shouldn’t negatively impact most users because we modelled our new pricing on average usage data. This means only the heaviest 20% of users should end up paying more. The other 80% shouldn’t exceed the limits of their package if they keep using Ahrefs as they did before.
Let’s take a closer look at some of the benefits of these changes.
More stability
Due to how the old plans were set up, we faced lots of abuse. In fact, a few hundred perpetrator accounts were responsible for half of the load on our system. Group buys were reselling a single account to hundreds of people and scrapers were making tens of requests per second.
This made Ahrefs slow for everyone.
With how the new plans are set up, group buys won’t be able to keep their costs low. For everyone else, this means that Ahrefs will be faster and have more uptime.
More features
Having plans that were so open to abuse meant that we had to spend significant manpower on catching abusers, blocking accounts, and dealing with fraud and chargebacks. Those were huge amounts of time and resources lost that could have been spent on improving Ahrefs.
This is how we plan to use these resources going forward.
In fact, we’ve already added some new advanced features to advanced plans to give you an edge. These include the new Site Structure report, Google Data Studio connector, and access management. There are plenty of new features in the pipeline too.
For a detailed breakdown of the features available on each plan, check out our pricing page.
More exclusivity
Group buys will no longer be able to keep their costs low and sell Ahrefs accounts for peanuts. This means less competition for our customers. Having access to Ahrefs’ data will give you a real competitive advantage.
More flexibility
If you pull additional reports beyond your plan’s limit, they’re automatically charged on a pay-as-you-go basis. This gives you a lot of flexibility. You pay for data when you need it.
More projects, keywords, and crawl credits
Every new plan gives you more in Dashboard, Site Audit, and Rank Tracker.
- Dashboard: 2x more non-verified projects on Standard and Advanced plans.
- Site Audit: Up to a 10x increase in crawl credits, depending on the plan. Data is now kept for 12 months on all plans instead of 3-6 months.
- Rank Tracker: Up to a 2x increase in tracked keywords, depending on the plan. Daily updates can be purchased as an add-on.
What changes are still to come?
It’s fair to say that we’ve had (and continue to have) a few teething problems while switching to our new plans. This was expected, but we’ve been listening to feedback and carefully considering where and how to make improvements and rebalances.
Here are some of the improvements we’ve implemented or plan to implement shortly:
- Report caching [Implemented]. You won’t get charged for opening the same report again within a certain timeframe.
- Bulk applying of filters [Implemented]. You previously had to apply one filter at a time in Site Explorer and Content Explorer. This burned through report credits way too fast. We’ve fixed this with an apply (“Show results”) button. Now you can add all the filters you need in one go to avoid overcharging. This will be added to Keywords Explorer soon.
- Removing Dashboard charges [Implemented on 24/5]. You were previously charged report credits for Dashboard usage. We removed this system, so you no longer consume reports when using your Dashboard. You’re now charged for adding new projects instead.
- Limiting overusage [In progress]. Workspace owners will soon have the power to set consumption limits for each user in their workspace. This will help to control overuse and charges.
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It’s taken us a while to post this, and we apologize for the confusion that it’s caused. We know that our new pricing model is very different from what we had before and won’t please everyone. However, we’re optimistic that these changes will be better for our customers and help us improve our product faster in future.
