Ahrefs Reviews 317

1-Star Review for Ahrefs: Unreliable Organic Traffic Data and Unhelpful Support

Ahrefs Organic Traffic Data is a Joke and all the support do is REMOVE reviews they do not like!!

Let's be blunt: Ahrefs' organic traffic data is garbage. My clients website pulls in over 300,000 organic pageviews a month, yet Ahrefs shows a measly 800+. That's a massive discrepancy, and it renders their data useless for anyone serious about tracking organic traffic. They cannot continue to present their data as FACT when is IS NOT.

I know how the methodologdy works and the stats below do not include social media, newsletter. emails clicks etc. It's pure organic.

This is an issue for millions of users so not point asking what domain!!! or trying to ask for extra info to get honest 1 star reviews removed IE I could not find your name on our BLAH BLAH BLAH.

Limited Keywords? More Like Limited Usefulness

Their whole system seems flawed. Ahrefs seems to only track a tiny fraction of keywords, which completely misses the boat for websites with a diverse traffic source. It's like they're trying to measure the ocean with a teaspoon.

Support Makes Excuses, Not Fixes

Don't even get me started on their support. I tried to get some help with the inaccurate data, but all I got were excuses and requests for extra info. It feels like they're more interested in burying bad reviews than fixing their product.

Free Tier or Not, This is Unacceptable

Look, I understand there might be limitations with the free tier. But even then, the data should be somewhat close to reality. This is just straight-up bad, and frankly, a waste of time.

Final Verdict: Stay Away (Unless You Like Wild Guesses)

Unless you enjoy basing your SEO strategy on wild guesses, avoid Ahrefs for organic traffic data. Their system is deeply flawed, and their support is unhelpful at best. Look elsewhere for tools that actually provide reliable information.

NOTE: I am not seeking assistance, but sharing my experience.

UPDATED: They have made it better since I wrote this...

The site was down for half a day, and the customer agent said, "We won't charge you for the use today." This made no sense, considering it was NOT working AT ALL, which shows the company's level of care for its users.

I have seen this company year or year squeeze people and offer nothing new worth noting...

I'm getting the "Couldn’t fetch data" error so often nowadays that the tool is barely usable. These errors completely kill the workflow, and you can never know when it's back to working properly. And when it does start working again, you have to spend your credits again just to get back to where you left off.

Nice of you to add the more affordable Starter pack, but it doesn't include the function of exporting keywords to a CSV?
Very disappointing.

Another victim of the price hike - auto disabled my loyal customer Legacy account and said I can never get it back because it can't be reversed.

A nightmare. I was supposed to get a “part time” low income job, and I get involved in 4 days in a $16k debt. No one helped at that time, it was just “put the money and the profit will be huge” run fast from this “work” place.

Their price is very high and customer support is not helpful. I tried them for 1 month and then I had to cancel.

I am using this service but facing an issue with the credit counter at the top of the page. It's expensive at $200 per month and comes with a lot of negativity.

There's a lot of negativity about this company for some reason, but actually I've found them great. Its expensive for sure, but not as expensive as some of the others and I like the responsiveness, and the features.

Not trustworthy. Appears to be faking (or at least heavily extrapolating without disclosure) the views a site received in an entire month, even if it has only been 2 days into that month.

1/5. Do not recommend.

What a complete scam company. Hide the credits. Over charge. No refunds. No warnings. You guys are straight up scammers.

And no ... don't be condescending and pretend you have plans for everyone, and I can switch to pay as you go. How about you make it DEAD OBVIOUS how much you are charging for your credits, and have a bit fat DEAD OBVIOUS credit counter on every page.

You are scammers, and you KNOW you are ...

Look at these reviews. Disgusting.

Vile company. They are so money hungry and disgusting. They hid the credit counter at the top of the page so you don't know how many credits you've been spending. I hope this company fails and something else takes its place (maybe SEMRush or some other smaller company that will eventually take it over)

Burying the credit total to induce more spend is one of the worst tricks I have seen. Avoid these guys like the plague.

Almost non existent support. You would think for $200 per month you would be able to call them. Nope! They don't even care if you can't sign in! Their email authentication doesn't even work... As soon as I find a different SEO tool I'm canceling my subscription.

Treat your customers better!

Used to be good. Now extremely expensive and less features. I estimated that single query costs 0.20usd.. and they even count multiple clicks when analyzing one single website!

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Ahrefs used to be a great tool. Despite expensive, it was a great value. However, in the last year, they made many changes, starting from the introduction of an expensive credit system. A credit is counted each time you make an action on Ahrefs, but the funny thing is that if I check a domain, then check its backlink, and then I sort backlinks by traffic.. Ahrefs charges me 3 credits. Same domain, a few navigation clicks.

600 credits are included in my Standard plan, which is 200usd per month. Additionally, I pay for extra credits. I am literally spending 0,20 usd per click.

Another thing, before the price hike, they used to have traffic information (in detail) for social media platforms. It was good to find which pages were getting traffic. However, now they dont show any data, saying they don't show it for large websites with user generated content.

Their app did not improve, and their pricing are ridicously high. Unless something changes, I will switch to another provider such as SemRush, Moz or SERanking, by the time my billling cycle ends.

Once one of the greatest SEO tools, it became a tool that confused customers with complicated pricing schemes and tried to charge as much as possible.

We have been AHREFS customers for almost five years, and their recent changes have made us wonder how far this company can go in terms of customer service, customer respect, and pricing schemes. The new scheme is so complicated that your credit card can suddenly charge $1000s without your knowledge.

When we contacted to customer support, they told us that beside the $2000 annual fee we pay, we also need to pay $3500 for additional keyword tracking (which we never signed up for, it was migrated from our old account, where usage was free) without our knowing.

We decided to stop partnering with ahrefs due its complicated pricing model which scams users and surprisingly charges you and we're moving to different platform now.

Usage is not recommended due to the high scam and confusion rate. Recommendation from a company with over 1 million organic monthly traffic and 22 million visitors.

We have been a customer of Ahrefs for many years now. However recently they have told us that the pricing model that we are on, is no longer sustainable for them and that we are using the account too much.

Their solution is to kick us off their platform unless we pay them well over double what we currently pay!

We tried asking for a compromise via email but their only solution was to pay annually to get a discount.

I also found their support to be quite dismissive, they misspelled my name, only answered some of the questions and gave me what seemed like rushed responses.

I hope that Ahrefs improves their pricing structure and customer support, especially for the old customers that helped them to be where they are today.

You want to charge for every single action, fine. But atleast allow to use full data. You are restricting historical data, and making people pay 3 to 4 times more just to be able to access to all time data. I used to respect Ahrefs, but what has it become? I hope you listen to your customers - I have used Ahrefs for the last 7 years and I am just disappointed now.

Once a beacon in the SEO tools landscape, Ahrefs has unfortunately plummeted into a state of despair. The tool has become a shadow of its former self. To add insult to injury, Ahrefs has introduced an opaque credit system that nickel-and-dimes you at every turn, charging for features that were once standard and freely available. This not only hampers productivity but also makes it virtually impossible to utilize the tool to its full potential without incurring exorbitant fees. In its current state, Ahrefs is a stark example of how not to evolve a digital tool, prioritizing profit over user experience and utility.

I just burned through all the extra credits my boss bought on top of the $400 he spends with them. The new credit system is truly a slap in the face to small businesses. I love ahrefs but I don't like not being able to search for keywords the way I need to anymore. I don't see my boss keeping this unless something changes with the insane new credit system. How are we supposed to train people how to use it? We all know (including ahrefs) that SEO needs to be a hands-on learning experience. How are we supposed to fix new client websites? "Sorry, we'll be able to update those headings in 2025 since we get nickeled and dimed for being loyal customers". I will start learning other programs to be ready when my boss says he's canceling. It's only a matter of time with how much they're screwing their customers over with this nonsense. They need to fix the issues with people taking advantage instead of punishing all of the businesses that have promoted them and HELPED them get where they are now.

Ahrefs kicked us off the legacy plan because our payment failed. Fair enough, except that they sent payment notifications to the incorrect email address and expected us to somehow know this. The agent said "This is the billing address which can be updated by support only", I've never used a service that requires you to update the billing email address by support instead of through the admin dashboard.

This sounds like a dishonest way of kicking people off their legacy plan so they can charge more.

Ahrefs is an amazing tool but this is not the best way to treat customers. I had the same problem with SEMrush but they were generous enough to reinstate our legacy plan and keep us as a loyal customer. Not the case with Ahrefs.

Edit: A new representative reached out to me from Ahrefs who was super helpful and was able to restore our Legacy plan so the issue has been resolved. Updating the rating from 1 to 4 stars. Ahrefs is a must-have marketing tool and I would give them 5 stars if they put more emphasis on improving their customer service policy.