This hub covers marketing and SEO software: keyword research, backlink analysis, rank tracking and email.
These are the most expensive tools on the site by a wide margin. Entry plans start around $29 a month and the tiers agencies actually need run into the hundreds. Seat pricing usually sits on top.
That makes the free and cheap alternatives genuinely worth reading about here, more so than in most categories.
Guides in this category
Alternatives guides
- 9 Best Ahrefs Alternatives in 2026 (Free + Paid, Tested) — Nine alternatives, including free tools that cover most of the job.
- 9 Best Semrush Alternatives in 2026 (Free + Cheaper Picks) — Cheaper all-round platforms compared on what you actually lose.
- 8 Best Moz Alternatives in 2026 (Free + Paid, Verified) — Eight alternatives with verified pricing and honest limits.
- 9 Best Mailchimp Alternatives in 2026 (Cheaper, Verified) — Nine cheaper email platforms compared at real list sizes.
- Jasper AI alternatives — Rytr, Copy.ai and three more, plus two the round-ups get wrong.
- Hootsuite alternatives — Buffer, Metricool and four more, now the free plan has gone.
- HubSpot alternatives — Pipedrive, Zoho CRM and four more, with the Professional cliff explained.
- Klaviyo alternatives — Brevo, Omnisend and four more, and why contact-based billing hurts.
- Similarweb alternatives — Cloudflare Radar, SpyFu and four more, plus how accurate estimates really are.
Head-to-head comparisons
- Ahrefs vs Semrush in 2026: An Honest Head-to-Head — An honest head-to-head on index size, breadth and cost.
Every marketing and SEO tool we have priced
Each page lists the full plan line-up, what the free tier actually allows, and the questions buyers ask most. Prices were checked against the vendor’s own page on 5 September 2026.
- Ahrefs — SEO and AI-search visibility platform built on its own web crawler. From $29/month (Starter)
- Semrush — SEO, advertising and AI-search visibility suite with a free tier. From $117.33/month (SEO plan, billed annually)
How we pick the alternatives
Every list here starts with the same three tests. Does the tool actually replace the thing it is compared against, or only part of it? What does it really cost once the free tier runs out? And is the price we quote the one the vendor publishes today, rather than the one it charged last year?
We check pricing against the vendor’s own page and date every figure. Where a plan is metered — credits, GPU time, seats, transcription minutes — we say which limit runs out first, because that is usually what decides whether a cheaper plan is genuinely cheaper.
Ratings on tool pages are aggregate scores from third-party review platforms, published with their review count so you can weigh them yourself. They are not our own test scores.
Free tiers vanished across marketing software this year
This is the single clearest pattern in the category, and it is recent enough that most published comparisons are wrong.
Hootsuite has no free plan. Its cheapest tier is $99 per user a month for up to ten accounts. Buffer charges $5 per channel, so three channels is $15. Our Hootsuite alternatives guide has the full comparison.
Writesonic stopped being a writing tool. Its pricing page now sells AI search visibility from $79 a month billed annually. Nearly every Jasper round-up still lists it as the cheap alternative.
Similarweb publishes no prices at all and routes you to sales.
HubSpot free is now capped at two users, and the meaningful features sit behind the Professional tier rather than Starter.
The direction is consistent: entry tiers are being removed or narrowed while the real capability moves up a level. Which makes checking the renewal price, not the sign-up price, the most valuable habit in this category.
The billing basis matters more than the price
Marketing tools are priced on four different bases, and choosing the wrong shape costs more than choosing the wrong brand.
Per contact stored. Klaviyo, Omnisend, MailerLite. Your bill grows with your list whether or not you email it, so a large partly-inactive list costs the same as an engaged one.
Per email sent. Brevo. Much better if you store a lot and mail occasionally, worse if you mail everyone weekly. Our Klaviyo alternatives guide works through the arithmetic.
Per channel or per workspace. Buffer and Publer charge by connected social account rather than by person, which is dramatically cheaper for a one-marketer team.
Per seat. HubSpot, Hootsuite, most CRMs. Predictable, and punishing when several people each use the tool lightly.
Work out your own two numbers first, list size and monthly sends, or channels and people. For most small businesses that calculation alone picks the tool.
Split the suite and it usually gets cheaper
The all-in-one pitch is that one platform saves money. For large organisations it often does. For a team of ten it usually does not, because you pay platform prices for the two modules you use lightly.
The cheaper pattern most small companies land on is a focused CRM for the pipeline, an email tool priced by contacts or sends, and a scheduler priced by channel. Pipedrive from US$14 a seat plus an email platform priced on list size comes to well under one HubSpot Professional hub while doing each job better. Our HubSpot alternatives guide has the numbers.
The cost of splitting is one integration to maintain and three invoices instead of one. Zoho is the exception that keeps the bundle argument alive cheaply, because CRM, Campaigns, Desk and Books genuinely share one customer record.
Treat traffic estimates as direction, not fact
Worth stating plainly, because it affects how you should read every competitor-research tool in this category.
Nobody outside a website can see its real traffic. Similarweb, Semrush and Ahrefs all produce estimates from clickstream panels, extension data and modelling. Accuracy is reasonable for large sites and poor for small ones, frequently out by a factor of several below roughly 50,000 visits a month, and different tools disagree substantially for the same domain.
So use them comparatively. “This competitor has roughly tripled since January” is trustworthy in a way that a specific monthly visit count is not. Where you need measured rather than modelled data, Cloudflare Radar and Google Trends are free and come from the source. Our Similarweb alternatives guide covers both.
Frequently asked questions
01 Ahrefs or Semrush?
Ahrefs has the better backlink index. Semrush covers more ground, including paid search, social and AI visibility. If you only do link building, Ahrefs. If you report across channels, Semrush.
02 What is the cheapest serious SEO tool?
Ahrefs Starter at $29 a month is the cheapest real entry point from a major platform. Below that, Google Search Console and Ahrefs Webmaster Tools are free for sites you own.
03 Why do extra seats cost so much?
Because these platforms price on data access, not software. Ahrefs charges $40 to $80 a month per extra seat depending on tier, and Semrush charges on every plan. For agencies this often doubles the bill.
04 Do I need a paid tool at all?
If you run one site, often not. Search Console gives you real query data for free, which no third-party tool can match for your own domain. Paid tools earn their money on competitor research.
05 What is AI visibility tracking?
Monitoring how often your brand appears in answers from AI search tools. Semrush tracks specific prompts — 50 a day on Starter, up to 200 on Advanced — and Ahrefs offers Brand Radar for the same job.
06 Is Hootsuite still free?
No. The free plan has been withdrawn and the cheapest tier is $99 per user a month for up to ten social accounts. Buffer is free for three channels and $5 a channel after that, Metricool and Publer both keep free tiers, and Postiz is free if you self-host.
07 Which email tool is cheapest for a large list?
Brevo, because it charges for emails sent rather than contacts stored, so a large list you mail occasionally costs far less. For very large lists, self-hosted Listmonk with a sending service like Amazon SES costs a few dollars per hundred thousand emails.
08 Why did my marketing bill jump without me changing anything?
Three usual causes: an introductory rate renewed at the standard price, your contact list grew past a pricing tier, or a free plan was withdrawn or narrowed. All three happened across this category this year. Check the renewal price rather than the sign-up price when comparing.
09 Is an all-in-one platform cheaper than separate tools?
Rarely, below about twenty people. A focused CRM plus an email tool priced by list size typically costs well under one HubSpot Professional hub and does each job better. The trade is one integration to maintain and more invoices. Zoho is the exception, because its suite genuinely shares one record.
10 How accurate are competitor traffic numbers?
Reasonable for large sites, poor for small ones, and often out by a factor of several below about 50,000 visits a month. Different tools disagree for the same domain. Trust the trend rather than the figure, and use Cloudflare Radar or Google Trends when you need measured data.
11 How do you verify the prices in these guides?
We open each vendor pricing page in a browser on the date shown and record what it says, including renewal prices and seat minimums. That is how we found Hootsuite entry tier at $99 and Writesonic repositioned as an AI search visibility product at $79.