SE Ranking 深度評測(2025):功能全面的 SEO 工具,值得投資嗎?

在競爭激烈的數位行銷世界中,選擇一款功能齊全且價格合理的 SEO 工具對於中小型企業、行銷專家以及自由工作者而言,至關重要。SE Ranking 就是這樣一款正在迅速崛起的全方位 SEO 解決方案。根據 SEO 顧問 Luca Tagliaferro 的實際使用經驗,SE Ranking 結合了易用性、功能完整性與合理價格,在市場上脫穎而出。

本篇文章將深入探討 SE Ranking 的功能、優缺點、價格結構、適用對象,幫助你判斷它是否適合你的 SEO 策略。


🌟 SE Ranking 是什麼?

SE Ranking 是一個雲端 SEO 軟體平台,提供超過 35 種工具,涵蓋搜尋引擎優化的各個面向,包括:

  • 關鍵字排名追蹤
  • 網站技術稽核
  • 競爭對手分析
  • 關鍵字研究
  • 內容行銷輔助
  • 反向連結監控
  • 本地 SEO 工具
  • 自訂與白標報告功能

SE Ranking 的目標用戶涵蓋從個人網站經營者到中大型行銷機構,是目前少數提供「價格彈性 + 工具完整性」的 SEO 平台。


🔧 核心功能總覽

1. 關鍵字排名追蹤

SE Ranking 支援追蹤多達 5 個搜尋引擎(Google、Bing、Yahoo、YouTube、Yandex),且可細分裝置(手機與桌機)、地區(國家、市、甚至區域)進行排名監控。它還支援 SERP 功能(如精選摘要、評論星星等)分析。

2. 網站稽核

它能分析網站上的技術問題,包括:

  • 錯誤的 meta 標籤
  • 404 錯誤頁面
  • 內部連結問題
  • 網頁速度與可用性

網站稽核報告清晰,並附上修正建議,對非技術背景的使用者也相當友善。

3. 競爭對手分析

可透過 URL 或網域查找競爭對手的自然排名、付費關鍵字、流量來源與廣告策略。甚至可以一鍵比較你的網站與最多 20 個競爭者的 SEO 表現。

4. 反向連結分析與監控

追蹤你的外部連結變化,檢查是否有低質量來源。它還支援導入 Google Search Console 的外部連結清單進行更進一步監控。

5. 關鍵字與內容研究

  • 提供關鍵字搜尋量、競爭度、CPC。
  • 顯示關聯主題、問題建議。
  • 整合 AI 協助的內容編輯器,幫助你根據關鍵字優化部落格或產品頁面內容。

6. 本地 SEO 工具

SE Ranking 對本地商家友好:它支援本地排名追蹤、Google 商家整合,並可自動監控線上商業目錄的清單一致性。

7. 自訂報告與白標功能

特別適合代理商與行銷團隊,能建立自動化排程的 SEO 報告,並加入自家品牌標誌(白標模式)。


✅ 優點

  • 價格彈性與透明:根據關鍵字數量與追蹤頻率訂價,適合不同預算的用戶。
  • 介面簡潔、易上手:相比 Ahrefs 或 SEMrush,SE Ranking 的操作邏輯更直觀。
  • 功能一應俱全:從技術 SEO 到內容行銷,幾乎不需要額外購買其他工具。
  • 在地 SEO 支援完善:特別適合有 Google 商家帳戶的本地商家。
  • AI 輔助內容編輯器實用:可提升 SEO 寫作效率。
  • 客服支援快速、樂於協助:Live Chat 反應快,支援文件也詳細。
  • 提供免費試用(14 天):無需綁卡即可完整體驗功能。

❌ 缺點

  • 高階用戶可能會覺得報表功能不夠彈性:雖然已經能支援自訂,但相比 SEMrush 的報告模組略顯簡單。
  • 部分工具採計點方式額外收費:如關鍵字分組工具、內容分析等功能會消耗額外點數。
  • 競爭對手資料較歐美市場強,亞洲區域資料尚可:若你的市場主要在亞洲,部分數據完整度可能不如 Ahrefs。
  • 整合性仍在開發中:目前還未完全整合 GA4,僅支援舊版 Analytics。

💸 價格方案一覽(2025 年更新)

方案月費(年繳)關鍵字追蹤量用戶數適合對象
Essential約 $447501自由接案者、小型網站
Pro約 $872,0003小型團隊、代理商
Business約 $1915,000+10+中大型機構、代理商

可自訂追蹤頻率(每日、每 3 天、每週),頻率越低價格越低。


🎯 適用對象分析

類型適用性評價
部落客與個人站長★★★★☆
本地商家★★★★★
行銷代理商★★★★☆
SEO 顧問★★★★★
大型企業★★★☆☆

🧾 總結:SE Ranking 值得入手嗎?

SE Ranking 是一款集合實用性、價格親民與功能完整性的 SEO 工具。對於中小企業與自由 SEO 工作者來說,它幾乎涵蓋了日常所需的一切,並透過本地 SEO、AI 寫作助手、彈性報表等功能提供額外價值。

如果你正處於以下情況:

  • 想擺脫多個工具交叉使用的困擾;
  • 預算有限但需要全方位的 SEO 解決方案;
  • 尋找可與客戶共享的報告和管理介面;

那麼 SE Ranking 是你值得一試的選擇。


➤ 馬上免費試用 14 天:SE Ranking 官方網站

SE Ranking 評測:2025 年值得投資的 SEO 工具嗎?

SE Ranking 是一款全方位的 SEO 平台,提供從關鍵字研究、排名追蹤、網站稽核到競爭對手分析等多項功能,特別適合中小企業、行銷機構與自由工作者。它的介面友善,價格合理,並支援本地 SEO 和內容行銷策略。


🔍 主要功能總覽

  • 關鍵字排名追蹤:可按國家、城市、裝置追蹤每日排名,支援 Google、Bing、YouTube 等多個搜尋引擎。
  • 網站稽核:快速掃描網站技術問題,並提供修復建議。
  • 競爭對手分析:比較關鍵字、流量、廣告策略,支援最多 20 個競爭對手。
  • 反向連結監控:追蹤連結狀態、來源網域、錨文字,並偵測有害連結。
  • 內容行銷工具:包含內容編輯器、主題發想器和 AI 寫作輔助。
  • 本地行銷支援:整合 Google 商家資料、商業列表檢查與在地排名追蹤。
  • 自訂報告與白標功能:適合代理商與團隊使用。

✅ 優點

  • 價格實惠:入門方案每月約 $39 美元起,提供彈性計費與折扣。
  • 介面直覺:適合新手,功能集中於單一儀表板。
  • 功能全面:涵蓋 SEO 所需的所有核心工具。
  • 支援本地 SEO:可追蹤城市層級的排名與商家資料。
  • 快速的客服支援:回應迅速,並接受功能建議。
  • 免費試用 14 天:無需信用卡即可體驗完整功能。

❌ 缺點

  • 學習曲線:功能多樣,初學者可能需要時間適應。
  • 部分功能需額外付費:如關鍵字分組器等工具需另購點數。
  • 報告自訂性有限:報告模板與自訂選項仍有改進空間。
  • 無法整合 Google Analytics 4:目前僅支援舊版 GA。

💰 價格方案(2025 年)

方案每月價格(年繳)關鍵字追蹤數適用對象
Essential約 $44 美元750自由工作者、小型網站
Pro約 $87.20 美元2,000小型機構、團隊合作
Business約 $191.20 美元5,000中大型機構、需要 API 整合者

價格會根據追蹤頻率與功能數量調整,選擇年繳可享 20% 折扣


🎯 適合對象

  • 中小企業與個人站長:需要一站式 SEO 解決方案。
  • 行銷機構與顧問:需要白標報告與多用戶管理。
  • 在地商家:專注於提升本地搜尋排名。
  • 內容行銷團隊:需要關鍵字研究與內容規劃工具。

🧾 結論

SE Ranking 是一款功能全面、價格合理的 SEO 工具,特別適合需要多功能整合的用戶。雖然在某些高階功能上略有不足,但對於大多數中小型企業與行銷團隊而言,已足以應對日常 SEO 需求。若您正在尋找一款易用且具成本效益的 SEO 平台,SE Ranking 值得一試。


如需進一步了解或開始免費試用,請造訪 SE Ranking 官方網站

2025 Printify vs Printful: Which One Offers Better Print-On-Demand Services?

Looking for an unbiased comparison between Printify vs Printful? Look no further because you have reached your destination.

Print-On-Demand dropshipping is one of the hottest business models in recent times. In this model, all you have to do is upload your design for a product, and the POD partner will take care of manufacturing and shipping. 

Printful and Printify are the two biggest names among POD manufacturers. Choosing between these two platforms is not an easy task as it offers almost the same services and a set of features. But there’s always a difference.

In this post, I am going to compare two POD giants, Printful and Printify. I will include an in-depth summary and explain all the differences so you can choose which one suits your business the best.

Printify vs Printful: Key Differences

Here are the main differences between Printful and Printify:

  • Printify relies on third-party suppliers for the products & fulfillment, whereas Printful has everything in-house, so they don’t need any third party to do the work for them.
  • You have to pay for Printify’s subscription if you want to get started with all the premium features, whereas there is no subscription model available on Printful.
  • Printify has over 90 operational centers, which they use to fulfill your customers’ orders, whereas Printful has only five operational centers.
  • You can choose a supplier who will manage your orders and the fulfillment on your behalf on Printify, whereas there is no such option available on Printful.

Printify vs Printful: In a Nutshell

Let’s get to know about both print-on-demand platforms. 

Printful Overview

Printful is one of the best POD manufacturers in the market. They offer a range of manufacturing and fulfillment services to their users. Printful offers tons of white-label products that you can select for designing with your artwork or taglines.

Printful works with various print providers and owns many manufacturing facilities, so customers receive high-quality products. It has the biggest logistics network across Australia, Japan, North America, and Europe because 80% of orders come from these regions. Still, it offers international shipping options. Till now, they have shipped over 50 million products.

Printify Overview

Like Printful, Printify also offers print-on-demand services across the globe. It has the biggest global reach — shipping products in over 100 regions. There’s no shortage of products. You can find products in almost any category for design.

Printify partnered with 90 manufacturing and printing facilities in the US, Australia, China, Europe, etc. It is free to use, and there are no upfront charges. And there are no order limitations, so you can order as much as you want. You can also compare all the shipping rates and delivery times among all the available locations. It also offers an in-built design tool with tons of templates, images, and one-liners.

Printful vs Printify: How it Works?

Printful and Printify both offer almost the same procedure of sign-up and onboarding. Let’s see how you can get started with both platforms.

  • Create an eCommerce store: In order to get in touch with a POD partner, you need to have a running online store. You can create one on Shopify, Etsy, Wix, etc.
  • Sign-up: Go through the sign-up process to create an account for free. You need a valid email to sign up.
  • Connect your store: After creating your account on your preferred platform, you need to connect your store so you can list/promote products.
  • Select a product: Select a product depending on your niche. You can choose from various categories.
  • Design the product: Now, it is time to give the product a unique design. You can upload custom designs or use in-built design tools to design your product.
  • Set your price: Set the price of a product after considering the production and shipping costs. Make sure to put a reasonable price.
  • Promote the product: Finally, you can list the product in your store for sale. 

Whenever a customer places an order from your store, the POD partner manufactures the product and ships the product to your customer, and you receive the profit just for designing the product.

Printful and Printify: Detailed Comparison

Here’s a comparison of both platforms’ features. Let’s find out who the winner is.

1. Ease of Use

Printful and Printify are both designed and neatly designed with minimalistic touch and layouts.

Printful

Printful offers a simple and easy-to-use user interface. And as I have mentioned above, the setup procedure is almost the same as Printify. After connecting your eCommerce store to Printful, selecting from a range of products for designing is pretty simple.

When it comes to giving your product design, Printful is pretty resourceful. You can upload your designs or use Printful’s in-built Design Maker tool to create creative designs for your products. It is a simple drag & drop editor that comes with several customization options. You can also generate mockups to preview and download your creation. 

Before launching your designed products to your online store, you can order the product to check the quality. 

Printify

Printify is not so different in terms of the user interface. The only difference is that it offers a permanent entry-level package for free. You can use the service with its design maker tool in up to 3 stores. And there are no limitations on using product designs — you can use as many design templates as you want.

To start with Printify, you can simply add your store to your Printify account and create a design or add products to your store. If you face any difficulty regarding design, uploading, or adding products to your store, you can take help from Printify’s Help Centre to solve your issues within minutes.

Like Printful, you can also order your designed product to test the quality to assure that your customers receive the same quality.

Winner: Tie

2. Product Catalog 

Check out how many products you can select for your business on both platforms.

Printful

Printful offers a vast range of products that you can select for your business. You can customize more than 415 different products with your personalized designs and sell them across the globe.

Printful’s product catalog includes a variety of trending products for customization. Here are some of the popular products:

  • Clothing (like hoodies, t-shirts, leggings, etc.)
  • Sweatshirts
  • Backpacks
  • Pillow
  • Mug
  • Various accessories 

Printify

Printify is two steps ahead with its product catalog. They offer 600+ high-quality products that you can design for your store. The best part is that they add about 5-6 products every week so that you can choose products according to your niche.

Merchants can find almost every type of product in various categories like accessories, clothing, home products, etc. Here are the most popular categories for product selection:

  • Clothing (t-shirts, socks, hoodies)
  • Sticker sheets
  • Speakers
  • Drawstring bags
  • Jackets
  • Watches 
  • Phone back covers

Winner: Printify

3. Profit Margins

As a POD dropshipping business owner, you might want to make a decent profit without overpricing the products. To calculate profit margins, you can subtract the production and shipping costs from your product’s total price. 

Let’s suppose the production cost of a product is $12, and the shipping cost is $5, then your product’s subtotal is $17. If you set $22 as your final price, your profit margin will be $5. Printful offers a Profit Calculator that helps you with the most sensible profit margin suggestions.

The production cost is almost fixed for both platforms, while shipping costs can vary according to the location. Printify offers a cheaper production cost, whereas Printful’s production cost is a little bit higher. With low production costs, you will have better profit margins without compromising the final cost. 

The shipping rates for the USA are almost similar on both platforms. However, Printful’s global shipping rates are better than Printify’s. But if you are selling Printify products primarily in the USA, you will have better profit margins.

Winner: Tie

4. Print Quality

A product’s quality determines customer satisfaction and ensures their return for more. Your product must be printed with high-quality and non-toxic inks so it can provide comfort to the customers. Let’s see what both platforms have to offer.

Printful

Printful is pretty serious about its products’ quality. That’s why they manufacture their own products. They own a number of warehouses and in-house fulfillment centers in Europe, Mexico, the USA, and Canada. 

Printful has invested more than 50 million in advanced printing equipment, so each product ensures high-quality and eye-catching designs. This might be the main reason why their product cost is higher than other print-on-demand platforms.

Printify

If we talk about Printify’s print quality, there is a lot of uncertainty. The main reason is that they don’t own any manufacturing facilities or workshops. They outsource ordered products from different manufacturing facilities. More likely, they act as a middleman between you and printing facilities. 

Since Printify has no printing equipment, you don’t have control over the quality of the products. However, the orders go through many quality checks before they are shipped to your customers.

Winner: Printful

5. Branding 

60% of shoppers prefer to purchase branded products from online stores as it ensures high-quality fabrics and better comfort.

Printful

Printful provides white-label service for merchants, so they are free to add their brands with their products. You can add your brand’s logo and inside and outside labels on clothing and packaging. Adding labels and custom packaging to your products will require you to pay additional costs, which can decrease your profit margins.

Adding brand labels cost around $2.49 to $5.95 per product, whereas custom packaging costs $0.50 for each product. However, you can add a white-label tracking page on packaging without any cost.

Printify

On the other hand, Printify relies on other print providers for product branding. As of now, only four of their printing partners offer branding options – SameDayPOD, Merch Made Easy, OPT OnDemand, and Textildruck Europa. They offer branding options on the left and right sleeves and a few outside labels on t-shirts.

Printify also doesn’t provide branding options for a few products like hats and accessories. However, you add your store and brand to the packaging. You can also add custom messages for your customers on packaging labels.

Winner: Printful

6. Order Fulfillment 

For a print-on-demand company, order fulfillment refers to the time they take to manufacture, package, and ship the order to the customers. 

Printful

Printful provides two different models for order fulfillment: POD dropshipping and warehousing & fulfillment service. 

Printful’s POD dropshipping service takes an average of 5-7 days for apparel products and 3-5 days for non-apparel products. On the other hand, the warehousing fulfillment service provides the same-day shipping option if the orders are placed before 12 PM. 

If you store your products in a warehousing facility, you will need to pay a monthly storage fee, and this service is only available in the US, Canada, and Europe.

Printify

As mentioned above, Printify outsources products from different manufacturing facilities so that order fulfillment can vary. 

Printify’s production partners have different production and shipping time. It takes an average of 2-7 business days to manufacture your products. However, there are not any warehousing fulfillment services like Printful, so you need to rely only on their print-on-demand service.

Winner: Printful 

7. Discount

If you want to stock products in your store or are planning to organize fundraising for charities, you can order customized products from Printful and Printify, and they will provide you with a handsome discount in return. Let’s know more about discounts on bulk orders.

Printful

Printful offers an exclusive 30% discount on bulk orders. With Printful, you can order your custom-designed products in bulk. You can also add different colors, sizes, and designs to your bulk orders. 

With Printful, you can also get a monthly discount after reaching a certain threshold of accumulated sales. The discount can vary between 5% to 10% based on your monthly accumulated sales.

Printify

Like Printful, Printify also offers a 30% discount on bulk orders. You can choose any product, color, and size to upload your designs before ordering them. If you purchase Printify’s premium subscription, you will automatically get up to a 20% discount on all products.

However, Printify doesn’t offer any monthly discount like Printful. But since its production cost is lower than Printful, they both sit on the same page.

Winner: Tie

8. Shipping

Shipping is the most crucial factor in this comparison. Both platforms offer global shipping options, but there are many differences. Let’s find out what it is. 

Printful

Printiful’s shipping time depends on location, and their shipping averages 12 business days. However, it doesn’t apply to all countries. Printful delivers products globally except in a few countries, such as North Korea, Cuba, Crimea, Syria, and Iran, due to carrier limitations and legal restrictions.

Shipping rates also differ according to consumers’ location. If a customer places a t-shirt from India, the shipping rate will be $11.99 for a single product and $6/each for additional products, and it will be shipped within 6-14 business days. 

You can check all the shipping time and rate details on Printful’s shipping page for a better understanding. 

Printify

Printify’s shipping time, on the other hand, depends on the manufacturing facility you choose, as each manufacturer has different shipping times and rates. However, their global shipping time depends on the order destination.

Printify also offers global shipping options except for a few countries, such as Libya, Iran, North Korea, Cuba, Burundi, Syria, Belarus, Somalia, Sudan, and Zimbabwe. Printify takes an average of 15-20 days to ship products globally.

There are over 90 printing facilities partnered with Printify. You can see all the shipping rates and delivery times from Printify’s shipping page

Winner: Printful

9. Integrations

Integration is one of the most crucial factors for print-on-demand as it decides which eCommerce platform or marketplace you are going to integrate with. Let’s see how many integrations both platforms offer.

Printful

With Printful, you get options for 21 eCommerce platforms and marketplaces for integration. It includes major platforms like Shopify, Wix, Etsy, WooCommerce, and Amazon, so you don’t have to look for any other POD companies. Apart from eCommerce integration, it also allows you to set up custom APIs.

Printify

Printify doesn’t offer many integrations like Printful. It offers integrations with seven major platforms: Shopify, WooCommerce, Etsy, Wix, eBay, PrestaShop, and BigCommerce. It also allows you to set up a custom API. But if you are running an online store apart from these platforms, Printify is not for you.

Winner: Printful

10. Customer Support 

Any platform’s customer support decides how fast users get their issues resolved which also increases engagement. Let’s have a look at the customer service of both platforms.

Printful

Printful has a deep-rooted set of tactics to engage with its users. They provide customer support via email, live chat, and a contact form. You will also get access to a help center where you can find solutions to common queries through how-to guides, blogs, documentation, and video tutorials. 

Printful also offers an onboarding session to new users without any cost. The blog section of the help center contains valuable insights and resources on how to run a POD business successfully. 

Printify

Printify only offers two options as their customer support: blog and help center. The help center contains essential information on products, integrations, mockup designs, troubleshooting, etc. Their blog contains success stories, design trends, and tips on marketing.

Printify lacks a live chat feature, making it fall behind Printful by a considerable margin.

Winner: Printful

11. Pricing 

Let’s see how much it costs to design and set up your store on both platforms.

Printful

You can sign-up and use the Printful tools free of cost. There is no subscription fee or order minimums. However, there is a Pro plan for advanced designers, which costs $49/month. The plan includes additional access to premium images, free digitization, background removal, and more.

If you are starting as a beginner, the free plan is the best option for getting started. If you still want to go with the Pro plan, you can try the 14-day free trial to test the features of the premium plan before investing your money. 

Printify

Printify also offers a free plan. You can sign up for free and start designing products for your online store right away. If you are a beginner or not getting enough sales, the free is the best option to go with. You can choose the Premium plan at $29/month if you want to upgrade your account. 

Printify’s premium plan is best for you if you want to be a long-term partner or are getting tons of sales. You will also get a straight 20% discount on all products, with the premium plan saving you hundreds of dollars each month.

Winner: Printify

Printify vs Printful: Pros and Cons

Here are some advantages and drawbacks of both platforms that will help you pick the right print-on-demand partner for your eCommerce storefront.

Printify Pros

  • Low startup costs: As a print-on-demand service, Printify requires no initial investment and provides access to marketplaces like Etsy, Shopify, and WooCommerce with instant integration.
  • Easy setup process: All you have to do is create an account, choose a product template, and start selling.
  • Automated order fulfillment: Printify saves you time by automatically printing, packaging, and shipping your products to customers as orders come in.
  • A wide range of products and customization options: You can design and print T-shirts, mugs, bags, stickers, phone cases, hats, and more with Printify. And the platform has powerful customization tools to make your products stand out.
  • Access to multiple suppliers: With Printify, you can choose from a variety of suppliers and printing services to get the best results for your products.

Printify Cons

  • Poor customer service: Printify’s customer service is slow when it comes to responding to queries. The platform needs to take strict actions in this section. 
  • No in-house printing facilities: Printify relies on third-party printing facilities and fulfillment providers to complete orders from customers. 

Printful Pros

  • Low setup costs: Like Printify, creating an account and setting up your store with Printful is free.
  • Quality products: Printful has access to reliable suppliers that create high-quality products, including apparel made from premium fabrics. In most regions, Printful has set up its own printing facilities and fulfillment warehouses, so you don’t have to worry about products’ quality. 
  • Automated order fulfillment: Just like with Printify, you don’t have to worry about printing and shipping orders manually—Printful takes care of it all for you.
  • A wide range of products: Printful offers a variety of products, including apparel, home décor, accessories, and more. 
  • Easy customization tools: Printful has an easy-to-use design tool that allows you to quickly create unique designs for your products. 
  • White labeling options: For an additional fee, you can have your products sent out with no Printful branding so that customers don’t know where the product originated from.  This is a great way to establish your own brand identity.

Printful Cons

  • Can’t select a specific fulfillment center: Unlike Printify, you can’t select your preferred fulfillment center to fulfill customers’ orders.
  • Limited mock-up images: Printful offers a limited variety of mock-up graphics, clipart, and images. 

Final Verdict: Who is the Winner?

Overall, Printful is the winner as it is better in many aspects. Printful offers excellent quality, more integrations, and tons of branding options. If you want more product options, Printify is the best platform. Printify offers great profit margins for US-based merchants. 

After comparing all the aspects, Printful does get the edge over Printify but only with the slightest margin. However, it all depends on your choice and the product type you want to sell. 

So which one do you choose for your online store? Let me know in the comments section.

HubSpot CRM Reviews & Ratings 2021

HubSpot is our top CRM pick for two reasons: it has an incredibly comprehensive free edition that outshines most paid CRMs on the market, and you can use it across your marketing, sales, and customer service teams. It’s a great option for just about every business out there. We compiled our extensive research and experience with the software—good and bad—into this review to help you decide if it’s right for you.

Compare HubSpot to The Best CRM Software

Based on weeks of testing and our own hands-on experience, Hubspot continuously outshines all of the CRM tools on the market—it’s been our #1 pick for a while, and we don’t see that changing anytime soon. It’s a powerful all-in-one business solution with hubs for sales, marketing, and customer service. HubSpot’s comprehensive free plan is better than many paid CRMs out there, making its robust feature set accessible to even the smallest businesses.

If you’re not convinced, you can see how it stacks up against our other top CRM choices, including Salesflare, Salesforce, Freshworks, and more. We took a deep dive into the most talked-about options, paying close attention to UI, reporting, lead management, support functionality, and sales features.

HubSpot: The Good and The Bad

HubSpot is our #1 recommendation for most businesses looking for a better way to manage customer relationships. But it’s not always perfect and it doesn’t come without its share of drawbacks.

The Good

Comprehensive Free Plan: Hubspot offers the most comprehensive free plan we’ve seen out of the dozens of CRMs we’ve tried and tested ourselves. Most free plans look great on paper but fail to deliver the features you need to actually improve customer relationships. But Hubspot does things differently—it over-delivers on its free plan. Whether you’re looking for customer support, marketing, sales, content management, or operational CRM, you get hundreds of powerful features and the ability to manage up to a million (1,000,000) contacts without ever paying a cent.

Flexible Pricing: While Hubspot’s paid plans can get expensive, there are numerous ways to bundle services to get what you need at a reasonable price. You can choose to purchase individual hubs or upgrade multiple hubs at a discounted rate. Another option is an entirely custom CRM solution with only the features you need if none of the out-of-the-box bundles are a fit for your team. Hubspot’s marketing, sales, customer support, and operational hubs start at $45 per month each. The CMS hub starts at $23 per month. But you can save a TON of money by bundling them all together. The Starter Bundle includes all the hubs and also starts at $45 per month.

A Modular, Scalable Solution: HubSpot’s motto is ‘there’s no better way to grow.’ Of course, that refers to the range of scalable tools it offers covering operations, content, customer service, sales, and marketing. All of Hubspot’s tools are modular so the platform grows alongside your business as you scale and face the need for more advanced CRM features across different departments. You can mix and match solutions as well as payment plans for each module, making it a truly customizable and scalable CRM system designed to bolster growth and propel your business forward. Whether you’re a new or small business on the free plan or on your way to upgrading every module to the highest tier, Hubspot’s CRM spares no detail while delivering exactly what you need regardless of your business’s size.

Easy to Use: Despite Hubspot’s complex pricing structure and modularity, the platform itself is intuitive and very easy to use. The developers do a great job of making everything easily accessible, even though there are hundreds of features available. Even on the free plan, you’ll have no trouble navigating around. Many CRMs struggle to find the balance between power, automation, and ease of use. The good news is that Hubspot doesn’t sacrifice intuitiveness for the sake of power. Ease of use is particularly important for anyone using the free plan since it doesn’t come with human customer support. In our experience, it’s so easy you won’t need support anyway. Regardless, you can leverage Hubspot’s extensive knowledge base and a comprehensive library of third-party tutorials in conjunction if you ever need help.

Easy to Create: HubSpot is not only easy for users to navigate and use daily, but it is also incredibly easy to create with. For example, content creation areas like landing pages, forms, and emails, are all drag and drop. You can also bulk-create and schedule social media content. This will come as a huge advantage for many businesses who simply don’t have time for these content creations.

Customer Support: HubSpot is renowned for its excellent customer support team. Depending on which plan you’re on, you can contact the support team via chat, email, or phone. You can even connect with Support on Twitter! Although these support methods are limited to the paid plans, users with the free version will still have access to the in-depth online knowledge base and community, so you’ll never be left out in the cold.

Tons of Free Tools: Anyone can access the free tools regardless of whether they’re even using HubSpot for their CRM. Nevertheless, we still think it’s extremely cool that HubSpot has so many free tools available for new business owners to use. There is a blog idea generator, invoice template generator, free business templates, email signature generator, and the list goes on. You’ll never start your business in the dark with HubSpot.

The Bad

Complicated Pricing Tiers: I know we said that the flexible pricing was a benefit of HubSpot, and I stand by that. However, there is a difference between flexible pricing and confusing pricing. There are so many different plans and pricing options to choose from that some may be completely overwhelmed and resort to sticking with the (evidently limited) free version or moving to another provider. 

No Customer Support on Free Plan: Although users of the free version do have access to the online knowledge base and HubSpot community to assist with troubleshooting, sometimes you just want to talk to a human to resolve your issues. It’s a shame that HubSpot doesn’t at least extend live chat to those on the free plan, just to ensure they are truly reflecting their award-winning customer support capabilities. 

Easy to Max Out Limitations on Free Plan: At the end of the day, it is a free version! But, you must consider the limitations of the free plan compared to the higher tiered options. For example, on the free plan, you’ll only have access to 200 email tracking notifications per month, compared to the Starter plan having unlimited. Some of the limitations may not matter to you, and some may be a deal-breaker. At the end of the day, the limitations that matter are the ones that are going to impact your business negatively. 

HubSpot Pricing and Options

Now that we understand all the benefits HubSpot has to offer (as well as the things they could improve on), let’s look at what products they can bring to the table for your business. 

HubSpot Pricing

HubSpot offers a pretty comprehensive range of free tools in all their product offerings, as we’ve already discovered. That is free CRM tools, free marketing tools, free sales tools, and free service tools. 

However, should your business grow to the extent that these free tools are no longer cutting it, you can upgrade to the premium versions. But, HubSpot does not make it easy to understand what those upgraded versions might cost you. You see, there are so many different packages and pricing tiers available that it’s a little confusing. 

For example, let’s say you only want to use HubSpot for their CRM and sales tool. You’re looking at a starting price of $45 per month over a 12-month contract. Maybe, down the track, you decide you’d like to use their marketing tools, too. The lead-in price for a Starter plan under this product offering is also $45 per month over a 12-month contract.

However, we’re going to let you in on a little secret. If you were to just sign up for the Starter Growth Suite bundle for $50 per month, you’d have access to all HubSpot product offerings under the one bundle (except the CMS Hub, which we’ll touch on later)!

To be fair, the price for the Starter Growth Bundle is usually $150 per month, but HubSpot has reduced the pricing to assist businesses during this tricky time.

Just some of the features the Starter Growth Suite includes are:

  • Advanced analytics dashboards
  • Simple automatic task creations and notifications
  • Up to 5,000 monthly marketing emails
  • Access to HubSpot’s intuitive mobile app
  • Ad retargeting capabilities
  • Automatic conversion routing for sales and service teams

If you are looking for a Professional or Enterprise Growth Suite, these plans include more features, and the pricing jumps up to $1,343 per month and $4,200 per month, respectively. 

So, the moral of the story is to dig deep into the pricing models to truly understand what you’re getting in the standalone plans compared to the bundle. And if you can catch the bundle while it’s on sale for $50 per month, jump on it! You’ll have access to tons of tools for almost the same price as a standalone plan. 

HubSpot Marketing Hub

HubSpot’s marketing software is designed to help you attract and convert. That is, attract the right audience, convert those visitors into customers, and run complete inbound marketing campaigns without breaking a sweat (or the bank). 

You’ll have all your marketing tools and data under one roof. You can publish blogs, build your search authority, track and manage ads, manage your social media channels, build a kick-ass landing page, and monitor and report on your progress. What else could you possibly want?

HubSpot’s marketing hub is trusted by tons of big-name companies such as Frontify, monday.com, Trello, and SurveyMonkey. They also consistently win awards from the likes of G2.com for being the best of the best. 

Pricing for the Marketing Hub plans look like this:

  • Free
  • Starter: $45/month
  • Professional: $800/month 
  • Enterprise: $3,200/month

In a nutshell, HubSpot’s Marketing Hub is an excellent marketing tool designed to grow with your business. 

HubSpot Sales Hub

HubSpot’s sales software is a CRM powerhouse. It will help your teams to close more deals, build stronger relationships, and manage their pipeline efficiently and effectively so that nothing slips through the cracks. 

With tools like email templates, email tracking, and call recording, you’ll have the opportunity to build stronger connections with your customers by ensuring your team is always delivering the same, conducive message. Furthermore, you can arm them with branded quotes and sales management playbooks so that everyone knows exactly what’s happening next.

Some other features you’ll have access to with HubSpot’s sales hub include:

  • Allow prospects to schedule appointments that automatically sync with your calendar
  • Automate your sales process with a personal touch
  • Direct live chat conversations to the right salesperson to build better customer relationships
  • Manage your pipeline with a single click ensuring important deals don’t slip through the cracks. 

There is not much else you could ask for from CRM software. 

HubSpot is the ultimate CRM platform, and the wide-ranging communication features on offer with Sales Hub simply solidify their position as a market leader. Having access to all of these tools in one place will only make your business stronger, leaving you plenty of time to focus on the customer. 

Here is an overview of the sales software tiered pricing with the included features below:

  • Free
  • Starter: $45/month 
  • Professional: $450/month
  • Enterprise: $1,200/month 

HubSpot Service Hub

Once you’ve got your team up to scratch and working like a well-oiled machine, it’s time to focus on the customer. When we say focus on the customer, we don’t mean just draw them in and convert them from prospects to buyers. 

We mean really focus on them. 

Enlisting a customer service management (CMS) software that enables you to scale your customer support while uniting your front-office teams is essential to satisfying the customer. Luckily for you, HubSpot’s service hub can do all of this for you in one platform.

Service Hub will allow you to:

  • Create a sophisticated help desk and ticket automation system.
  • Build a detailed online knowledge base for customers to troubleshoot their issues.
  • Enlist a clever live chat that directs your customer to the right place and people.
  • Connect your team’s emails, live chat, Facebook Messenger, and more into one universal inbox for complete visibility into the communication pipeline.

In today’s fast-paced world, customers expect round-the-clock resolutions and personalized support. So, by bringing all of your service data and communication channels under one roof, you’ll spend more time supporting and impressing your customers than scratching your head over customer complaints. 

Pricing for Service Hub is very similar to those listed for the Sales Hub, with the Free, Starter, and Enterprise pricing remaining the same. The Professional pricing plan, however, sits at $360 per month. Here’s an overview of the different features and limitations on offer for each of the Service Hub plans:

HubSpot CMS Hub

No doubt you’ve heard by now that creating engaging and interactive content for your audience and prospective buyers is one of the ultimate tools in building trusting relationships with them. 

When you give your audience enough ‘free’ advice to help them through menial tasks, but not quite enough to render your help useless, you will start to gain their interest and trust. How on earth are you going to deliver this free advice, though? 

With a content management system (CMS), that’s how!

With HubSpot’s CMS hub, you’ll be able to create and manage website pages with a simple drag-and-drop editor, so you can say goodbye to waiting on developers for your every need. Better yet, these web pages will automatically be optimized for different devices, so your content won’t lose shape. 

Some other features this product has to offer include:

  • SEO recommendations to make sure you’re putting yourself on the map
  • Access to pre-built website themes for easy customization
  • Multi-language content creation
  • Analyze the impact of your website with contact attribution reporting
  • 24/7 security monitoring and threat detection

Although we think this CMS hub is a great product from HubSpot, we need to highlight that if you are looking for a CMS powerhouse, it has to go to WordPress. 

However, for those who like to have all of their business tools under one roof and don’t want to deal with an additional web host as required when using WordPress, HubSpot’s CMS Hub is a good alternative. 

There is no free or Starter plan offered for CMS Hub. However, the available pricing tiers are:

  • Professional: $270/month 
  • Enterprise: $900/month

It’s also important to note that this product is not included in the Growth Suite bundle we spoke about earlier. 

With this in mind, combined with the fact that there is no budget pricing tier, managing your content with HubSpot is actually pretty darn pricey, especially when you could have access to robust content management such as WordPress or Wix for a fraction of the price. 

Try out HubSpot today!

SEMrush Review: A SEM Tool To Research Competitors’ Keywords

What is SEMrush? – A Hands-On Review

Let’s explore what makes SEMrush such an amazing SEO tool and a favorite among millions of users.

SEMrush makes it really easy to find what keyword your site (or any other site) is ranking for. In short, it makes keyword research a piece of cake.

Once you are done doing your keyword research, you can add in keywords and track their positions in all major search engines based on geographical location.

I emphasize the geographical location feature as it’s important for those who target specific countries like Spain, the U.K, Australia, India, the U.S., etc. For a global blogger, you can also use this feature to see how your site ranks in specific countries’ search engines.

It is an essential SEM (search engine marketing) tool that I believe every serious blogger and internet marketer should have in their SEO tool arsenal.

SEMrush is a product from the maker of SEOQuake, a popular SEO addon for Firefox.

At the time of this writing, SEMrush has:

  • more than 130,000,000 domains and
  • more than 800,000,000 keywords in their database.

SEMrush will allow you to find all of the keywords for which any existing web page on the internet is ranking. You can also find more statistical details regarding specific keywords and related keywords which you can rank for.

Sound a little confusing?

Here is a screenshot which will justify my statement that SEMrush is essential for all bloggers and serious internet marketers:

Let me walk you through the process…

  • Note: You can use it for any site. Serious internet marketers are encouraged to try it with their competitors’ sites.

Let me explain a few of the fields on this report page…

  • Keyword: The keyword for that specific ranked page.
  • Pos: The keyword’s position in the specified search engine. In this example, I have selected Google’s US database (default), but you can change it to other locations and search engines too. You can also use the Free Keyword Monitor for verification.
  • Volume: Number of exact match queries for that keyword in the local search. In this example, I have once again used Google’s US database. (This data was taken using the Google Keyword planner tool which I have also verified the accuracy of myself.)
  • CPC: Average cost per click for the keyword.
  • URL: Corresponding URL to which that keyword is driving traffic.
  • Com: This shows the competition of advertisers for that keyword. A lower number means little competition and a higher number means greater competition for that term. (How can a search engine marketing tool be complete without a competition check?)
  • Results: Number of search engine results.  (A lower number here is better.)
  • Trend: This is one column which I find very interesting. In order to find profitable keywords, we need to make sure the traffic trend for that keyword is not dying. This column pulls up the search trend for that keyword over the last 12 months.

In addition to all of the information resulting from our search, there are two columns that, as a blogger, interest me the most.

It’s here that you will find the top 200 organic keywords for that domain and also receive a detailed backlink report for any domain along with the link’s anchor text.

For me, the most interesting factor here is the ability to find the top keywords driving traffic to any domain. For a serious marketer or company, knowing a top competitor’s keywords is the holy grail.

SEMRush features: A complete walkthrough

As I mentioned earlier, SEMRush is full of features and to make it easier for you to navigate, below I’m sharing about major features of SEMRush that you should know of.

Keyword Magic tool:

Apart from the Keyword research technique, I shared above, you can always use the conventional way of researching keywords using SEMRush keyword magic tool.

You will quickly get metrics like search volume, keyword difficulty, competitive density, SERP features, cost-per-click data. Do try the related feature of Keyword magic tool, which helps you discover keywords that you might have missed otherwise.

Once you have selected the keywords you want to work with, you can then move these keywords to Keyword analyzer tool. The automatic grouping and seed keyword feature will help you group the cluster of keywords that you picked in stage 1.

Do pay attention to click potential column, as it helps you to understand how many clicks you can expect for your target keyword after ranking for #1. This step saves a lot of overhead as you move ahead with content production.

Site audit: 

This is another popular feature of SEMRush which is idle for your own sites or if you are an SEO agency, you can run and create a white label report for your clients. For improving the technical SEO of your website, a single site audit could potentially reveal a plethora of SEO changes you could make on the target site to improve the rank significantly.

You have the option to run an SEO site audit for desktop or for mobile separately.  Every report can be exported in .pdf or excel format for your SEO team to take action on.

Position tracking mobile app:

SEMRush also has a mobile app which will let you view your keyword position from the comfort of your mobile app. This is another feature which I haven’t found in any other SEO suite yet.

The app is currently available for Android and iOS version coming out soon.

So back to the original question:

  • “Should I start using SEMrush?”

My answer:

  • YES!!!

Why should you start using the SEMrush tool right away?

As bloggers, we work day and night to write posts hoping to increase the amount of traffic coming into our blog. But we often don’t focus enough on how we’re generating that traffic. If you check your analytics, you will realize that only a couple of your blog posts are contributing all of the traffic to your blog.

But when using the SEMrush SEO tool, you can find keywords which are driving traffic to your competitor’s website and you can write quality content based around those keywords. This will help you get a better position for certain target keywords in your niche.

If you want to try it out and see how well it can work for you, they offer a free 14-day trial.

SEMRush pricing: Which SEMrush plan is best for you?

SEMRush offers multiple plans for the different use cases, and you could pick the one you would like to get started with.

  1. Pro plan
  2. Guru plan
  3. Business plan
  4. Enterprise plan

SEMrush works best with the PRO account if you are an individual (as you will get a complete report), but for a beginnerwho is new to search engine marketing (SEM) research, you can always start with the free trial.

For Agencies, the Guru plan offers all bells and whistles like Branded PDF reports. 

Once you are accustomed to its various features, you can upgrade to the PRO account to get a complete, detailed analysis of any website (like yours and your competitor’s).

Sign up here: Free SEMrush trial account

 Note: You can anytime upgrade or downgrade a plan.

I hope this SEMrush review has helped you to understand the benefit of this awesome search engine marketing tool. Always remember, SEMrush (or any other SEM tool) is useful for research and analysis, but at the end of the day, it’s your hard, smart, and quality work which ultimately puts you at the top.