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DeutschAh, Moz. A giant in the SEO industry. Went through countless ups and downs since its foundation all the way back in 2004. And with that natural evolution of any company follow changes to some of the most important aspects for the end customers – namely, the price.
This great platform by the infamous Rand Fishkin and team has evolved quite a lot throughout the years bringing innovative tools to the competitive SEO industry.
With many ups and downs throughout their journey, it’s safe to say that this company has literally changed the SEO game as we know it.
In fact, you can read more about Moz’s founding story directly from Rand’s own book Lost and Founder (recommended read, by the way).
And certainly, when talking about the pricing, straight away it’s fair to say that Moz is not the most expensive SEO tool out there.
After all, there are huge enterprise software tools out there that cost a lot more. But that’s also not to say that Moz is cheap in any way.
Here’s what I mean:
So it’s safe to say that it’s not only you wondering about Moz Pro’s subscription plans.
While Moz is a beloved tool by many, the high price point is not to be ignored – especially by smaller businesses which can’t afford a solid marketing tech stack.
To explain what’s going on, here I’ll break down what makes up Moz’s pricing and why it can be perceived as so expensive.
But before we begin, here’s a little disclaimer. I got interested in Moz because our team is developing an easy-to-use Moz alternative. My logic here is, even if you end up choosing Moz based on this guide, I hope you remember us as someone who helped out. 🙂
And full disclosure, we’re actually using Moz’s API to supplement our Link Data. Not sure what you’ve heard but I can tell you first hand – it’s great. Initially, we thought it’s just an opinion we share internally in the company, but lately I’ve been seeing more people online praise Moz’s Link Data quality (over some competitors).
So, let’s look at the cost of Moz products in detail.
What Does Moz Cost?
Moz comes with 2 different main products that have unique features and are therefore priced separately. Moz Pro is an all-around SEO Tool and its cost starts from $99 a month. On the other hand, Moz Local is an Online Presence Tool which supplements Local SEO – and it starts from $129. Below you can see our in-depth findings about the costs for both of the company’s analytics tools – Moz Pro & Moz Local.
How Much Is Moz Pro?
Moz Pro comes with 5 different pricing options each of which offers different data limits. The cost of each Moz plan also differs based on the billing period you choose.
Moz Pro Monthly Plans:
A monthly Moz subscription will cost you either:
- Standard Plan: $99 / Mo.
- Medium Plan: $149 / Mo.
- Large Plan: $249 / Mo.
- Premium Plan: $599 / Mo.
- Moz Enterprise: Custom Pricing
Moz Pro Annual Plans:
And yearly Moz subscription cost:
- Standard Plan: $950 / Ann.
- Medium Plan: $1,428 / Ann.
- Large Plan: $2,390 / Ann.
- Premium Plan: $5,750 / Ann.
- Moz Enterprise: Custom Pricing
Their yearly plans include a 20% discount compared to the monthly plans and, as the name suggest, require you to commit for one year at a time.
Because the Moz Enterprise plans come with bespoke data limits (and therefore pricing), we will not be looking at that in this post.
A snippet of Moz Pro’s pricing page as of July 2020
Moz Pro Price Breakdown
| Pricing Details | Standard Plan | Medium Plan | Large Plan | Premium Plan |
| Regular Monthly Pricing | $99 | $149 | $249 | $599 |
| Monthly Pricing After Yearly Discount (-20% | $79 | $119 | $199 | $479 |
| Regular Yearly Pricing (-20%) | $950 | $1,428 | $2,390 | $5,750 |
| Otherwise Undiscounted Yearly Pricing¹ | $1,188 | $1,788 | $2,988 | $7,188 |
| Yearly Savings w/ Annual Plan Discount² | $238 | $360 | $598 | $1,438 |
As seen on the Moz Pro website as of July 2020
¹ – Considering you pay for the tool for 12 months but commit to a monthly plan only.
² – The yearly difference saved by switching from a monthly to yearly subscription.
Moz Pro Pricing Pros & Cons
Pros:
- You get full functionality of Moz Pro with any of the plans. The only difference is how many credits you have available for each of the plans. That is a very fair deal for anyone using Moz and it’s the right thing to do. Big props to the Moz team for this decision.
- The quality of the data is quite good. Moz is continuously investing into upgrading their systems which makes them one of the top provides in the industry.
Cons:
- Even the smallest plans can be too expensive for smaller businesses. While this pricing might seem “fair” for bigger companies, SMBs struggle with growth by not having access to such a tool.
- The amount of data you can use on the Standard vs Medium plans differs wildly. So considering you’re a company with limited resources, even this entry-level offer can still be quite limiting.
To put this into perspective, here’s what users report:
Now, granted, it is also very reasonable to think about how much you actually need the tool. If you rely primarily on SEO and you have a content team who needs a platform to be effective, the cost can be justified. Looking at smaller companies which have never tried SEO, however, this price point can definitely increase the “entry threshold”.
On another hand, this is not something we can point a finger solely at Moz as all well known competitors to Moz share a very similar pricing structure.
Moz Pro Plans & Pricing Structure Breakdown
So let’s compare how much data you can use with Moz in each of their plans for some of the most important metrics in SEO. A Moz Pro subscription grants you access to:
- The Moz Research Tools: Fresh Web Explorer, Keyword Explorer, Link Explorer and On-Page Grader
- Full functionality including the Moz Campaign Tools
- Moz’s SEO toolbar MozBar Premium
- Crawling and tracking throughout the four biggest Search Engines
- Personalized walkthrough and 24/7 support
- The Moz Q&A community forum
You can see a detailed breakdown of the pricing for each of their tools In the tables below.
Tracking & Crawling Tools:
| Features | Standard Plan $99 / Mo. | Medium Plan $149 / Mo. | Large Plan $249 / Mo. | Premium Plan $599 / Mo. |
| Campaigns Available¹ | 3 | 10 | 25 | 50 |
| Rank Tracker Keyword Limit² | 300 | 800 | 1900 | 4500 |
| Mobile Rankings | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Weekly Pages Crawled³ | 100,000 | 500,000 | 1,250,000 | 2,000,000 |
| Speed (Priority) Crawl⁴ | No | No | No | Yes |
| Monthly On-Demand Crawls⁵ | 5 | 30 | 60 | 100 |
Research Tools:
| Features | Standard Plan $99 / Mo. | Medium Plan $149 / Mo. | Large Plan $249 / Mo. | Premium Plan $599 / Mo. |
| Monthly Keyword Research Queries | 150 | 5,000 | 15,000 | 30,000 |
| Maximum Rows Per Keyword Research Query | 10,000 | 30,000 | 50,000 | 100,000 |
| Maximum Keyword Lists⁶ | 5 | 30 | 60 | 100 |
| Maximum Keywords Per List | 100 | 500 | 750 | 1,000 |
| Monthly Link Queries | 5,000 | 20,000 | 70,000 | 100,000 |
| Maximum Rows Per Link Query | 10,000 | 40,000 | 50,000 | 75,000 |
| Maximum Link Monitoring Lists⁷ | 1 | 30 | 60 | 100 |
| Maximum Number Of Links Per List | 100 | 500 | 750 | 1,000 |
| Daily On-Demand Rank Tracker Updates⁸ | 200 | 200 | 500 | 800 |
| Website Grade Reports⁹ | Unlimited | Unlimited | Unlimited | Unlimited |
Reporting Tools:
And specifically for the agencies out there, the data limits for their Reporting tools:
| Features | Standard Plan $99 / Mo. | Medium Plan $149 / Mo. | Large Plan $249 / Mo. | Premium Plan $599 / Mo. |
| Scheduled Reports¹⁰ | Unlimited | Unlimited | Unlimited | Unlimited |
| Branded Reports¹¹ | Unlimited | Unlimited | Unlimited | |
| Report Templates¹² | Unlimited | Unlimited | Unlimited |
Access:
| Features | Standard Plan $99 / Mo. | Medium Plan $149 / Mo. | Large Plan $249 / Mo. | Premium Plan $599 / Mo. |
| User Seats¹³ | 1 | 1 | 3 | 5 |
| 24/7 Support | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Onboarding Session¹⁴ | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
As seen on the Moz Pro website as of July 2020
¹ – Each Campaign Credit allows you to track 1 Primary Website & 3 Competitors. Each Campaign includes weekly rank tracking & website audits. Additional Campaigns can be purchased for $10 per month per extra Campaign on top of your subscription price.
² – Each Keyword includes Desktop and Mobile Rank Tracking for the 4 main Search Engines: Google Desktop (US & International); Google Mobile; Bing, and Yahoo. Additional Keywords can be purchased for $20 per month per extra 200 Keywords on top of your subscription price.
³ – Automatic weekly crawling of up to 1 million pages specified in your Campaign. Additional Page credits can be purchased for $15 per month per extra 50,000 Pages on top of your subscription price.
⁴ – Crawls your Campaigns 10x faster than normal.
⁵ – Quick on-demand crawling and reporting on website health issues for up to 3,000 pages.
⁶ – Categorize, prioritize and compare search terms in the Keyword Explorer tool. You can either create or import / export Keyword Lists. Additional Keyword Lists can be purchased for $25 per month per extra 5 Lists on top of your subscription price.
⁷ – Set goal and track and analyze your link building progress with the target backlinks Lists. Additional Backlink Lists can be purchased for $25 per month per 5 Lists on top of your subscription price.
⁸ – Allows you to instantly fetch your fresh keyword rankings data whenever needed.
⁹ – Grades your pages and provides you with reports on how well they are optimized for your target keywords.
¹⁰ – Allows you to schedule and send PDF reports. The settings also allow you to choose the frequency – weekly or monthly.
¹¹ – Allows you to replace Moz’s logo in your reports with your own brand.
¹²– Grants you access to pre-defined Moz report templates that can save you time.
¹³ – Additional User Seats can be purchased for $49 per month per User Seat.
¹⁴ – Included is a free 30-minute onboarding session with one of Moz’s own experts.
Moz Pro Free Trial
Like many software companies nowadays, Moz Pro also comes with a free trial. To access their 30-day free trial, you’ll need to enter your credit card upon signup.
By signing up for the free trial, you will automatically subscribe to their Medium pricing plan which totals to $149 monthly. It’s important to also note that the free trial is not available for other types of plans.
Here’s what you need to know about the free trial itself:
- During your trial, you will not be charged.
- They send you a reminder 7 days before your trial ends.
- As always, you’re able to cancel your subscription at any time.
Besides the setup-related information, the trial itself includes:
- Full access to Moz Pro for 30 days
- An onboarding with a Moz specialist
- 24/7 help & support
- Access to Moz’s private Q&A forum
Moz Pro Cancellation Policies
Moz Pro allows you to cancel at any time. To complete the cancellation process, you will also need to submit a required survey.
If you decide to cancel during your free trial, you will not be charged and will keep your access to the analytics tool until your trial period runs out.
Once you cancel your trial, your data remains in your account, however your data does not get updated – essentially, no new data about your website gets crawled and fetched.
Besides that, you’re able to re-subscribe at any point with the same account. And once you activate your subscription, your data will immediately start updating again.
Key Drawbacks of Moz Pro
1. High entry price
In all fairness, although $99 per month is a standard price for a plan in the SEO tools industry, it is also quite high considering this is the smallest plan available. Not having more low-tier entry options means that SMB must be ready and committed to improving their SEO, since otherwise this will negatively impact their bottom line – without bringing a positive ROI.
2. Too few credits for the Standard Plan
On the other hand, even if your SMB has an SEO specialist (read dedicated SEO person), the data limits that come with the Standard Plan are quite small. Of course, it all depends on what you’re planning for, but having only 150 Keyword Research queries per month is really not that much. You might be thinking “But that’s 150 unique searches?” but consider this: every time we SEOs start exploring a topic, we go “down a rabbit hole” of sorts. Each keyword usually leads to many other keywords which lead to other keywords, and so on.
On the other hand, the 10,000 query results sound promising – as it is a big number – however, you will find that more often than not your keyword research won’t return anything close to that number. The more niche your keywords get, the less market demand there is – and therefore less keyword variations.
3. Too few Keyword Lists
Personally, I see this as a “fake” limitation. That is, it is artificially lower than it has to be. That is to say, the data you’re working with in those Lists does not cost Moz a lot (if anything) since it’s already available in their databases. Now, you have to get really creative and change your workflows to fit all your plans in your Keyword Lists. Granted, you can always create a list, export it and remove it from Moz. But if you’re forced to leave the application for stuff functionality that’s supposed to be part of it, to me that’s not engineered well enough.
And personally, I hold this opinion across all of Moz’s pricing plans. For $599 a month you should have the freedom to manage your keyword ideas directly in the tool.
4. Rank Tracker incongruence
In comparison to Point #3, something like the On-demand Rank Checker gives you many (maybe too many) credits – which actually cost Moz money by crawling the web on demand.
Now, considering that your Keyword Rankings get automatically updated every 7 days, and you have a limit of 800 keywords, I really do not see the point in having 200 On-demand rank tracking credits DAILY.
To me, this just overcomplicates the matter for the end user. It can also turn out that it’s costing Moz quite a lot to provide that on-demand data. To give you an example, a better structure in my opinion is to update all keywords on a 3-day basis, remove all on-demand credits, and add an option to upgrade the 3-day crawl to a daily crawl.
5. Too few Link Tracking Lists
Building upon the two previous points, Link Tracking Lists are way undervalued in my opinion. Unlike the professionals, many beginners have no idea where to start and what to do. Therefore, it makes no sense to limit the “goal-setting and monitoring” aspect of the analytics tool – because that is the only guidance those customers get in the first place.
With that, I also have to somehow challenge the status quo among SEO experts. Yes, I understand we’re used to working in spreadsheets – BUT WHY? In 2020, there are tons of alternatives. They have visual insights. They organize everything in one place.Yet most professionals still want to export data and run it in spreadsheets.
My verdict on the Moz Pro Plans
If you’re just starting out or are limited by resources, the Standard Plan at $99 per month should be sufficient for you. However, this plan also comes with quite big data limitations compared to the other plans, so if you need more freedom to research, the Medium Plan at $149 per month should be sufficient.
Alternatives
Can’t afford that but still need an SEO analytics tool? Check out this Moz Pro Alternative here.
In fact, it’s important to mention that while both tools have unique aspects, they are also similar in that they don’t only provide you with raw data – which you need to understand to make use of – but also specifically guide you in improving your SEO and therefore generating more customers.
Moz Local Plans & Pricing
Firstly, it’s important to differentiate that compared to Moz Pro, Moz Local is a syndication software. This means that besides providing you with insights, it also allows you to directly work on your Local SEO.
Moz Local is a distribution and management local presence tool for the US, Canada & UK markets.The pricing plans for this service are offered only on a yearly basis and start from $129 (or £129).
With that explained, let’s look at a breakdown of each pricing plan for Moz Local.
There are 3 Moz Local plans:
- Basic: $129 / Ann.
- Plus: $199 / Ann.
- Complete: $299 / Ann.
What’s included in Moz Local’s Plans
| Basic $129 / Ann. | Plus $199 / Ann. | Complete $299 / Ann. | |
| Included in the Service | Your location data is published to essential directories across the US, UK & Canada. This includes Facebook, Google & Google Maps, & Waze. | Includes everything provided in the Basic plan. Besides that, your location data is also being submitted to important aggregators like Factual, Infogroup, Localeze and additional UK Moz partners. | Includes everything from both lower-tier plans. This feature also grants you the ability to respond directly to posts and customer reviews on the different channels, including social platforms. |
| All pricing quotes are for each unique location you manage. | |||
As seen on the Moz Local website as of July 2020
Now let’s take a look at which specific features you get with each Moz Local pricing plan.
| Basic $129 / Ann. | Plus $199 / Ann. | Complete $299 / Ann. | |
| Instant Profile Management¹ | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Data Cleansing Process² | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Automated Duplicate Deletion³ | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Direct Google & Facebook Integrations⁴ | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Activity Feed and Notifications and Alerts | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Direct Directory Submission⁵ | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Direct Aggregator Submission⁶ | Yes | Yes | |
| Customer Review Monitoring & Management⁷ | Yes | ||
| Social Posting Tools⁸ | Yes |
As seen on the Moz Local website as of July 2020
¹ – Allows you to manage and update your location information on Moz’s partner sites instantly.
² – An extensive review process ensures that your location data is accurately formatted for submission.
³ – Automatically handles duplicate listings by identifying and deleting them.
⁴ – Provides insights into your presence on the platforms and allows you to directly publish on them.
⁵ – Google Search, Google Maps, Bing, Facebook. Foursquare, Apple Maps, Waze, Here, Tom Tom, Navmii, Uber, Infobel (us-info.com), ShowMeLocal.
⁶ – Factual, Infogroup, & Localeze. Additional UK Partners: The Mirror, The Daily Record, The Evening Standard, The Scotsman, Citipages.net).
⁷ – Review customer feedback about your business and reply directly to it through the tool.
⁸ – Post company news & updates and engage with customers directly through the tool.
Moz Local Pricing Pros & Cons
Pros: In all fairness, the service and benefits that you receive out of Moz Local are very very satisfactory at this price point. Moz Local is a very cost effective way of building Local SEO signals. It saves you not only time – but honestly also money – by doing all the work for you automatically. Additionally, it’s safe to assume that it’s not as easy for everyone to get access to Moz’s partners where they can submit their location information. So all in all, 100% worth it.
Cons: Unless you’re a big company who uses the Moz Local monitoring tools, I’ve heard the product has a high churn rate. That is to say, many business subscribe only for the first year where they receive the submission benefits of the tool – which are then kept virtually forever. While this is probably not something that directly affects you, it might be “a bad business case” of sorts for the company itself.
Our verdict on Moz Local
If you have a local business situated in the UK, US or Canada, we strongly recommend Moz Local. The service offers a great boost across your channels which can also lead to higher search rankings – based on both the more widespread search presence and the social media signals you will receive from it.
Our personal advice is to generally opt in for the Plus Plan at $199 per year. This is because it includes the submission service to major Aggregators which will drastically increase your search presence. And, of course, if you have the need to monitor reviews and post on social channels, the Complete Plan at $299 per year comes in handy as well.
Compared to similar tools and services, Moz Local stands out with its low pricing point. That is, several competitors exist in this niche, however, they usually cost more. Therefore, we believe that for an SMB (especially on a limited budget), Moz Local proves to be an effective solution.
Final Words on Moz’s Plans
Moz is an awesome tool. The engineering behind it is great – which is what produces their top-of-class data. There’s no doubt about getting value out of the tool.
When it comes to their plans and pricing, however, my opinion is that they can be adjusted and are not optimal. I wouldn’t go as far as saying making them “more fair for the user” as apparently there are dozens of smart Mozzers who have thought long about these things.
But as someone working for an SEO tool competitor to Moz, I’ve had a chance to see first-hand what the company resources get spent on crawling the internet – and this insider info sways to believe Moz can make certain adjustments.
