Apify is a platform for web data extraction and automation. The core component is the Apify Store, a marketplace where developers can publish and monetize serverless cloud programs called Actors. Key Capabilities Serverless Automation Programs: Developers author Actors using JavaScript or Python. The Apify Store provides pre-built programs for tasks such as e-commerce data extraction, map scraping, price monitoring, and social media content aggregation. Web…
$29
per month
RavenTools
Score 7.6 out of 10
N/A
Raven Tools from the Tennessee company of the same name is Internet or search engine marketing optimization software consisting of popular tools targeted at SEO specialists who need research automation. To that end it contains the familiar set of website research and auditing, competitor monitoring, rank tracking, and also content investigation to see that material on the site is keyword-rich yet topically relevant. Social media and backlink checking tools facilitate outreach and drive traffic…
$49
per month
Screaming Frog
Score 9.2 out of 10
N/A
N/A
$149
per year
Pricing
Apify
RavenTools
Screaming Frog SEO Spider
Editions & Modules
Starter Plan
$29
per month
Scale Plan
$199
per month
Business Plan
$999
per month
Apify for Enterprise
Custom
Fully-customized web scraping and automation solution for any scale.
Small Biz (2 users)
$49
per month
Start (4 users)
$109
per month
Grow (8 users)
$199
per month
Thrive (20 users)
$299
per month
Lead (40 users)
$479
per month
Paid Version
$149.00
per year
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Apify
RavenTools
Screaming Frog
Free Trial
No
No
No
Free/Freemium Version
Yes
No
Yes
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
Yes
No
No
Entry-level Setup Fee
Optional
No setup fee
No setup fee
Additional Details
The lowest-priced plan that has all the features needed and is recommended as a starting point. If users exceed the platform usage credits for a plan, a notification is sent, and the excess usage will be added to the next invoice or the user can upgrade to a higher plan.
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More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
Apify
RavenTools
Screaming Frog SEO Spider
Considered Multiple Products
Apify
No answer on this topic
RavenTools
Verified User
Analyst
Chose RavenTools
We had selected RavenTools at the time because it was converting more sales. We had both Moz and RavenTools running. I went back to RavenTools once I started my own company in 2014, but after demoing out Moz and their current suite of tools, I was ready to make a jump. I think …
Apify excels at mass data tracking, like monitoring e-commerce pricing or scraping dynamic websites cost-effectively. Its pre-built automations are great for plugging data into automation stacks. It is less appropriate for simple, one-time tasks where a basic browser extension is faster, or for pure integration work where you just move data between standard apps without scraping the web.
If you are looking for a one-stop shop for MOST things related to digital marketing, RavenTools is a great solution. You will be able to monitor social media, Google tools, email campaigns, and much more from one spot. It really cuts down on time spent moving from account to account. If you are looking for clean and easy to read reports for clients, RavenTools is perfect for that as well. It provides tools and reports that can be used by internal and external teams alike.
Screaming Frog SEO Spider is well suited to auditing brand new websites, when you need a quick, holistic view of the websites technical issues. Its great for providing a top line view of a websites architecture, perhaps for a new business approach where you need to assess the scale of work to maintain a website. Its also a useful tool in situations where you might need to see whether a large scale change in the website has taken place, you can see word counts, pages and their https response codes. Screaming Frog may be less useful if you need an idea of the customer experience on a website, it doesn't really provide information that helps assess how fast a website loads, what issues might come up when trying to convert or faults with the payment process. Screaming Frog is largely a technical SEO focused tool, it also can't assess the quality of a websites, layout or the quality of the content used on the website. As mentioned, its niche, but very useful within that niche.
I love how intuitive the interface is. Even without deep coding knowledge, I can set up workflows quickly. The ready‑made actors are extremely helpful and cover most of my use cases.
Apify makes it incredibly easy to automate repetitive web tasks. The platform is stable, the actors run smoothly, and the logs give me full visibility into every step.
Apify offers impressive flexibility — from custom actors to API integrations and scheduling options. It scales well even with large workloads, and the performance has been consistent.
RavenTools has teamed up with SEO services like Moz and Magestic SEO to provide detailed data about the SEO health of your own websites as well as how they compare to your competitors' websites. I can directly compare number of backlinks, page speed, domain authority, integration of Google Analytics, presence of robots.txt files, on-site social media engagement, and home page load time. This a great way to get an idea of how your site stacks up against others and what can be done to improve it.
RavenTools' automated reports are mostly great (I'll cover the negatives later). You can create reports with as much data as you would like and schedule them to arrive as often as you would like. I have SEO, social media, and site performance reports delivered to my team and me every Monday covering the last 10 days, and a broader quarterly report arrives in the inboxes of a few executives once a quarter.
RavenTools' graphs are often easier to read and decipher than graphs found in Google Analytics. Part of the reason is the graph height. Google Analytics graphs are fairly short, so it's difficult to see smaller variations in the data. Those variations are more pronounced within RavenTools using the data.
I think monetization part needs some improvement. Sometimes it stops working.
Second issue is that when you run actor locally on your device using Apify run command, it runs fine and does not show errors. However, when you run on Apify platform, it starts showing error that this python based library is not supported etc. I think, error logging needs to be improved.
Issue support is very slow. If you create an issue it takes a lot of time that somebody reply.
Automated testing also needs to be improved. Testers run simple tests and if extra keys are used or something else, test is failed.
The data it gets from Webmaster Tools and Analytics is great and reporting on it is easy - however, when you're looking at the charts for keyword placement on screen the graphic can be hard to read and often I find myself just checking GWT and BWT separately for easier information if no report needs to be generated.
RavenTools comes with an iPhone app so you can check on your campaigns and clients when you're not at your desk, however, the app crashes quite a bit when you get to the Google Analytics portion of the screen.
Requires Java. This isn't a huge deal as many computers already have it installed, but it's yet another 3rd party component.
The free version has a crawl limit of 500 pages per site. This is fine for smaller sites, but if you're running a big e-commerce site then you'll need to pay for Pro version.
The user interface isn't very pretty. This is an analytics tool so it doesn't really have to be, but it might be helpful for improving the overall user experience.
It's the best because you can just load in a limited amount of money and limit your financial exposure to using a tool like this. so renewing isn't a big consideration... i know that i'm going to need the tool in the future and i'll load it with money accordingly when im ready.
A year ago or so, Raven abandoned many of their organic rank reporting tools in an attempt to favor some Adwords intelligence. The market rebelled, as did I; in our desperation to find an alternative to Raven, none could be found and a great majority of users didn't want/need Adwords data. Months later, Raven reverted. I'd renew with Raven not just because nothing else cuts it, but because they are both trying to innovate, and listening to customers.
The tool has become integrated into our teams daily workings and I have yet to find a tool other than scremaing frog to replicate all of our use cases for it. It's a great tool and we're sticking with it
Apify is incredibly user friendly and has a very simple and direct dashboard that includes tool tips and onboarding for extra help. Plus support is always available when needed to assist with anything you cannot figure out or need help with.
Certain areas, Social Media scheduling, could stand to undergo a complete overhaul. However, most of the RavenTools interface is easy to use. You will not have any issues getting up and running and should there be an issue, the customer service is really good. They also continue to preform updates that make the usability even better
The main problem of Screaming Frog SEO Spider is it being an offline software which limits itself to a single pc and that creates problem when multi user agents want to get involved or even work on it, it’s a difficult task to collaborate on it and do research for keywords at one place
We never needed to contact support directly because the platform was always clear and easy to use. The documentation is thorough, there are plenty of how-to guides, and YouTube.
RavenTools has some of the best Customer Support I have ever received. They are quick to respond and will keep you posted on the progress of your issue. You truly feel as if you are getting customized service. No human is perfect and I have had one situation in which I had to reach out multiple times, but overall I fully trust and approve of their process
Screaming Frog is a relatively primitive system, and doesn't need to be supported by devs or other software. Screaming Frog does interface directly with some programs that are most needed (Google Analytics, Search Console, Page Speed Insights), so that's convenient. It isn't widely supported by other programs, but it also doesn't need to be.
If I would not have come across Apify I would have built my own scrapers and extractors but this would have been very time consuming and intense in maintenance so the main advantage was that it was working very quickly, it had all the scrapers I needed and it just kept working without any issues
I don't have a lot of experience with other tools although we have had a lot of demos of other products. We have often found that by utilizing features in Raven that we didn't know about we could have the same functionality without using another reporting tool. This allows us to continue using one integrated reporting tool.
Screaming Frog SEO Spider is probably the best non-client facing SEO audit tool in terms of technical SEO. There are other tools on the market that do a more complete job of keyword tracking, competitive analysis, and backlink profiles...however, for analyzing the technical SEO health of any website, Screaming Frog is the best
RavenTools has been invaluable in helping us improve ranking through website audits. The ease with which we can correct issues once they arise has resulted in approximately 35% increased productivity from our audit team.
It would be helpful if the reports were nice enough that they could be customer-facing. We have to put the data into our own reporting forms for customer presentation.
Increased employee efficiency - We spend many less hours tracking down and reporting simple meta tags.
Better Client Servicing - We are able to ensure we have a total look at a client's site before we recommend anything.
True Pricing Structure - We are able to more accurately predict how much help a client may need based on factors such as size of site, number of redirects, proper use of meta tags, etc.
