Ahrefs told legacy users to upgrade or lose support, triggering backlash on Twitter. The hosts compare it to Netflix's price hike and argue that abandoning loyal customers damages brand reputation more than the revenue gain is worth.
All right. So we're going to talk about how customer service is actually your marketing, or it's a big piece of your marketing. So those of you that can see on YouTube right now, you can see my screen, but I'm going to read off what's happening here. And Neil, feel free to tell me if I missed any gaps. So this is a post from someone. This guy's name is Jason Mills. This is on Twitter or X. So he says, thanks, Ahrefs. Now it's time for me to decide whether to make the switch. And this is not a good way to treat 5-year-plus customers. And he's like, is it time to move to SEMrush? And in the screenshot, what it says is, it's an Ahrefs dashboard. And at the top of it in red, it says, action required by November 20th, 2023. Your legacy plan support is ending. Basically saying you need to upgrade, AKA pay us more money. And so if I scroll down, Neil, you probably remember this guy, Ronnie, the watch guy. Yeah, I remember Ronnie.
Nice guy.
Yeah. So Ronnie's like, did that 6 months ago, to be honest, and worked out better for me in the long run. So he's basically supporting Ahrefs, right? But what happens here is that everyone just starts to— so Ahrefs jumps in and then they're like, oh, please see this announcement. Don't hesitate to reach out if you have additional support concerns, blah, blah, blah. And then he's like, I can't see how I'm in the top 15% of usage. And then people start piling into this Twitter thread. And the way this is managed, I love Ahrefs by the way. We both love Tim Soulo. I think it's great. But I think the way this was managed was not ideal. And so more and more people jump in and say, oh, I'm making the switch to Semrush. You know, I love Ahrefs, but I made the switch. And so that's why we wanted to talk about how customer service can be a major impact when it comes to your marketing.
The founder says, based on your screen, Ahrefs is preparing to stop renewing around 15% of legacy subscriptions consuming the most data so we can serve everyone else. Oh, you just switched your screen. I made it bigger. So to serve everyone else better. Somewhere around 2 years ago. So pretty much what they're saying is if you're a heavy user, we're stopping to support you, whether it's due to cost or whatever it may end up being. But it's funny because if I was a very active user, I would be pissed off because I'm like, wait, I'm one of your loyal customers and I'm getting penalized for actually using your product.
Right. So these people, there could be an argument. Typically in SaaS, what you would do to preserve that customer goodwill is you would grandfather them in. And there could be an issue here. Like this guy made a good point. He's like, seems reasonable to block those who scrape against your wishes. And that's actually a guy that works at Google, John Mu.
Yeah.
Yeah, so.
At the end of the day, if you do anything to hike up customer pricing, unless they're very, very reliant on you, you're going to get people who are going to be pissy. A great example of this is Netflix just increased their pricing. I don't know if you saw it, but I got an email saying I got to pay Netflix more. I was pissed off, but I'm so reliant on Netflix. And yes, there's a lot of alternatives, but the content's different, right? Like SEO tools, the solution, whether you use Ahrefs or SEMrush or any of the ones out there, we have a few ourselves, you can kind of get a lot of the similar stuff, but there's a big difference from Netflix and Amazon Prime because the content is drastically different because they all have their own original shows. So even though Netflix increased their pricing and it sucks, I don't really have a choice and I'll pay up for it. But when you're increasing your price and there's a lot of alternatives that are very, very similar and there's not a ton of differentiation, you will lose and people will start churning.
I think it's— so at the end of the day, you're— what is it? I think it's Peter Drucker that said this. So Peter Drucker says that the point of a business is to generate a customer, right? And also, like, you generate a customer, you also want to keep the customers too. So I look, we still love Ahrefs as a product. We have no ill will towards their, like, Tim Soulo or whatever. Like, we're friends with them. But we think, you know, in general, if you're going to look at this, think about grandfathering in the future. Otherwise, you're going to get negative blowback like this. There's other stuff going on with what they're tweeting about. I'm not going to talk about that. But, you know, that is the lesson. So we'll keep this one short and sweet. Anything else, Neil?
Yeah. The last thing I would have to add is it's, you know, it's not just with Pricing, anything that can really disrupt loyal customers. And if you're a highly profitable company, which I'm assuming Ahrefs is based on, you know, indirect or messages that they've posted online, it's kind of obvious that they do extremely well financially. I think they talk about how they've done like over $100 million or someone has online.
I think it's close to $100 million a year.
Yeah. And 50 employees, you can assume they're highly profitable. Like there's a certain point where you're just Better off just not making as much money and keeping people happy, because when something happens that can tarnish your brand, it's really hard to recover from it in the future.
You know what I'll call out too? They do some interesting things. What I like about them—this will be the last thing. This kind of ties in with sometimes it's a risky. They they like to take risks, right? And so, like them making a search engine, in my opinion, like that does take some focus away from the business, and then like kind of going at like the one of their competitors pretty publicly on Twitter. Like, that is another thing, right? There's like sometimes like, you know, risks will yield nice rewards, but sometimes you have to pay the price as well. And I think in this case they're kind of paying the price. So that is all that it is. Anyway, that is it for today. Please don't forget to rate, review, subscribe, and we'll see you tomorrow.
