There is a point in the life of a marketing agency when another client stops feeling like a victory and starts feeling like a systems test. The keyword research still gets done. The audit still runs. What breaks is everything around it: permissions, monthly reports, status questions, approvals, notes and the tiny ritual of making vendor data look like the agency’s work. At that point, the familiar debate between Semrush and Ahrefs changes. The winner is no longer the tool with the most persuasive chart. It is the tool that leaves the fewest loose ends.
This was Semrush’s underappreciated agency advantage. Its former Agency Growth Kit placed a Client Portal, CRM, reporting, lead generation and an agency directory around the search tools. For a shop carrying ten or more accounts under one login, that surrounding layer could turn a collection of SEO projects into something closer to an operating system. Ahrefs could be preferred for its data, interface or research habits, but it did not offer the same native CRM-and-portal proposition.
That history helps explain why many agencies learned to default to Semrush. It does not, however, describe the product shelf in August 2026.
The moat was the Monday morning
Feature comparisons tend to begin where software vendors want them to begin: databases, crawl speed, rows, credits, tracked keywords. Agency owners experience the product elsewhere. They experience it when an account manager has to retrieve a number before a call, when a client cannot remember a password, and when last month’s deck must be rebuilt with this month’s data.
The Agency Growth Kit attacked that repetition. A client could enter a branded portal. Tasks, reports and communication lived nearer the underlying analysis. The agency could put its own name on the output. Lead tools and a directory extended the loop from winning work to servicing it. None of those functions made the backlink index larger. They made the agency feel more put together.
The hidden unit of agency software is not the query. It is the handoff.YesPress analysis
This matters because workflow savings compound by account. A five-minute nuisance repeated once is forgettable. Repeated across a dozen clients, four reporting cycles and several employees, it becomes an operating expense with no line item. An integrated client layer also creates switching costs: reports have templates, clients learn a portal, staff develop habits, and historical notes accumulate.
Semrush had enough breadth to make that promise credible. Its final annual report as a public company described products spanning SEO, generative-engine optimization, paid search, social media, content and competitive intelligence. It reported roughly 108,000 paying customers in 145 countries at the end of 2025. The company had become much more than a keyword tool before Adobe completed its acquisition in April 2026.
Then the bundle came apart
Semrush now says the Agency Growth Kit has been discontinued. Its help documentation says the Client Portal, CRM and Lead Finder were sunset. Former users who need data from the portal or CRM are instructed to contact Semrush’s agency team. That last detail is revealing: a tool built to organize client relationships inevitably holds records people care about after the product itself is gone.
Where the former bundle shortened the loop
The analysis remains. The outlined delivery layer is the part Semrush retired.
The useful pieces have not all vanished. My Reports remains a substantial agency product. Semrush says it can combine data from its own tools and outside marketing platforms, schedule delivery, export PDFs and produce online dashboards. Pro reports add branding, white-labeling, custom domains and wider integrations. The pricing model is now report-by-report: Semrush lists Base reports at $10 a month and Pro reports at $20 a month, with some Base reports included alongside paid toolkits.
The Agency Partners Platform also survives as a separate $90 monthly product. It gives agencies a directory profile, partner status and access to prospective leads. Those are useful capabilities, but the shape is different. A modular catalog lets a buyer pay for what it needs. It also transfers the work of assembling the system back to the buyer.
Count the recurring handoffs your stack removes. Feature totals hide the cost of stitching tools together.
Ahrefs narrowed the gap sideways
Ahrefs did not suddenly become an agency CRM. Its current public pricing presents Dashboard, Site Explorer, Site Audit, Rank Tracker, portfolios, Report Builder and team access. Standard includes twenty unverified projects; Advanced includes fifty. Verified projects are listed as unlimited across the principal plans. Additional users can be added within plan limits. Advanced and Enterprise agencies can also apply for a profile in the Ahrefs agency directory.
Those additions address capacity, collaboration, reporting and discovery. They do not amount to the old Semrush proposition of a native CRM joined to a client portal. The distinction still matters for an agency that wants one vendor to remember the relationship as well as the domain. But the comparison is no longer “Semrush has an agency operating layer and Ahrefs does not.” It is “both cover parts of agency work, neither publicly sells that old integrated layer, and each may require an external client system.”
The current agency layer, based on public product pages
“Not listed” means the capability is not presented on the cited public product and pricing pages, not that an integration or workaround is impossible.
For buyers, this is liberating. The choice does not have to carry the weight of the entire agency. A team can choose its preferred search dataset and pair it with a purpose-built CRM, project manager or reporting layer. That may cost more in subscriptions and integration work. It can also reduce dependence on a single vendor’s product roadmap.
Run the month, not the demo
The cleanest buying test is a rehearsal. Create representative projects, invite the people who will use them, build one real client report and follow it through delivery. Measure the time spent on permissions, branding, explanations and exports. Ask whether a client can understand progress without a staff member narrating every chart. Then model the same process at the account count the agency expects next year.
Data quality should remain part of that test. Agencies sell judgment, and judgment degrades when the inputs are weak. But “best data” is often task-specific. A technical SEO team, a content studio and a digital PR shop may value different indices and workflows. A broad verdict hides those differences.
Price deserves the same full-system treatment. Compare the plan, seats, project limits, reports, add-ons and the outside software required to close the gaps. Include labor. A cheaper subscription that creates hours of recurring production work is not cheaper. An expensive bundle full of unused modules is not integrated; it is cluttered.
There is a larger product lesson here for Adobe, which acquired Semrush as discovery shifts toward AI interfaces. Adobe introduced Brand Visibility in June, combining Semrush’s search corpus and AI-visibility capabilities with its customer-experience products. That expansion addresses where brands are found. Agencies will still need help with what happens after the finding: explaining the result, assigning the work, obtaining approval and showing the next result.
Semrush once connected those motions in a way agencies could feel every Monday. The company may have had good economic or product reasons to replace a bundle with separate offerings. The cost is that its simplest agency story disappeared. Ahrefs has not replaced it outright. It no longer needs to for the old comparison to be obsolete.
The sensible default now is no default at all. Draw the workflow. Price the whole stack. Test the handoffs. The software that wins should be the one that makes the agency calmer when the next client signs.
Questions agencies are asking
Does Semrush still offer Agency Growth Kit?
No. Semrush says Agency Growth Kit has been discontinued as a toolkit. Reporting and agency-directory capabilities are now offered separately.
What happened to its Client Portal and CRM?
Semrush sunset both. Former users who need to retrieve data are directed to contact its agency team.
Does Ahrefs offer an equivalent client layer?
Its public pages show projects, users, portfolios, reporting and an agency directory, but not an integrated native CRM and client portal equivalent to the former Semrush bundle.
Which platform suits a multi-client agency?
That depends on project limits, users, reporting, research preferences and external systems. Test one complete monthly client workflow in each candidate before committing.
Who owns Semrush?
Adobe completed its acquisition of Semrush in April 2026. Semrush is now an Adobe company.