What Ahrefs does well
Ahrefs sells licensed data: search volumes, keyword difficulty, a backlink index built over years, and rank tracking. That data is expensive to build and we do not have it. If your question is which keywords to target or who links to you, Ahrefs answers it and Shipwork does not.
Where a data platform stops
A keyword and backlink tool does not tell you what your own site returns to a crawler from a different network, whether AI agents are allowed to read it, whether a Merchant Center field is present on a product, or what broke since yesterday. Those are outside-network and site-level questions, not data questions.
What Shipwork does instead
- Free, server-side checks on any platform with no install and no account.
- Outside-network reachability, so "works for me, 500 for Google" is reproducible.
- AI crawler access, structured data, sitemaps, TLS, DNS and email auth in one place.
- A paid daily watch that records the day something changes: the one thing a snapshot cannot do.
Which should you use?
Use Ahrefs for keyword and backlink research. Use Shipwork for the technical, outside-network checks Ahrefs does not cover, and to watch for the day they break.
- Run the free auditOne crawl, every applicable check, from outside your network.
- AI crawler accessWhether ChatGPT, Claude and others may read your site.
- Every check, explainedThe full list, each with what it inspects and the fix.
- LearnPlain-words guides on feeds, crawlers, schema and sitemaps.
- Shipwork vs AhrefsData platform or site checker?