Backly vs ColdSEO
Backly
backly.io
ColdSEO
coldseo.comSide by side
| Figure | Backly | ColdSEO |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | €9/mo | $79/mo |
| Free plan | — | Yes |
| Free trial | Yes | — |
| Open source | — | — |
| Web | Yes | Yes |
| API | — | Yes |
| Plans published | 3 | 3 |
| Spec score · Link Building Software | 8.7 (#4) | 8.3 (#8) |
| Audience | The homepage identifies SaaS founders, SEO consultants, indie hackers, and content creators as audiences for Backly. | ColdSEO identifies SEO consultants and freelancers, in-house SEO leads, and link-building agencies as its intended users. |
| Privacy | Backly says it does not sell personal data or use it for advertising. | ColdSEO says it does not sell user data or share prospect lists between customers; it lists Stripe, Anthropic, Hunter.io, Mozscape/DataForSEO, and email infrastructure providers as subprocessors. |
| Security | The privacy policy describes TLS/HTTPS encryption in transit, secure database hosting, and access controls. | The privacy policy says SMTP credentials are encrypted at rest with AES-256-GCM, passwords use bcrypt cost 12, traffic is HTTPS-only, and privileged actions are logged. |
| Support | The site lists [email protected], and the Growth and Pro plans include priority support. | The company lists [email protected] and a contact form; Pro and Agency customers receive priority email and chat support. |
Plans
In their own words
Backly
Backly finds potential backlink opportunities and prepares tailored posts for relevant online communities and sites. Users enter a website URL; Backly reads its niche, suggests destinations, and drafts content for each prospect. The homepage says a run returns 5–8 opportunities and takes about 60 seconds to produce drafts. Suggested destinations include Reddit, Quora, Indie Hackers, Hacker News, Dev.to, Product Hunt, Medium, Stack Overflow, niche forums, and Q&A sites. Backly checks whether proposed links resolve. Users review and edit each draft, then publish it themselves by copying and pasting; the service does not post on their behalf. Its stated audiences include SaaS founders, SEO consultants, indie hackers, and content creators. Starter costs €9 a month and includes five generations per month; Growth costs €29 a month for 20 generations, while Pro costs €79 a month for unlimited generations. Each tier includes niche analysis, opportunities, drafts, and link checks. Backly offers a 7-day free trial, requires a card to start, and says cancellation before day seven avoids a charge. It does not guarantee SEO results or rankings.
ColdSEO
ColdSEO is a link-building outreach platform for SEO professionals, combining prospect discovery, personalized email campaigns and backlink monitoring. Prospect Finder searches by keyword, competitor backlinks, content topic or uploaded domains, with filters for authority, traffic, language, country and spam score. Hunter.io helps locate verified email addresses and check them before a campaign sends. Anthropic’s Claude API generates a tailored opening sentence for each prospect. Campaigns can send through Gmail, Google Workspace, Microsoft 365 or custom SMTP. Replies are threaded and categorized, and campaigns periodically check replied prospects’ sites for links to a chosen target URL. Deliverability controls include inbox rotation, send caps, warmup and unsubscribe mechanisms. ColdSEO offers web and API access, but API access is not included in its plans. The free plan has one inbox, 50 prospect credits and 100 sends per month, 25 AI personalizations and one active campaign. Pro is $79 a month; Agency is $199 a month. Monthly credits expire, and campaigns pause at the cap.