We realize that the monthly fee can be a problem for some potential customers. However, when we set out to build SECockpit, we had a choice to make: should we create the best keyword tool possible, even at a high cost, or should we cut corners to make it as affordable as possible and release yet another mediocre, underwhelming keyword tool?
I think it's clear which choice we made. The world doesn't need another lukewarm keyword tool. There are more than enough of those already.
There are three categories of keyword tools, in our mind:
1) Keyword tools that straight-out lie to you.
These are the kinds of tools that, for example, create an "SEO difficulty" value based solely on the number of pages returned by Google, when the keyword is searched for in quotes.
These tools show you numbers and values for keywords, but those numbers and values might as well be randomly generated, because they don't have anything to do with real SEO.
2) Keyword tools that are precise, but slow.
Market Samurai is the perfect example. It does have some flaws as described above, but they can all be worked around. Ultimately, it provides a real top-10 analysis of the results, checking the SEO metrics for each page listed. It provides the information you truly need, before you can make an informed decision about any keyword. Unfortunately, getting this information takes 1-2 minutes per keyword.
In addition, because it's a desktop tool and it works through your internet connection, there have been a slew of issues in the past. At times, it has not been working more often than it's been working.
3) SECockpit.
It's alone in the field, because it provides the same real SEO data that Market Samurai (and a few other tools) does, without any of the misleading data and at a speed that's about 200-500 times faster than any desktop tool can ever be.
Instead of waiting 2 minutes for one keyword to be analyzed, you can analyze hundreds and even thousands of keywords in a short amount of time and you can easily find the very best keywords out of a very long list of keywords. No other tool lets you do this.
With SECockpit, a typical keyword search session which might take 10 minutes (getting a list of keywords, expanding it several times, until you have 1500 keywords, filtering down to a smaller set, closer analysis of the few winning keywords). To achieve the same result with a tool like Market Samurai would literally take more than 24 hours of non-stop, back-to-back keyword analysis, with your manual input required again and again, during the whole time. And that's assuming there won't be any issues with proxies/being shut out by Google.
In reality, no one does full, thorough keyword analysis on large keyword lists unless they have a large team working for them or they are using SECockpit.
So the question is: what costs more money?
$40 - $120/month (depending on the edition) or 24 hours of your time to find one set of keywords?
$40 - $120/month (depending on the edition) or a large team of virtual assistants?
$40 - $120/month (depending on the edition) or all the missed opportunities, because you end up compromising for the first decent keyword you find, because, let's be honest, you neither do 24 hour keyword research sessions, no have a large team of virtual assistants doing just keyword research for you.
The truth is that SECockpit is only possible if we charge a monthly rate, because every single search you do costs us money.
And the truth is that SECockpit is not expensive. If keyword research is part of your business, no tool will save you more money than SECockpit.