If you're a new print on demand seller, start with eRank's free plan. It costs nothing, it doesn't expire, and it covers the two jobs a small shop needs first: looking up the words buyers type and checking your listings before they go live.
Which tool should a new shop open first?
eRank, for three reasons.
Its free plan has no time limit, so you're not racing a trial clock while you figure out what a tag is. It gives you five keyword lookups and five listing audits every day, which is enough to work on a listing or two at a time. And when you outgrow it, the next step up is $5.99 a month, about the price of a coffee and a cookie.
EverBee is the name you'll hear most alongside it, and it's good at a different job: showing what's selling in a niche. But the sales and revenue figures it's known for aren't in its free plan, and paid plans start at $39 a month, or $299 if you pay for a year up front. That's a lot to spend before you've made a sale.
Alura is the third name that keeps coming up, usually described as an all-in-one option. It might suit you later, but it isn't where I'd start.
The choice makes more sense once you see that these three tools aren't doing the same thing.
What Etsy SEO tools do for a print on demand shop
Strip away the dashboards and there are three jobs.
Finding the words buyers type. You've made a shirt for nurses who love dogs. Do shoppers search "dog mom nurse shirt" or "nurse dog lover gift"? A keyword tool shows you which phrases get searched and how many other sellers are chasing them.
Checking a listing. You've written a title and picked your tags. An audit tool reads the listing and tells you where it falls short of what Etsy says it wants, such as unused tags or a title that buries the main phrase.
Seeing what sells in a niche. Before you design another ten mugs, you'd like to know whether funny teacher mugs are moving or dead. Product research tools estimate views, sales and revenue for listings already on Etsy.
A brand-new shop needs the first two right away. The third matters once you have listings up and are deciding what to add.
What eRank, EverBee and Alura cost, and what's free
Here's each plan side by side.
| Plan | Monthly | Yearly | What you get |
|---|---|---|---|
| eRank Free | $0 | $0 | No time limit. 5 keyword lookups and 5 listing audits a day, 1 AI Listing Helper use a day, 1 shop, up to 50 listings, 1 keyword list, 10 rank-checker lookups, browser extension. No competitor tracking. |
| eRank Basic | $5.99 | $65.99 | 100 keyword lookups and 50 audits a day, up to 200 listings, 5 competitors monitored |
| eRank Pro | $9.99 | $94.99 | 200 lookups and 200 audits a day, up to 4,000 listings, 50 competitors |
| eRank Expert | $29.99 | $269.99 | 500 lookups and 500 audits a day, up to 5,000 listings, 200 competitors |
| EverBee Hobby | $0 | $0 | Views, reviews and favorites only. Keyword research capped at 10 keywords, basic filters. Favorites limited to 5 keywords, 5 shops and 1 folder. No sales or revenue figures. |
| EverBee Growth | $39 | $299 | Sales, revenue and conversion-rate analytics, unlimited keyword research with Keyword Score, Tag Analyzer, 100 AI actions a month, 3 store connections |
| EverBee Business | $99 | $828 | Unlimited AI actions, custom filters, favorites and store connections. Trend patterns over 3 to 24+ months. |
| Alura Free | $0 | $0 | Up to 5 searches a day in each tool, 10 listing optimizations, limited research databases, profit calculator, browser extension |
| Alura Basic | $11.99 | $7.99 a month, billed yearly | Up to 50 searches a day in each tool, up to 100 listing optimizations, saved lists and folders |
| Alura Growth | $29.99 | $14.99 a month, billed yearly | Ten times the usage, full research databases, advanced data and filters, Etsy Ads optimization |
| Alura Professional | $69.99 | $29.99 a month, billed yearly | Unlimited usage, multiple shops, data export |
A few things stand out on the eRank plans page. Paying yearly saves you roughly $6 on Basic, $25 on Pro and $90 on Expert. On Basic that's too small to bother with. I'd pay monthly until you're sure you'll keep using it.
EverBee is the opposite. The $24.99 and $69 you'll see on the EverBee pricing page are what its plans cost per month when you pay for a year up front, which is $299 and $828. Pay month by month and Growth is $39 and Business is $99, so twelve months of Growth comes to $468 that way. That's a real saving for committing, but only if you're sure you'll use it for a full year. EverBee also says it doesn't offer a free trial, so the Hobby plan is your only way to look around before paying.
Alura prices the same way. The Alura pricing page opens on yearly billing, where Basic is $7.99 a month, Growth $14.99 and Professional $29.99. Switch it to monthly and they become $11.99, $29.99 and $69.99. Its free plan gives you up to 5 searches a day in each tool and 10 listing optimizations, which is close to what the eRank Free row offers.
The limits look abstract in a table. They get real when you sit down to write tags.
Keyword and tag research: filling your 13 tags
Etsy gives every listing 13 tags, each up to 20 characters. Using all 13 is one of the simplest things you can do to get found, and the trick is filling them with phrases a small shop has a chance on.
A tag like "funny shirt" pits you against a mountain of listings from shops with years of sales behind them. eRank's own advice is to go for long-tail phrases, built by adding details such as style, size, color, occasion or recipient. So "funny shirt" becomes "retired teacher gift" or "plant mom tee". Fewer people search those, but the ones who do know what they want, and fewer sellers are competing for them.
What eRank shows you
Type a phrase into eRank's keyword tool and you get average monthly searches, average clicks, click-through rate and how many sellers are competing for it, based on the past 12 months. For a tag decision you're mostly weighing two of those: are people searching this, and how crowded is it?
Where the free plan pinches
Say you're writing tags for one new hoodie listing and you've brainstormed 13 candidate phrases. On eRank's free plan you can check five today, five tomorrow and the last three the day after. That's three days for one listing, before you've tested any alternatives.
That's the moment $5.99 starts to make sense. A hundred lookups a day lets you check every candidate for several listings in one sitting.
How EverBee compares here
EverBee's free plan caps keyword research at 10 keywords with basic filters. Its better keyword features, unlimited research with a Keyword Score and a Tag Analyzer, come with the Growth plan, at $39 month to month. For tag research alone, eRank Basic gives you plenty for $5.99.
Once the tags are chosen, the next question is whether the listing they sit in holds together.
Listing audits: fixing a listing before it goes live
eRank's listing audit grades a listing against Etsy's own published search guide and Google's search guidelines. It looks at your title and tags, where your keywords are placed, and your word and character counts. Think of it as a second pair of eyes that catches the tag you left blank or the title that opens with your shop name instead of what the product is.
The best part for a new seller is that it works on draft listings. You can write the listing, run the audit, fix what it flags and only then publish, so you're not patching live listings after the fact.
Five free audits a day goes further than five keyword lookups. If your shop has 20 listings, you can audit every one in four days without paying anything. A brand-new shop adding a couple of designs a week will rarely hit the cap.
One caution: a high grade means your listing follows the rules. It doesn't mean buyers want the design, which is a different problem and the one the other tools try to solve.
Finding what to sell: EverBee, Alura and the paid wall
This is EverBee's territory. Its pitch is letting you look at existing Etsy listings and see estimates of how they're doing, so you can spot niches with demand before you design for them.
The catch is where the line falls between free and paid. On the Hobby plan you see views, reviews and favorites. Those are useful hints. A listing with lots of favorites is clearly catching eyes. But the estimated sales, revenue and conversion rates sit behind the Growth plan, at $39 a month or $299 for the year.
Alura gets mentioned for product research too, as part of its all-in-one pitch. It draws the line in a similar place: the free plan includes a limited version of its research databases, and the full ones come with the Growth plan.
My view is that product research data is most valuable when you already have a shop to apply it to. If you have three listings and no sales, knowing a competitor's estimated revenue doesn't help you much. You'll learn more by publishing 20 well-tagged designs and watching which ones get views.
Do you need a paid tool at all?
Not at first, and maybe not for a while.
Do the math against your own margin. Suppose you keep about $5 on each shirt after the print cost, shipping and Etsy's fees. That figure is an assumption, so swap in your own. A $39 plan then takes eight sales a month just to cover itself. If you're selling eight shirts a month, all of your profit goes to software. A $5.99 plan costs a little over one sale.
You can also do a fair amount with no tool. Start typing a phrase into Etsy's search bar and it suggests what shoppers commonly search, which is free tag inspiration straight from the marketplace. Once your shop has some traffic, Shop Stats shows the search terms that brought people to your listings. Those are real terms from real visitors to your shop, which no third-party tool can match.
That brings up something to keep in mind with all three tools. The search volumes, sales and revenue figures they show are their own estimates. Etsy doesn't hand out those numbers. Use them to compare one phrase against another, or one niche against another, and don't read them as exact counts.
Which tool fits your shop right now
Zero to about 20 listings, no budget: eRank Free. Audit every draft before publishing and spend your five daily lookups on the tags you're least sure about. The downsides are the slow pace of tag research and the lack of competitor tracking.
Adding listings every week and waiting on lookups: eRank Basic. The sign it's time is simple: you keep running out of lookups before you've finished a listing. If you rarely hit the cap, stay on free. eRank's weak spot at any tier is that it's a research and audit tool first, so it won't hand you product ideas the way EverBee tries to.
A working shop with steady sales, deciding what to design next: this is when EverBee Growth is worth a look. Try the Hobby plan first so you know your way around it before you pay. Its downside is the price, and the fact that the free plan holds back the data you came for.
Curious about Alura: compare its free plan against eRank's on daily limits, and its paid price against what you'd use. An all-in-one tool only saves money if you'd otherwise pay for two.
Whichever you pick, upgrade when a daily limit is slowing down work you're already doing, not because you hope the paid version will bring sales by itself.
FAQ
Does Etsy have its own keyword tool?
Not a dedicated one. You get search bar suggestions as you type, and Shop Stats shows which search terms led shoppers to your listings. Both are free and worth using alongside any tool.
How reliable are the search and sales numbers in these tools?
Treat them as estimates. They're good for comparing options, like whether "dog dad mug" looks busier than "dog dad cup". Don't build a sales forecast on them.
Do I need more than one tool?
Not when you're starting out. One tool for keywords and audits covers a new shop. A second tool for product research only earns its place once you have listings, some sales and a real question about what to make next.
How do I find low-competition tags?
Start with a broad phrase and add details: who it's for, the occasion, the style, the color. Then check each version and look for ones with some searches and fewer competing sellers. Keep each tag within Etsy's 20-character limit, and use all 13.
Can I audit a listing before I publish it?
Yes, eRank's audit works on drafts, and the free plan includes five audits a day. Run it, fix what it flags, then publish.
