At first, I was skeptical of AI copywriting tools. Do they even work? Are they coming to take my job and stamp out the flame of human creativity in creating written content?

A mindset shift is required.

Tools like Copy AI aren’t going to replace content marketers or editors, at least not at first. However, these AI content generators are great at helping you structure an article, break through writer’s block, write small bits of repetitive ad copy or production descriptions, and many other writing tasks.

Copy AI was one of the first tools I tried, but I’ve tested several others (and actually regularly use one specific copy.ai competitor).

This article will walk through the top 10 Copy AI alternatives – copywriting software to help you create more and better content.

First, let’s cover Copy AI and what people love about it.

What is Copy AI and why do people love it?

Copy AI is an AI writer that helps you generate ad copy, create long form blog posts, or just rewrite sentences to add some flavor and style to your content. With Copy AI’s automated creativity tools, you can generate marketing copy in seconds.

They’ve got some 1M odd users, so we’re definitely past the point of early adoptions. AI copywriting is here, and it’s effective.

Starting with the user interface, it’s clean and easy to use. You can either start with a template like their blog post wizard or sales landing page template, or you can start from scratch.

Let’s use their blog generator to write a post about Copy.ai alternatives (somewhat meta, yeah?)

You enter your blog title, search keyword, and the tone you’d like the writing to be written in:

Doing this then generates a bunch of blog sections and talking points for you. This is a great way to generate a content brief or outline to plan your article:

You can edit the sections they provide to you, and then you just click “generate content” and it gives you a whole blog post:

Pretty good! It didn’t quite get which tools I wanted to explore in the piece, but man, if I had writer’s blog, it’s over after using this AI software.

Copy.ai is amazing at short form ad copy, product descriptions, and sentence rephrasing as well.

The downsides of Copy AI (why to seek a Copy AI alternative)

Still, many find copy.ai lacking compared to competitors for a few reasons:

• Lack of native integrations. Other AI copywriting tools like Jasper come with native integrations to content optimization software like Surfer SEO. This is hugely beneficial in your content operations process.
• Blog post generator still needs some work. While it has come a long way, the blog post generator suffers from a lack of context, so it tends to require a lot of editing.
• The tool starts out free, and it’s great for small projects and individual use, but team packages require custom pricing and it gets much more expensive.
• No native plagiarism checker. You’ll need to use another tool like Grammarly or a Grammarly alternative.
• CopyAI is somewhat expensive with a monthly plan starting from $49/month

With that in mind, let’s cover the 10 best Copy.ai alternatives.

The 10 Best Copy AI Alternatives

1. Jasper
2. GrowthBar
3. Copysmith
4. Hypotenuse.AI
5. Frase.io
6. Wordtune
7. Dashword
8. Article Forge
9. Snazzy AI
10. Anyword

1. Jasper

Jasper is an AI-powered content writing tool that helps you create high-quality, engaging content for your website or blog.

With Jasper, you can create articles, product descriptions, and even social media posts. The best part? You can create all this content in minutes, not hours!

To get started with Jasper, simply open up the tool and choose a starting template. You can also start a blank project from scratch.  Once you’ve chosen your template, simply fill out the information about your topic and Jasper will do the rest.

In minutes, you’ll have a well-written, engaging piece of content that’s ready to be published on your website or blog.

What sets Jasper apart from other copywriting tools is its use of natural language processing (NLP) and GPT-3. They were, I believe, the first to be provisioned with the ability to create long form blog content. And you know what? It works pretty damn well.

Jasper is also one of the more affordable copywriting tools on this list. Plans start at just $19/month (billed annually). If you need more features, like team collaboration or integrations, you can upgrade to the $49/month plan.

So, if you’re looking for Copyai alternatives that this author uses personally (even to write this article you’re reading, this is my favorite tool. They also have an integration with Surfer, which I also use to plan and optimize long form content. They also just launched an AI image generator that is probably my favorite (other than Midjourney).

Quick tip: their boss mode feature is great! I find it to be the most “accurate” of the content generation tools.

Price: $24/mo for their basic plan when paid annually. However, you should opt for boss mode, which starts at $49/mo

G2 Score: 4.8/5

2. GrowthBar

GrowthBar is the best AI copywriting software for SEO, hands down. It uses machine learning to help you write better content in less time. It’s similar to Copy.ai, with one key difference: it has far more features.

GrowthBar is designed for entrepreneurs and marketers who need to create high-quality content quickly and consistently.

With GrowthBar, you can also track your SEO progress and keyword rankings, conduct keyword research and SEO research, analyze competitors, and of course, generate AI-driven outlines and content.

All of the AI generated text incorporates SEO suggestions into the copy, making it the easiest to use for bloggers hoping to rank in the SERPs.

GrowthBar doesn’t offer a free trial, but they do offer a 5 day money back guarantee, so you can try out all of its features and get a feel for the value of the tool.

Price: $48/mo when paid monthly (big discount for annual plans)

G2 Score: 4.9/5

3. Copysmith

Copysmith.ai is one of the copyai alternatives that offer a more human touch to your copywriting.

Basically, it’s a copywriting bot that helps you improve your copy by making suggestions based on data from over one million high-performing headlines.

Copysmith.ai is aimed at ecommerce marketers and agency founders. Thus, it is a wonderful copywriting tool for content assets like product descriptions, Facebook Ads, and social media marketing.

However, they have all kinds of templates to get you started, including one for long form content:

My favorite use case for this AI tool, however, is short form copy that is oriented towards sales (product descriptions and marketing copy). If you’re looking for a tool to help you write copy that sells, Copysmith.ai is worth considering.

Pricing: Copysmith.ai offers a 7-day free trial and three pricing plans:

• Starter: $19/month
• Professional plan: $59/month
• Enterprise plan: custom pricing

This makes it one of the most affordable writing assistant tools on the market.

Price: starts at $19, but includes a 7-day free trial (no credit card required)

G2 Score: 4.2/5

4. Hypotenuse.ai

Hypotenuse.ai is the copywriting tool for entrepreneurs, copywriters, and marketing teams with more ideas than time.

It is a copywriting platform that helps you write copy faster by automating the research and copywriting process. Like Copysmith, it’s also primarily aimed at ecommerce store owners. They’ve even got a direct integration with Shopify.

With Hypotenuse.ai, you can create high-quality, SEO-optimized copy in minutes. This includes product descriptions, blog articles, and Instagram captions.

Pricing: Hypotenuse.ai offers a 14-day free trial and three pricing plans:

• Starter: $29/mo
• Growth: $59/mo
• Enterprise: custom pricing

While this is a newer AI copywriting tool on the market,  it’s quickly become a favorite for copywriters and content marketers who want to create copy faster without sacrificing quality.

If you’re looking for an AI copywriting tool to help you write better copy, faster, give Hypotenuse.ai a try.

Price: Starts at $29/mo but you can try it for free

G2 Score: 4.2/5

5. Frase.io

Frase is actually one of my favorite tool. It ‘s an AI copywriting tool that not only helps you write copy faster, but also optimize it for SEO.

Pricing: Frase has no free trial but they do offer a money back guarantee and three pricing plans:

• Basic: ​​$44.99/mo
• Team: $114.99/mo
• Enterprise: custom

They also have an SEO add-on $35/mo. This includes unlimited access to the Frase AI Writer, but also other premium features.

Working with Frase starts with the generation of a content brief – essentially, a content outline based on your keyword of choice that reverse-engineers currently ranking content to identify and suggest other keywords, headlines, and assets to include in your content. This is cool because it can also be an alternative to something like Clearscope or Surfer.

When it comes to writing your content in Frase,  you can either start from scratch or use the content brief as a guide. The copy editor includes a built-in dictionary, thesaurus, and tone analyzer to help you optimize your copy for both SEO and readability.

If you ‘re looking for an AI copywriting tool that does it all, Frase is definitely worth checking out.

Price: starts at $44.99/mo

G2 Score: 4.8/5

6. Wordtune

One of the best Copy.ai alternatives is Wordtune, an AI-powered article writing tool that uses a similar interface and style to Copy.ai.

The difference here is that Wordtune operates primarily through their Chrome extension. Their key value proposition is rewriting sentence to generate better copy – clear, compelling, and authentic writing.

You can actually test out the tool for free on their website:

Wordtune works by asking users to upload content they’ve already written (or paste in text directly) and then automatically generating new material based on that content with no need for additional input from users or editing by human editors afterward.

The result is fresh content with your own voice that still sounds natural when read aloud—and you can use copy/paste commands in some platforms (like Google Docs) while composing an article via Wordtune.

This is the most affordable AI copywriting software on the market, but their feature set is pretty limited to rephrasing. You can’t really use this for long form content, and I wouldn’t use it to optimize for sales copy or SEO.

Price: they have a powerful freemium plan, and then their premium plan is only $9.99/mo

G2 Score: 4.2/5

7. Dashword

Dashword is much more of a Clearscope or Surfer competitor than it is a Copy.ai competitor. I wanted to include it on the list, however, because it is a powerful AI tool and content optimization software.

Its primary use case is in creating content briefs. Like Frase or Clearscope, it’s trying to reverse engineer the success factors of content that currently ranks for your keyword, and give you suggestions to help you compete.

These suggestions include things like headlines, word count, and suggested keywords. The cool this here is it not only gives you an outline for your own content, but it also generates content outlines from your competitors so you can compare, contrast, and differentiate your content while still hitting the keyword topics.

It also lets you monitor content proactively as well as generate small bits of copy like meta descriptions.

The ideal set up is to use something like Dashword along with Copy.ai or Jasper.

Price: free! No credit card required. Next plan starts at $39/mo

G2 Score: N/A

8. Article Forge

Article Forge is a copywriting tool that uses AI to help you write better content. It’s designed to be simple, fast and easy-to-use.

The user interface is clean and intuitive; it allows you to quickly upload your text or find content online, then the application will do all the heavy lifting for you.

This AI writing tool uses the same type of deep learning / artificial intelligence models to write content that Google uses to evaluate content. So among all the AI writing tools out there, this one is specifically catered to helping you generate high quality SEO copy.

It will automatically create content using related keywords and your suggested length and word count. In 60 seconds, you’ll have a full blog post – marketing content that is likely to rank.

Price: Starts at $57/mo and this gives you 250,000 words per month. $117/mo gives you unlimited words per month.

G2 Score: 3.6/5

9. Smart Copy (formerly Snazzy.ai)

Snazzy.ai is a new AI-powered content creation tool that uses a system of templates to generate copy. The Snazzy.ai team has created a platform that uses AI to automatically create unique blog posts, landing pages, press releases, and more.

More recently, Snazzy.ai was purchased by Unbounce and is now incorporated into the landing page builder’s broader suite of AI tools to help drive more conversions.

Therefore, it’s my favorite tool for generating sales oriented copy (as opposed to educational long form content or other things).

The technology behind Snazzy.ai works in two ways: first, it allows you to plug in your keywords and target audience demographics so that the system knows what kind of content should be created for them; second, it allows you to select from hundreds of prewritten templates—each with different parameters (like length or tone)—that will result in unique content each time they’re used.

If this sounds like copy.ai but with fewer steps involved (and maybe even less money), then Snazzy might be just what you’re looking for!

Price: starter plan is free and generous. Next plan starts at $49 mo

G2 Score: 4.4/5

10. Anyword

Anyword is a fully automated AI-powered content creation tool that can create articles, blog posts, emails and more. You can use it to write thousands of articles in a matter of days without lifting a finger.

Anyword works by using predictive technology to suggest potential words or phrases based on what you’ve already written. For example, if you start off with the sentence “I love copywriting,” then Anyword will suggest other things like “I love writing” and “I love marketing” before you even type them out yourself!

The results are pretty impressive; I tried it out for this article and it only took me about 30 seconds to write a few paragraphs.

I will warn, however, that Anyword is one of the more expensive AI writing tools on the market, beginning at about $100 per month when paid monthly.

Their AI writing assistant is pretty powerful though and serves many use cases, from social media to email all the way to complete long form content.

Price: $99 /month

G2 Score: 4.8/5

Wrap up on Copy AI alternatives

If you’re looking for a Copy AI alternative to help with content generation – whether for Google Ads, landing pages, marketing copy, or to generate high quality blog posts – this list should give you a good starting point.

My favorite solution on the market is Jasper. It’s just the complete package and I find it to be the best and most accurate AI writer (especially with boss mode).

However, some tools are better at specific things or are cheaper or start with a free plan.

GrowthBar, for example, has many other SEO features. Article Forge automatically does plagiarism checks so you don’t copy others’ content (though many AI writers have embedded plagiarism checks).

Some of it is also preference – if a UI is intuitive and easy to use.

But you’ve got my picks! Now go forth and write more content.

The post The 10 Best Copy AI Alternatives in 2025 appeared first on Alex Birkett.

However, it’s not in everyone’s budget range. And some companies have different needs when it comes to content optimization and on-page SEO writing.

In my case, I also run my personal blog and pay for all the software out of pocket. So when it came time to look into content optimization tools like Clearscope, I realized I wanted to try out other solutions that were more affordable.

So I’ve tested several at this point and wanted to make a list comparing the pros and cons of each and helping you decide on a Clearscope alternative that works for you.

First, a bit of a background on Clearscope so we can use that as a baseline from which to compare other content optimization tools.

What is Clearscope (and why do people love it)?

Clearscope is a content optimization software that helps you plan, write, and edit content to optimize your chances of ranking for a given keyword.

Say, for instance, that I want to rank for the keyword “content marketing metrics.” I simple plug that keyword into Clearscope, and it gives me an editor in which I can write my content.

On the side, I can see a variety of recommended keywords, weighed by both importance and those that are missing from my blog post.

As I write my piece, Clearscope analyzes it and compares my blog post with the top few pages of Google that rank for the same keyword. Then, it computes a score and gives me recommendations on how to improve it (these are based on keywords, keyword density and placement, readability, and other dimensions).

Basically, it helps you rank content, which is an obviously beneficial value proposition for anyone looking to max out the results of their content marketing strategy.

People love it because of its simplicity, its scoring model, and because of its, well, ROI – one can easily test this out by optimizing a bunch of historical content and seeing if rankings improve, and sure enough, it tends to happen.

So what about Clearscope competitors? Let’s dive in and see if anything comes close to the power, simplicity, and effectiveness of Clearscope.

The 9 Best Clearscope Alternatives

1. Surfer SEO
2. Frase
3. MarketMuse
4. SEMrush Content Assistant
5. GrowthBar
6. Dashword
7. Topic
8. Content Harmony
9. SimilarContent

1. Surfer SEO

Surfer is far and away my favorite of the Clearscope alternatives.

First, it’s affordable. It starts at just $49/month, whereas Clearscope’s price starts at $170/mo.

Second, it integrates natively with Jasper, the AI copywriting software. I use this tool all the time to generate outlines and break me out of writer’s block. So the combination of the two is incredibly powerful.

Finally, it’s a damn good tool and I can see that it really works to rank my content. In fact, its content score component may be even more demanding than Clearscope’s, which may frustrate your freelance content writers, but it will likely make your content better in the end.

They’ve got a rich feature set. Of course, you have your content editor and keyword suggestions. They also have a content score feature that ranks your piece out of 100:

This brings into account dimensions like word count, headings, images, and even includes where you include keywords (whether they’re in paragraphs or headers).

They also created AI generated content briefs for you and offer title and header suggestions:

As you can see, I use Surfer SEO and I’m currently using it to optimize this very piece. I clearly recommend it (plus Jasper if you can afford the combo).

G2 Score: 4.8/5

Price: $49/mo – no free trial, but they have a money back guarantee

2. Frase

Frase is an awesome content optimization and conversion tool.

It’s a bit broader in use case than Clearscope or even Surfer. Not only does it produce content briefs and help you optimize on-page SEO, but it offers content analytics and other features to help you measure and identify pages that may need a content refresh.

One cool thing about Frase is that they offer a ton of free SEO tools:

This includes their version of an AI content generator (like Jasper or Copy.ai, an introduction generator, a paraphrasing tool, and much more.

Like the other tools on this list, Frase helps you figure out how long your content should be, what keywords you should include, how readable your post is, and how to optimize it.

They’re probably stronger on the side of generating content briefs, whereas I’d put Clearscope and Surfer a bit ahead when it comes to optimizing content that has already been written.

Anyway, I love Frase. It’s a great product and they’ve got a great team behind it. The best part? They’re even cheaper than Surfer, sitting at $44.99/mo for an introductory price.

G2 Score: 4.8/5

Price: starts at $44.99/mo – no free trial, but they have a 5 day money back guarantee

3. MarketMuse

MarketMuse is the brand name that has been around the longest in this space and one of the most popular Clearscope alternatives. They’re also probably the most catered towards enterprise software companies.

They’re known for their AI content brief tool. As they describe it, their “patented AI collects and analyzes your content, prioritizes your best opportunities based on Authority and ROI, and builds industry-leading topic models.”

The focus on content briefs as a proactive approach, which Surfer, Frase, and Clearscope offer, but it’s not their core strength. This is the function that MarketMuse leans on most heavily, pitching to editors who are tired of spending all of their time tweaking content for SEO purposes.

With MarketMuse, you just get everything in the brief up front, and voila, you save hours on each piece when it comes to editing.

Of course, they’ve got features for historical optimization as well.

I’ve used MarketMuse the least on this list, but it’s got a great reputation in the SEO industry.

G2 Score: 4.6/5

Price: they have a free plan but it’s limited. Standard starts at $7,200/yr

4. Semrush Writing Assistant

Similar to Clearscope, Semrush’s content writing assistant helps you optimize on-page SEO for a blog post.

However, unlike Clearscope, this tool is free, and it’s also just one content optimization tool among Semrush’s entire suite of digital marketing and SEO tools.

I started using it when it was a Google Docs add-on. Now, it’s also part of the Semrush platform.

Like Clearscope, it gives you an overall score based on originality, readability, tone of voice, and SEO dimensions.

Check out this example for the keyword “Clearscope alternatives”

It gives very simple SEO recommendations and writing recommendations for each dimension it uses to calculate the total score.

If you’re looking for a free content optimization tool, this is the one to go with. I also love Semrush’s entire suite of tools. This writing assistant isn’t going to be as powerful as other tools on this list, but it is useful and, of course, it’s free.

G2 Score: 4.6/5

Price: free

5. GrowthBar

GrowthBar is a newer SEO tool, but I already love it.

They’ve got multiple features, ranging from keyword research to AI copywriting, making it a full suite of SEO tools.

Particularly as a Clearscope competitor, their AI content writing assistant, which uses OpenAI / GPT-3, is quite good.

In addition to helping you produce copy and content outlines, the tool helps you with:

• Suggested keywords to use
• Optimal length of the post
• Optimal image count
• Headline count
• Internal and external link count
• Flesch Reading Ease score

One thing that impresses me about GrowthBar is how frequently they add new and powerful features. They started out as a simple Chrome extension, and they’ve since added tons of functionality, including their content optimization and outline generator, as well as typical SEO features like a keyword research tool and search volume data.

Compared to other Clearscope alternatives, GrowthBar is much more feature rich.

G2 score: 4.9/5

Price: $48/mo when paid monthly (discounts for annual pricing). They also offer a free trial.

6. Dashword

Dashword is a content optimization tool that primarily focuses on content planning and content briefs.

They’ve got a slew of free SEO tools, including a meta description generator, people also ask suggestions (for keyword research and related keywords), and a content optimization checker.

Best of all, you can try the tool out for free, no credit card or payment required.

Once you pick a topic or keyword, you’re presented with suggested outlines, as well as seeing the outlines of your competitors that are currently ranking for that keyword. This allows for great SEO intelligence and an ability to differentiate yours when producing the blog post.

Great tool, easy to use, and affordable. Includes content monitoring as well. It’s also much cheaper than other Clearscope alternatives.

G2 score: N/A

Price: $39/mo

7. Topic

Topic is another content optimization and content planning tool that focuses mostly on generating smart content briefs.

It’s easy to use. Enter the focus keyword for your post and using the top 30 results in Google, the tool suggests what headings, questions, and keywords you should include.

Topic also has a Content Grader feature that helps you optimize your piece during and after it is written. This lets you quickly see what your draft is missing. I like to include this step in my editorial process for each article published and aim for an A+ content grade score.

Topic is a bit more expensive than other Clearscope alternatives, but not as pricey as Clearscope.

G2 score: 5/5

Price: $99 / month

8. Content Harmony

Content Harmony is a platform that helps you build awesome content briefs and optimize your content with their AI-driven topic model.

Of the many alternatives to Clearscope, I believe this is one of the few that started out first as a content marketing & SEO agency.

They’ve got a strong feature set that helps you:

• Analyze search intent.
• Review overlapping keywords and entities that have to be included.
• Study competitor document structure.
• Build an outline that covers key questions readers have.
• Cite & link to authoritative sources.
• Identify visual content requirements.

And you get your first 10 briefs for $10, so it’s quite affordable.

The user interface is clean and easy to use, allowing you to expand from a target keyword and get a comprehensive content plan that saves you a ton of time on the research process as well as the content creation process.

G2 score: 4.8/5

Price: $99 per month for 12 content briefs and 50 search intent reports per month

9. SimilarContent

Finally, we have SimilarContent. This tool helps you identify LSI keywords (the most common related keywords found in top google results), entities (anything that can appear on a web page’s SERP), and facts (facts that google knows before most people do).

This is a popular Clearscope alternative, with some 15k users.

It includes common features like calculating average word count, reverse engineering Google search results to offer suggested keywords, and giving you a content grade to help create quality content with relevant terms

It also includes AI copywriting technology to help speed up the time consuming aspect of writing a piece of content.

G2 score: 4.4/5

Price: $79 (One Time lifetime access)

Wrap up on the best Clearscope alternatives

Depending what specific features and data points you need, there are many options for the best Clearscope alternatives.

My personal favorite on this list and the one I’m using to write this is Surfer. But if you want features like AI copywriting, then perhaps a tool like GrowthBar or SimilarContent would be beneficial.

If you’re on a budget, Semrush’s content assistant is free and easy to use.

All of the tools on this list are solid (as is Clearscope). Hope you find this helpful in finding your Clearscope alternatives!

The post The 9 Best Clearscope Alternatives in 2025 appeared first on Alex Birkett.

But there is the best one for you.

Whether you’re a startup, scale up or enterprise; whether you’re in ecommerce, lead generation, or B2B SaaS – there’s an agency out there for you, and hopefully this list will narrow the search for you and help you decide.

The 12 Best Content Marketing Agencies

1. Omniscient Digital
2. Siege Media
3. Grow and Convert
4. Foundation
5. Codeless
6. Optimist
7. Brafton
8. Seer Interactive
9. Seven Atoms
10. Animalz
11. Marketing Insider Group
12. Quill

1. Omniscient Digital

Omniscient Digital is my own agency, so obviously take my personal bias into account when I describe this (and everything else) in the article.

Omniscient Digital is a full service content marketing agency that offers content marketing strategy, content production, content promotion and distribution, and content optimization. We also build content growth models and make sure your analytics are set up so you’re able to attribute the value of our content marketing.

The founders – myself, David Khim, and Allie Decker – met while working at HubSpot. To a degree, we all built our careers on writing and content marketing, and of course, we got to see how content works at HubSpot.

David and I came from the growth side of the organization, and Allie came from freelance writing and worked on thought leadership at HubSpot. This combination of product management, growth-focused performance marketing, and content writing has helped us drive both results and content quality for our clients.

Every engagement starts with a robust discussion of goals and formation of a cogent strategy. Only from there do we produce best in the world content. Promotion depends on strategy, too – sometimes we help clients repurpose thought leadership posts into email marketing, LinkedIn, Twitter, and sales enablement. Much of the time, we help clients build high power links to their new posts.

We primarily focus on B2B SaaS, having helped companies like SAP, Loom, Adobe, BetterUp, Asana, Wunderkind, HotJar, Madison Logic, and AppSumo grow through content.

2. Siege Media

Siege Media is a content marketing & SEO agency focused on the B2C space, including ecommerce, but with many large consumer logos like Zillow, Airbnb, and Casper.

The agency has 100+ employees with tons of experience particularly writing SEO-driven content and attaining backlinks, both actively and passively.

I did an interview with Ross Hudgens, the founder and CEO of Siege, on my podcast. In it, he spoke about why they chose to become a design-focused content marketing agency.

How they do SEO content is different. They’ve got a whole team of designers and heavily index on design as a competitive advantage. This is true of their own content and website, and they also use this to invoke trust and authority for the content they produce for clients.

3. Grow and Convert

Grow and Convert is one of my favorite content marketing agencies because of the thought leadership they’ve put out into the world.

They’ve created frameworks like “pain point SEO” that helped me think about how I approach topic ideation. They’ve also written advanced guides to content marketing attribution that I think elevate the industry.

At heart, they also sell business results and performance marketing, which differs from many content marketing agencies who just sell deliverables and word counts.

Grow and Convert works with both B2B and B2C businesses, with logos like Leadfeeder, Patreon, and Helpspot on their site.

4. Foundation

Foundation Inc is a top tier content marketing agency that is famous for content promotion and content distribution. In other words, they take your content and get it *seen* so it performs well and actually reaches your target audience (perhaps more than half the battle – the “marketing” side of content that is often forgotten).

Ross Simmonds leads Foundation and he’s one of the most interesting and inspirational thought leaders in the space. A very good follow on LinkedIn and Twitter.

The firm, while focusing on content promotion, also offers strategy and content audits, content writing and editing, and audience intelligence. They serve B2B companies.

5. Codeless

Codeless is a high scale content marketing strategy and production agency. Their sister agency, Userp.io, also focuses on digital PR and link building, which is of course a highly complementary offering.

Codeless impresses me for a number of reasons, namely their scale. In a case study, they wrote about how they ramped up content production for Monday.com, writing and optimizing over 750 articles in 9 months.

I asked Brad Smith, their founder, about their process for being able to handle such a high production volume, and he was incredibly generous and smart in describing how they hire writers and build processes:

6. Optimist

Optimist is a collective of sorts – an “anti-agency.”

We interviewed their founder, Tyler Hakes, on the podcast, where explained this novel business model:

I do miss that mustache, by the way.

Anyway, from my conversation with Tyler, I learned that Optimist is eminently focused on good content strategy, which is a good sign. Without a good strategy, your content production efforts are likely going to be wasted.

They focus primarily on serving product-led companies in the software space, and they offer all the standard content services from writing and blogging, strategy, optimization, and promotion.

7. Brafton

Brafton is one of the largest content marketing firms out there right now.

They call themselves a “creative content marketing agency,” and you can see by their services menu that they mainly focus on content production of all various types:

The two services that stand out to me are “video services” and “graphic design,” which are often not offered or are subcontracted by other agencies.

They do, however, offer a whole slew of other services from social media to email marketing and paid as well:

So in this respect, they’re a full service digital marketing agency, though they do seem to focus primarily on content.

8. Seer Interactive

Seer Interactive is definitely not just a content marketing agency – that, in fact, may be a small part of what they do. But I had to include them because their founder, Wil Reynolds, looms large over the content marketing thought leadership space.

They’re a data-driven firm, with analytics at the heart of all their services. And their service range widely, from conversion rate optimization to search engine optimization, creative, analytics, audience intelligence, and more.

Wil and Seer are some of the biggest names in the SEO industry as a whole. They’re likely more at the enterprise tier when it comes to their pricing and companies they work with.

Even if you don’t work with them, their blog and conference talks are great places to learn both introductory and advanced SEO lessons.

9. Seven Atoms

Seven Atoms is an ecommerce content marketing agency that does both inbound marketing and PPC management.

To be honest, it’s hard to find an ecommerce content agency that focuses only on content. Perhaps due to the nature of growth priorities for ecommerce, most of the agencies I’ve heard of or researched tend to be full service. Or at least they also offer paid advertising to complement their SEO and content.

The SEO firms in this space tend to take a technical outlook, focusing on site structure and getting product pages to rank.

However, Seven Atoms does it all – foundational SEO strategy, blogging and content marketing, social media marketing, demand generation and lead nurturing, and even setting up your marketing technology stack (they’re a HubSpot partner).

They’re full service as well, helping you with PPC, paid social, display, and more.

10. Animalz

Animalz is one of the leadest content agencies focused on a wide variety of clients from enterprise companies to startups and VC firms.

The agency is well known for their remarkable thought leadership, led by VP of Marketing Ryan Law.

They’ve introduced concepts to the industry like “is your blog a library or a publication” and “movement first content,” which speaks to companies who are trying to create their own new product category.

According to their website, their services range from product marketing to SEO, brand awareness, lead generation, and content promotion and content distribution (which includes link building, social media copy, and email copy).

Animalz is one of the best known brand names in the content space.

11. Marketing Insider Group

Marketing Insider Group is a content marketing agency working with 30+ company blogs to drive traffic, rankings, and sales.

Run by Michael Brenner, who built many of the content initiatives at SAP, the company focuses on business consulting, teaching clients strategic lessons like how many blog posts would be optimal to publish, how to define proper goals with content marketing, and ultimately, how to establish ROI with the channel.

In fact, Michael Brenner even wrote a book on the subject of content marketing ROI, called The Content Formula.

A quick look at their case studies page shows they don’t necessarily focus themselves on a particular niche, which stories from non-profits, SaaS companies, enterprises, and ecommerce blogs.

12. Quill

This is a recent update to the best content marketing agencies, and an important one.

Quill is different from the rest on this list in that they focus on podcasting. And podcasting is an increasingly important content marketing activity (i.e. we run our own successful podcast for our own agency).

Quill helps huge brands and growing companies develop, product, and market award-winning podcasts to drive reach, awareness, and ultimately, growth.

Need a B2B podcast to target key accounts for sales? They’ve got you covered. Branded content to increase top of funnel awareness? They can do it.

They also built their own software, Cohost, that gives incredibly robust analytics for podcasters, much deeper than other podcast hosting platforms I’ve used.

What is a Content Marketing Agency and How Should You Choose One?

Some people view content as all encompassing, reaching social media marketing, blogging, SEO, video product and video marketing, and sometimes even paid advertising (if it includes the content and media creation).

Some, however, view content marketing as simply blogging and writing.

The true definition, unfortunately, is sort of in the eye of the beholder.

Basically, my definition of a content marketing agency is: a consulting firm that helps a business grow through content. At heart, this means creating content on owned platforms (i.e. for your website). Social media, YouTube, and paid ads are ways you can distribute this content, so they aren’t necessary to define yourself as a content marketing agency (though often, they can be included).

The clause “grow through content” is important. This means the content created needs to have a strategy behind it. Those who just write content are content writers, freelancers, or content writing agencies, but I don’t view them as “content marketing agencies,” because the exclude the “marketing” aspect of it all.

So what criteria are we going to judge agencies on?

Industry and focus

The first thing many people want to know when they work with an agency is, “do you work with other companies like ours?”

This is a good question, and it matters, but it’s not the most important question.

The two benefits to working with someone who specializes in your niche are economies of scale and accumulation of knowledge.

Economies of scale benefit content agencies that specialize for a few reasons.

First, if they work with many writers in the same space, they can typically hire more in-house writers or long term contractors, which means they can lower their costs (and sometimes pass those cost savings onto you). If an agency is diluted in 10 different industries, they have to hire specialists for each of these spaces.

Second, they can do the same thing with link building, which is a product of one’s network. Our agency, for example, specializes in B2B SaaS, and we know essentially every editor who publishes in this space. If we were to, for example, take a client that sells flowers online, it would be very difficult (but not impossible) for us to make connections to build links for them.

Accumulation of knowledge is even more important. As an agency works on several strategies in a given space, they start to learn things that dilettantes can’t. For example, especially in B2B SaaS, the most profitable keywords tend not to show much search volume in standard SEO tools (Ahrefs, Semrush, they all suffer from this).

Because of this underestimation, if you tackle these keywords, you can often print money because the keywords are product led and have very little competition.

So if you can, it does help to find someone focused on ecommerce. Or early stage startups. Or large enterprises. Or B2B SaaS. Whatever your niche and scale is.

Experience and reputation

Obviously, experience and reputation count for something. It’s not easy to maintain a good reputation in this space if you’re not putting out good work. And having many years of experience leads agencies to make fewer mistakes and have more frameworks, tactics, and tools of the trade that you might not have heard about.

We all know now about topic clusters, but not everyone truly understands how to create them and why to create them. I’ve seen so many prospective clients misunderstand this that it’s not even funny.

Experience breeds this hard fought wisdom and teaches agencies to focus on the things that matter and move the needle.

However, that’s not always the case – I still see a lot of mishaps with agencies that have been in business for decades. Wasting tons of time on compiling huge keyword lists of irrelevant topics, spending months creating buyer personas that they don’t end up using, etc.

Reputation, however, is a good bet. If you can get a recommendation from a trusted colleague, I’d take that recommendation seriously.

The converse (someone having had a bad experience), though, you have to take with a grain of salt. Like I said, not all agencies are good fits for all clients. So it could have been the case that goals were misaligned, but that agency could do wonderful work for you. If that’s the case, you should still jump on a call and come with great questions.

Scope

Is your content agency a full service digital marketing agency? Or do they focus only on content marketing?

In content marketing, do they do it all (content strategy, production, promotion, optimization, analytics, operations), or do they specialize in one or a few of these? What’s their secret ingredient among these? Ours is content strategy and analytics, but we offer all of the above.

It’s just my opinion, but you probably shouldn’t get a full service agency to do your content. They often treat it like an afterthought, handing your account off to junior employees, so you end up spending extra money with little to show for it. Of course, if your prerogative is to get one firm in to take your mind off all these channels, that can be a benefit. But in most cases, hiring agencies that solely focus on their “thing” is the way to go.

Cost

This all depends on your budget, there’s no right or wrong answer here.

Some agencies are cheap – a couple thousand bucks a month. Some are more expensive, like mine – our average deal is going to be about $15k a month, but our minimum is around $7k per month.

Typically, cost correlates with quality, but not always. That’s why the other criteria (reputation, scope, experience) need to factor heavily into your equation.

Cost is really just a limiting factor – you have a set budget, and obviously, if an agency is more expensive than that, it’s going to be difficult to hire them. These agencies are typically hiring more senior managing editors, writers, and strategists, so you can’t expect a big discount.

Cost is an easy one to sort out in that way. Most of the agencies on this list are going to be on the more expensive side. Unfortunately, there’s no such thing as free lunch. If you want to save money, you’re going to have to do a lot more work on your side with management, editing, and strategy. For instance, you could hire an agency like mine to come up with your content strategy, and then hire cheaper freelancers or a cheap content mill to write your content. Your mileage may vary.

Conclusion

While there’s no such thing as the “best” content marketing agency, there are better and worse ones, and there’s definitely a best agency for you.

In this list, I compiled 11 of my top content marketing agencies and gave you some criteria by which you can evaluate them. Hopefully, this at least narrows down your selection and makes it easier to choose who you eventually work with.

The post The 12 Best Content Marketing Agencies in 2025 appeared first on Alex Birkett.