Limits and cost

Every action that spends third-party credit, what bounds it, and what happens at the ceiling.

Most of what AgencyDash does costs nothing to run again. A handful of things buy data from a third party, and those are bounded per client so one enthusiastic afternoon cannot produce a surprise. This page lists every one of them, what bounds it, and what happens when you reach the bound.

#The principle

Every action that spends states its cost before you press it, and every one of them has a ceiling. A confirmation dialog quotes an estimate; a button that would exceed an allowance is disabled rather than left to fail; a client at a ceiling says so on the page rather than in an error.

Reading never costs anything Opening a report, sorting a table, expanding a past crawl, reading stored SERP features, or a client refreshing their Search visibility page all cost nothing. Everything shown was bought once and is read from storage from then on.

#What spends

Action	Where	Bounded by
A keyword ranking check	Scheduled by cadence, or Check ranking now	Keywords per client × cadence
Keyword volume & difficulty refresh	SEO → Refresh keyword data	Deduplicated per client per day
Keyword discovery	SEO → Research → Look up	A lookup allowance; disabled at zero
Competitor keyword gap	SEO → Research → Run analysis	The same lookup allowance
A site crawl	SEO → Site health → Start crawl	Crawl pages per run, and crawls per client per month
A single-page audit	SEO → Site health → Run audit	Cheap; no separate ceiling
A backlink lookup or refresh	SEO → Links	Its own allowance — it is priced per link returned
AI recommendations	SEO → Recommendations → Generate	AI runs per client per month
AI clause rewrite	Contracts → template editor → Rewrite selection	The same AI allowance
AI contract import	Contracts → templates → Import	The same AI allowance; disabled at zero
Finding a Google Place ID	Client → Profile → Find from address	Needs seo.manage; typing a known ID is free
Syncing Google reviews	Client → Profile → Sync Google reviews	Per location, on demand
Uptime checks	Automatic, every 5 minutes	Uptime monitors per client
Web Health reports	Automatic, from the plugin on each site	Websites reporting per client
Storing deliverable media	Content → upload or import from Canva	Content media storage per client

Two of these cost us rather than a third party Uptime checks, Web Health reports and stored media buy nothing from anybody else's API — what they bound is our own bandwidth and storage. They are ceilings for the same reason as the rest: a number that only ever grows, on a seat price that does not, eventually stops adding up.

#The ceilings

Six numbers, set by the platform and applying to every agency. Your own values are visible wherever they bite — the keyword page says how many slots are left, the crawl form caps Max pages at the ceiling.

Ceiling	Applies to	What happens at the limit
Keywords per client	Tracked phrases at once	The page says so; Add keyword is refused. Untrack something to free a slot.
Crawl pages per run	One crawl	Max pages cannot be set higher.
Crawls per client per month	All of a client's sites	Start crawl is refused until the month rolls over.
Uptime monitors per client	Monitored sites	Start monitoring is refused. Stop or pause one first.
Websites reporting per client	Web Health	Connecting another site is refused. Disconnect one first.
Content media storage per client	Deliverable assets on content items	Uploading and importing are refused, naming what is used and what the allowance is.
AI runs per client per month	Recommendations, rewrites, imports	The button is disabled and says why.
Lookup / backlink allowance	Research and Links	The button is disabled at zero rather than failing on press.

If a ceiling is genuinely too low One agency can be excused from one ceiling. Ask platform support, with the client and the number you need — an enterprise client tracking three hundred phrases is a real case, and it is handled per agency rather than by raising the default for everybody.

#The one lever that dominates everything

SEO cadence, set per client. Every tracked keyword is re-checked on that schedule, so the multiplier applies to the whole keyword set:

Cadence	Checks per keyword per month	Relative to weekly
Monthly	1	About a quarter
Weekly	~4	Baseline
Daily	~30	Roughly seven times

The control warns about this where you set it. Daily is right for an active campaign, for as long as the campaign runs — not as a default across a book of clients.

#Seeing what a client has cost

The client's SEO page carries a Search data spend · last 30 days disclosure. The agency-wide SEO page sorts clients worst first and marks in red any client whose next request would be refused.

#When spending stops on its own

Three states stop paid work without anybody remembering to switch anything off:

A paused client. That is what a pause is for — stopping the meter without tearing the account down. Their portal is untouched.
An offboarded client. No version of "offboarded" should still be buying rankings.
A past-due or suspended agency. An agency that is not paying should not be buying, and the read-only demotion only stops a person pressing a button — it does not stop scheduled work that needs nobody to press anything.

All three are checked in the same place as the module gate, because a spend gate is only worth having if it is the kind you cannot forget to call. See Modules.

#Seats, which are a different thing

Seats are what you pay us: one agent seat per member of staff, one client seat per active client. They are both the invoice and the ceiling — you cannot exceed what you have bought, and you cannot set them below what you are already using. See Agency settings → Subscription.

Offboarding a client frees its seat. Disabling a team member frees theirs.