SEO4Ajax compared to Prerender.io
The feature tables below show the advantages of using SEO4Ajax compared to alternatives like Prerender.io (SaaS).
1. User interface
The user interface allows configuring the service and managing manually the snapshots stored in the cache among other things.
| SEO4Ajax | Prerender.io | |
|---|---|---|
| Backend console | Yes | Yes |
| Multi-user accounts | Yes | No |
| Analytics (bots) | Yes | Yes |
| SEO Reports |
Yes
|
No |
2. API
The API is responsible for serving snapshots to bots and offering a way to control the cache programmatically.
| SEO4Ajax | Prerender.io | |
|---|---|---|
| API Features |
Full
Add/remove snapshots, manage sitemaps, configure the service etc.
|
Basic
Add/remove snapshots
|
| Sitemaps generation | Yes | No |
| On-the-fly snapshots |
Yes
Configurable by user-agent
|
Yes
Always active
|
| Service Level Agreement |
Yes
Up to 99.9%
|
Yes
99.9%, no compensation
|
3. Crawler features
The crawler is responsible for keeping the cache up-to-date. For this purpose it controls scrapers which are responsible for doing snapshots on the website.
| SEO4Ajax | Prerender.io | |
|---|---|---|
| Snapshot caching | Yes | Yes |
| HTTP redirect & error caching |
Yes
Automatic caching of redirects, pages not found (4xx), and errors (5xx)
|
No |
| Capture of inner links |
Yes
Configurable
|
No |
| URL rewriting configuration |
Advanced
URL rewriting based on regular expressions with optional custom HTTP status or redirect
|
Basic
Query parameters stripping
|
| Cache on facebook | Yes | No |
| Custom recache periods |
Yes
Via URLs rules defined in the settings, the sitemaps and the API
|
Yes
Via the sitemaps and the API
|
| Email alerts |
Yes
Quota overage, scraping errors, unreachable website
|
Yes
Quota overage
|
4. Scraper features
The scraper is responsible for doing snapshots. For this purpose it uses a pool of web browsers to interpret web pages, execute all the scripts, and save the resulting snapshots in a cache.
| SEO4Ajax | Prerender.io | |
|---|---|---|
| Based on an evergreen desktop browser |
Yes
Chrome
|
Yes
Chrome headless
|
| Mobile support |
Yes
|
Yes
|
| Page capture debug |
Yes
The activation of debug logs during a capture is accessible via the administration console or the API.
|
Yes
The capture can be debugged on a desktop by installing the open-source version of Prerender.io, configuring it and testing the capture.
|
| Fault detection and tolerance |
Yes
Any failed capture (e.g. 5xx errors, network errors, blank pages) is retried 3 times.
|
No |
| Third-party resources blocking |
Configurable
|
Predefined
Read-only configuration
|
| Multilingual site support |
Yes
|
No |
| Custom HTTP headers | Yes | No |
| Custom user-agent string | Yes | No |
| Framework agnostic | Yes | Yes |