Quick review:
Ezoic is a Google-approved partner to monetize a blog with high-paying ads. They pay on time. They use AI to improve revenue. Also, you can earn more money with Ezoic than using Adsense or media.net alone.
Pros:
- You’re not bound by a contract (unless you sign for the premium deal which I don’t recommend).
- There’s no minimum traffic needed to join.
- You can apply with a non-English site.
- They give technologies for free that can save you tons of money.
- Ezoic won’t reject your website if the majority of traffic is not from the US.
Cons:
- Can be confusing for non-technical persons.
- With its different services, it is often a challenge for the support team to understand the problems users are facing.
- Their DNS integration break some websites
Verdict: I am actually using Ezoic and recommend them with their JavaScript integration. I’ve experienced an average of $20 EPMV (per 1000 visits) using them. But it decreased to $5 in recent months.
Sign up for Ezoic and start earning
Why do I Still Recommend Ezoic and When?
- They pay well: you can start making money with a blog early on. I’ve never see them miss a payment.
- No contract: you can remove it anytime if you don’t like it or want to move to another platform.
Also, there’s no guarantee Adthrive, Newor Media, or Mediavine will approve your website after a long wait without monetization or that you’ll make more money with them.
In fact, users with thousands of page views are happily using Ezoic. It’s not a platform to just start with until you’re qualified for platforms with higher pageview requirements.
But DNS integration can cause a lot of technical errors that may affect site traffic. I use and recommend the standalone (Javascript) integration.
For a detailed review of Ezoic, keep reading.
Table Of Contents
You’ll learn everything you should know to decide to join Ezoic or not.
Ezoic Review (2024)
Ezoic can help you make money with high paying display ads on your website. In this post, you’ll find:
- an honest review of Ezoic,
- its pros and cons,
- how it compares to alternatives,
- my earnings and my experience using Ezoic.
What is Ezoic?
Ezoic is an ad management company, approved ad partner of Google, with a suite of tools to help you make money with ads on your website. Here’s how:
- Header Bidding: Ezoic makes hundreds of ad networks and ad exchanges compete for your ad space. With the increasing competition, you earn more money for your ad space.
- Ad sticky & Refresh: Ezoic refreshes ads and allows you to stick ads to remain visible as the user scrolls. This will increase ad impressions which will increase your ad earnings.
- SEO Optimized video player: You can upload videos on Ezoic and embed than on your website. It is a good alternative to hosting videos on YouTube. You earn more money with ads in these videos. And there are no related videos to take visitors out. It’s also an opportunity to get on video search results for an increase in traffic.
- AI Optimized ad placement: Ezoic uses Artificial Intelligence to show the ad sizes, number of ads, and ad position that will increase ad revenue based on a lot of data.
Ezoic makes it possible for low-traffic sites to get access to high paying ads to monetize their traffic.
Sites with more traffic get access to more advertisers and earn more.
How to start using Ezoic?
Go to Ezoic.com to create your free account. For your first 30 days, you get 100% of revenue without a cut.
Ezoic will give you a list of tasks with instructions to complete them:
- integrating your site with Ezoic via a WordPress plugin, name server, Javascript, or Cloudflare.
- creating placeholders manually or adding them via either the browser extension or WordPress plugin.
- Apply for Google Ad Exchange as MCM child.
- Turn ON Ezoic when you’re ready.
There is no traffic requirement. But your site needs to be compliant with Google.
You don’t need a Google Adsense account to join Ezoic. But the website should not be banned by Google Adsense either.
I had issues with their WordPress plugin. The site stopped working on plugin uninstall and I had to delete the folder of the plugin using FTP in CPanel. They improved the plugin but I am no more using WordPress to give it a test.
I recommend standalone integration over name server or Cloudflare.
How do you get paid with Ezoic?
Ezoic pays monthly, at the end of the month, for the previous month’s earnings. The minimum payout is $20.
They pay via PayPal, Direct deposit (US), Wise, check/cheque, and Payoneer.
It is one of the aspects where Ezoic thrive. I was using Ezoic since October 2016, and they never miss a payment.
What is Ezoic Pricing?
Ezoic is 100% free for the first 30 days.
After that, it is either “ad funded” when Ezoic adds an ad at the bottom of the website; or “revenue share” where they keep 10% of ad revenue.
You can access their features for better site experience for users, monetization, analytics for free.
They have a premium program where you pay a subscription to get access to direct deals.
Ezoic Pros
Control over ad placements: with Ezoic, you keep full control over number of ads on pages, ad placements, size, quantities, etc… This is one of my favorite aspects of Ezoic.
No Contract: You don’t sign a contract when you join Ezoic. You’re free to leave whenever you want. PS: There’s a fee for leaving early when you subscribe to premium annual payment.
Big Data Analytics: with Ezoic detailed analytics reports, you get the data you need to grow your site and make more money. You see pages with highest RPM, keywords with highest EPMV, etc… You can focus your efforts on publishing articles that make you money.
Minimum withdrawal of $20 and on-time payment: You don’t have to wait to get paid with Ezoic. You get paid monthly, on Net-30. And the minimum payout is only $20.
Ezoic Cons
Incompatibility with some useful technologies: the way Ezoic works makes it incompatible with a lot of technologies. As example, it is incompatible with Cloudflare full-page cache, not compatible with certain hosts and some WordPress plugins.
Support always respond but not always helping: You’ll always get a reply from a human. But you won’t always get a helpful answer. Sometimes, it seems they do not take the time to read the email or look at your site. At times, they just recommend you articles in their helpdesk not always related to your issue.
Is Ezoic better Than Adsense?
Yes. Ezoic outperforms Adsense in a lot of tests. Adsense could beat Ezoic with high CTR ad units but they moved to pay per impression model.
I use both Ezoic and Adsense.
With Ezoic, you can set ads sticky and to refresh. This will increase ad impressions and earnings.
Also, while the minimum payout of Adsense is $100, Ezoic pays at $20 minimum withdrawal threshold.
The good news is that you can add Adsense in mediation inside Ezoic. They’ll still compete for your ad space and when they win, you’ll see the revenue directly in Adsense dashboard.
Ezoic Premium Review - Is It Worth The Investment?
Ezoic premium is a paid subscription to get higher paying ads from direct deals.
I have mixed feelings about Ezoic Premium.
Actually, with premium you’ll see more revenue in your account. The system will always adjust the revenue so you get your investment back.
Still…
- You should not have to pay in advance for high-paying ads. Ezoic should have given those high-paying ads in the first place. Also, why am I paying a fixed rate in advance when Ezoic doesn’t know yet the deals I’ll find?
- Premium, when paying annually, comes with a contract where you have to pay a fee if you leave early.
- Some days, it looks like Ezoic just moves earnings from normal to premium because when premium goes up, normal goes down.
I don’t recommend a lengthy contract with Ezoic. If you go for premium, maybe for analytics and AI for videos, pay month to month.
Good to know:
You can’t downgrade plans manually. Usually, Ezoic gives 20% reduction when you pay annually or even a free year. But there’s a fee of 50% of the remaining months if you decide to quit early.
Don’t calculate your risks based on your starter plan. Once you move through premium plans, you can’t go back to lower plans to reduce the fees. The only way to lower your plan is to make less money than your actual plan.
So, it’s something to keep in mind when you’re tempted to activate auto upgrade.
Is it worth the investment? If you’re using Ezoic and get invited to premium, use it. The system is setup so you get full potential with premium. It may affect your normal revenue positively and you’ll get what you’ve paid + extra earnings. Always think twice before committing for a yearly plan and turning auto-upgrade ON.
Also, now you know that EPMV of Ezoic compared to RPS of other platforms are often misleading. When you remove premium cost, EPMV is lower than what is displayed.
Ezoic Leap Review For Speed
Most Ezoic users complained about its impact on their site speed. Also because Ezoic had a paid plugin to fix speed issues caused by its scripts. It was called Site Speed Accelerator.
The real problem was because your site was slow because of Ezoic technologies and they asked you to pay to fix it.
At that time, all honest Ezoic reviews mentioned this when they talk about Ezoic speed impact on websites.
Fortunately, they listened to the feedback and came with Ezoic Leap which is free for Ezoic users. It is almost the same features as Site Speed Accelerator but with a different design and now free.
They added features such as scanning website for technologies to give suggestions on better tools.
Overall: Leap is a good tool and is like hit and miss. It works well on dozens of websites using Ezoic.
Unfortunately, it did not work well with my website (see in previous screenshot). Reading reviews of Ezoic on Reddit, I am not the only one in that situation.
I contacted Ezoic about it and they could not find any issue. Without Ezoic my website passed Core Web Vitals but not with Ezoic ads.
Also, some pages passed core web vitals for a day or two but failed the next days. On top of that, they could not find optimization I could do on my side. So, there were inconsistency with LEAP even if my website was cached by Ezoic for 85% of the traffic it received.
Then, I decided to deactivate LEAP because my website was already optimized. I activated Ezoic caching and optimize its settings. After two weeks, my website finally passed Core Web Vitals while using Ezoic ads (without LEAP).
Bottom line: Ezoic leap will speed up some sites. But it will not work on certain websites if you did optimize the site prior integration with Ezoic.
Now I have full control over speed optimization ofmy website because I integrate Ezoic via Javascript. Their script is faster than DNS integration because they don’t have to rewrite the source code for each visitor.
Best Ezoic Alternatives
The best Ezoic alternatives are:
- Journey By Mediavine (10,000 monthly sessions required): better looking ad, generally higher RPM.
- Newor Media (no traffic requirements): had lower RPMin my experience but only require 2ads per page. Good to add on informative pages on an affiliate website.
- Mediavine (50,000 sessions required): the main Mediavine ad management service with more advertisers and video hosting.
- Adtrive (100,000 pageviews required): one of the top management companies.
They are all high paying ad management companies to work with and monetize your traffic.
With Ezoic, you join without a traffic requirement, you have control over ad placements, you get paid fast on Net-30. But, with DNS and Cloudflate integration, it takes control of your DNS, impact your site performance in some cases. It ask you to pay for premium ads.
- Newor Media is a good alternative to Ezoic because you still have control over ad placement, and fast net-30 payment terms and your site remains fast, but you’ll probably get less revenue. They display fewer ads which makes them a good fit for affiliate sites. Unlike Ezoic, they don’t have a native video player.
- Mediavine is a good Ezoic alternative because it has higher-paying ads and your site remains fast. But they require 50,000 sessions to join. Journey is their offering for publishers with blogs receiving 10,000 sessions per month. You have less control over ad placements and they often display more ads than Ezoic. Also, they pay on Net-60 (after two months). Still, I’ve seen people moving from Ezoic to Mediavine and getting 2X the revenue without the fees Ezoic takes for premium.
- Adthrive is another good alternative to Ezoic. They have high-paying ads, you can set up ad placements, they pay on Net-45, and they are focused on improving your ad revenue. The only concern is that they require 100,000 monthly pageviews and reject a lot of applications.
Ezoic Review Verdict
With Ezoic, you can start making money with high paying ads from the start.
Let’s take an example:
Imagine that you need 50,000 sessions to join Mediavine. You stuck on 35,000 monthly visits for 6 months. With Ezoic and $15 EPMV, you’d make $525 each month.
When you reach 50,000 sessions, you could decide on joining Mediavine or stay with Ezoic. You’re not under a contract unless you pay premium annually.
You can leave anytime you want if you don’t like them.
