Looking for a Modash alternative

This page exists because people type the phrase, not because the comparison is fair. Modash indexes creator profiles and audience data and charges a subscription in the region of two hundred dollars a month on annual billing. That is a good price for what it does, and what it does is answer the question of who exists. It does not brief anyone, negotiate anything, chase a delivery, check a claim or hand you an exported file. We do the second list and have no index worth the name. So rather than pretend to a rivalry, this page sets out which of the two problems you have, and says plainly that plenty of readers should buy the subscription and leave.

What Modash is actually good at

Answering questions about people you have not met, quickly and at a price that does not require approval.

• Audience data. Where a creator's followers actually live, which is the single most common reason a shortlist is wrong.
• Filtering at scale. Narrowing a very large index down to a working list in an afternoon rather than a fortnight.
• A check you can run before outreach rather than after a disappointing campaign, which is when audience problems usually surface.
• A price a marketing manager can approve without a business case, which is not true of most of this category.

We will happily tell a brand to buy a search subscription instead of hiring us, and we do, because a tool at two hundred dollars a month is better value than an agency fee when the only missing thing is a list of names.

What a search tool cannot do

Not a criticism. It is a category boundary and the product is clear about it.

1. It cannot tell you whether a creator will reply. Reply rates on cold outreach are low and no index improves them.
2. It cannot write a brief that produces a usable opening, which is where most creator content actually fails.
3. It cannot negotiate a rate, a usage window or an exclusivity term, and those three decide what you own afterwards.
4. It cannot chase a delivery in week three, which is roughly a quarter of the hours on any campaign.
5. It cannot hand you an exported file in the aspect ratio your ad account wants.

Add those five together and you have the job description of the person you would hire to operate the tool. That person is the real cost of the search-first approach, and it is worth costing before you assume software is the cheaper route.

What it costs, both ways

Comparing a subscription with a production cost is comparing different things, which is exactly why the table has this shape.

A year of the subscription is roughly two thousand four hundred dollars, which sits between our two smallest packages. The difference is that one of those numbers buys capability and the other buys output, and a brand short of hours rarely converts the first into the second.

How to tell which one you need

One honest test, which takes five minutes and costs nothing.

1. Write down the last ten creators you approached and what happened. If you cannot name ten, your shortage is names and a search tool fixes it.
2. If you can name ten but seven never replied and two delivered late, your shortage is process rather than discovery.
3. If they all delivered and the content simply did not perform, your shortage is casting judgement and briefing, which is the expensive kind.
4. Only the first of those three is a software problem, and it is the cheapest of the three to solve.

Most brands who ask us about search tools turn out to be in the second or third case. That is not a sales line, it is why this page is not trying to sell against a two hundred dollar subscription.

When Modash is the better buy

Where a search subscription is the right spend.

• Your shortage is names. At around two hundred dollars a month a search subscription is far cheaper than paying anyone a fee for discovery, and we will say so.
• You need audience geography before you commit. Nothing we do replaces the ability to check where a creator's followers actually live, at scale, before outreach.
• You have people and time but no list. A tool multiplies an existing team, and if you have that team our fee is buying capacity you already own.
• You want to verify a supplier, including us. Independent audience data is a reasonable way to check that a recommended creator is what they appear to be.

Using a search tool alongside a supplier

The combination is sensible and we have no objection to a client running one, including for checking our own recommendations.

• Use the audience data to verify that a creator we propose actually reaches the country you sell in. We publish our numbers and the date we measured them, so checking us is easy.
• Use the tool for categories outside our roster. We will tell you when a brief sits outside what we know.
• Keep the discovery in-house and buy production outside. That split is the most efficient arrangement for a small team.
• Do not pay twice for the same function. If you are running a search subscription, do not also pay anyone a fee for discovery.