Clarification on ToS; use of Ahrefs

Admin
1

I noticed that AUP states:

Users must not perform any benchmark tests or analyses relating to Netlify Services or website without express permission of Netlify.

and I wanted to clarify if that means services like Ahrefs (which crawl one’s site and analyse for SEO issues) are a no-no, or if the above is referring to attempting to analyse the service Netlify provides.

2

Hi, you are allowed to use auditing tools like PageSpeed Insights or the aforementioned Ahrefs site to analyze your sites.

To be clear, for those two services above or ones like them:

  • You are allowed to use those services to check your sites hosted at Netlify.
  • You are not required to get our express permission before doing so.

Please feel free to continue using Ahrefs or PageSpeed Insights on any or all of your sites hosted here. We do not forbid that in any way. SEO testing and link checking is always allowed for your own sites (meaning don’t try linking checking all the sites at Netlify which do not belong to you). As long as the SEO and link checking is for sites you own, you can do so without asking permission.

So, what does require express permission? The main two categories of tests that require express permission are:

  • load testing
  • penetration/security testing

If you are not doing load testing or penetration/security testing, you are allowed to do so without express permission. If you are doing doing load testing or penetration/security testing that does require our express permission.

Also, if you want to do non-automated security testing, we have a program at HackerOne and we pay bounties for valid vulnerability reports. More information about that here:

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