Ezoic is an automated website testing company that enables publishers to evaluate and optimize ad placements and website layouts.
Utilizing AdSense and DoubleClick Ad Exchange, Ezoic helps publishers maximize revenue and improve user experience across desktop, mobile and tablet.
There are many questions that publishers have about Ezoic so these are some of the most common questions publisher have and my best attempt to answer them honestly.
Table of Contents
- Is Ezoic a Scam?
- Does Ezoic Take any Site?
- Why Did People Stop Recommending Ezoic?
- Is Adsense Mandatory for Ezoic Approval?
- Does Ezoic Offer Free Hosting?
- Sites Pending Approval in Ad Manager
- Is Ezoic Slower than Adsense?
- Hosting Provider Compatible with Ezoic
- Can I Stop using Ezoic Leap?
- Is CloudFlare Full Page Caching Compatible with Ezoic?
- Can I use Caching Plugins with Ezoic
- Publishers have Control over the Ad Placements?
- Should I use Ezoic Chrome Extension?
- Can I Split Test Adsense vs Ezoic Ads?
- Adsense Mediation not Working
- Do you Really Need to Install the Ezoic Plugin?
- Ezoic Premium
- Does Ezoic Staff Have Access to my Data?
- Ezoic or Mediavine?
- Final Thoughts
Is Ezoic a Scam?
Absolutely not.
I don’t agree with everything Ezoic does but they are a legit company focused on making profit like most companies out there.
They are very popular and all sorts of people in the making money online used to recommend them.
If you join Ezoic and you start using shady tactics, Adsense and Ezoic might ban you, so you better play by the rules if you use them to monetize your site.
Does Ezoic Take any Site?
Ezoic is helping a lot of publishers make money online, especially publishers who are not targeting a US audience.
Publishers who have a non-US audience have a difficult time getting accepted by the most popular ad networks so Ezoic deserves some credit for giving small publisher a chance
Why Did People Stop Recommending Ezoic?
Lots of influencers stopped recommending Ezoic because the Ezoic Affiliate Program got shut down so now they don’t have an incentive to continue promoting them.
Is Adsense Mandatory for Ezoic Approval?
You don’t need an AdSense account to get your site approved by Ezoic
If a site has been banned or penalized by AdSense, it is unlikely Ezoic will be able to approve the site for using Monetization until the penalty is removed.
Does Ezoic Offer Free Hosting?
Ezoic hosting is free, and basically featureless for that reason, but it’s shared AWS with reasonable bandwidth that adjusts to the site traffic.
It doesn’t provide CPanel or any other common host features other than SFTP and database connections.
They offer free hosting, they are not the new SiteGround or the new Cloudways, you might not a get instant support.
Be ready to manage your site or you will end up with issues like this:
Another Ezoic hosting posted this the other day.
Those are some examples that show that Ezoic Free hosting is not for everyone
Sites Pending Approval in Ad Manager
Once your ad manager account is created, you need to get all your sites submitted to Ezoic approved.
I waited around 5 business days to get most of them approved.
If your concern is about your google ad manager domain status, you can reach out to Ezoic support so they can review your site and manually submit your site for review.
Is Ezoic Slower than Adsense?
It is true that that Ezoic advertising is heavier than Adsense. You can check site using Ezoic ads and see for yourself.
For example, check OwnTheYard.com
If you check the source code of any site using, you will find that Ezoic adds a bunch of lines of code to your site’s HTML.
I am not a coder. I am not sure what each one of those lines does but I hate the fact that they are there.
Those lines of code are gonna slow down your site a bit.
Hosting Provider Compatible with Ezoic
There are a few hosting providers blocking Ezoic IP’s and they don’t want to whitelist them because they are way too many.
I suggest moving to a better hosting provider such as Cloudways:
The cheaper one is enough to host several sites if you use Ezoic caching
Can I Stop using Ezoic Leap?
This is my personal opinion but I think you should optimize everything at the application level and use Ezoic caching.
Ezoic Leap was created when everyone thought their sites were going to disappear the Search Results if they didn’t meet Google speed expectations.
You don’t have to use it if you have a better solution.
Is CloudFlare Full Page Caching Compatible with Ezoic?
I cleared Ezoic Cloud Caching and then I deactivated it. Then I wrote three page rules to enable CloudFlare Full Page Caching.
I thought everything was gonna be fine despite I got a message on my dashboard saying that I shouldn’t use CloudFlare Full Page Caching
I didn’t give a crap about that warning and continued with the experiment.
Everything was doing great until I noticed these two issues:
- Ezoic analytics was not able to register all visitors to my site
- Ezoic ads meant for desktop were being shown on mobile devices and vice versa.
Cloudflare APO is also not compatible with Ezoic
Can I use Caching Plugins with Ezoic
I am such a being believer in using Cloudflare APO or CloudFlare Full Page Caching but if you want to monetize your sites with Ezoic, you can do that.
I recommend using Perfmatters to handle everything at the server level and then activate Ezoic Caching.
- I wouldn’t use a Caching Plugin because Perfmatters takes care of 80% or more of what caching plugins do.
- I wouldn’t use Ezoic Leap because Perfmatters is way superior to it.
If you still want to use a caching plugin like WP Rocket or a free plugin, make sure you know the reason why you want to do that.
Ezoic doesn’t recommend caching plugins because there might be problem with the caching at the server level generated by caching plugins and caching at the CDN level generated by Ezoic
If you know Ezoic well, you know that Ezoic warnings and recommendation are crap.
But you can still get a good cache hit rate if you are not clearing cache every five minutes
Just choose something higher than a week and you will be fine.
You can keep caching plugins as long as you deactivate and delete the Ezoic plugin.
The Ezoic plugin deliberately prevents caching so the only way around is not using their plugin.
If you don’t use the Ezoic plugin, you should clear your site cache manually.
Publishers have Control over the Ad Placements?
Yes, you have full control over you ad placements. You can use a conservative approach or you can spam your content with ads.
I recommend using Ad Inserter to add Ezoic ads or wrap your existing Adsense units.
Should I use Ezoic Chrome Extension?
I don’t recommend using the Ezoic Chrome Extension to place your ads for two main reasons.
- Most of the placeholders will be gone once you change your theme or update your site structure.
- It is hard to predict where the ads will show when you make changes to your site layout.
I recommend using the Ad Inserter plugin to add placeholders.
Can I Split Test Adsense vs Ezoic Ads?
You can definitely do split testing.
Ezoic recommends that you go full Ezoic because you will make more money but you can definitely test it!
You can do this by changing your traffic settings to 50% here:
Adsense Mediation not Working
Sometimes Ezoic publishers click on Adsense Mediation and they get this screen
One thing that fixed it was disabling my advertisement blocker or whitelist Ezoic.
Once you do that, you will find the options to start the Adsense mediation process.
You’ll need some patience since the approval can take weeks.
Do you Really Need to Install the Ezoic Plugin?
You don’t really need to use the Ezoic Plugin
You can use Ad Inserter to add placeholders and have more control over the place and the quantity of ads shown to your visitors
You can integrate your site by using Cloudflare and forget about the need of the plugin.
Perfmatters is a way better tool than Ezoic Leap.
Ezoic Premium
I don’t really like the premium model that we have now.
I have read many publishers stating that Ezoic Premium pays itself or that you are gonna get downgraded to a lower plan if you don’t make what Premium says you would do.
That doesn’t sound like the best deal ever at all.
Have a look at these plans.
If Ezoic makes me $200 a month, I am happy with them taking $50, and not $140 as they do now.
Despite how horrible those plans are, some Ezoic publishes seem to love Ezoic Premium
Does Ezoic Staff Have Access to my Data?
I understand that Ezoic needs access to Google Ad Manager and to an extent to my Google Adsense account.
But why do you want to have access to my Google Search Console and my Google Analytics?
I wonder if the Ezoic staff knows what the big-money sites are and what topics bring the most revenue by having a look at those big-money site stats.
If they are a serious company, I bet all that information is confidential but you never know.
Ezoic or Mediavine?
Most people move from Ezoic Mediavine if opportunity knocks. You can go back to Ezoic whenever you want.
John Dykstra moved from Ezoic to AdThrive and then from AdThrive to Mediavine.
This video might help make up your mind:
Final Thoughts
I think I have said this before but Ezoic is a very misunderstood platform.
They want to be different but Publishers don’t seem to like the areas in which Ezoic is trying to stand out.
Ezoic knows what publishers are bothered by the most but they don’t seem to care. They introduce stuff and changes that nobody is asking for.
