Common questions

Straight answers, in the order people actually ask them. If you don't see yours, ask in Discussions.

Does this work with WordPress?

No. Content ships as pull requests against a Git repository, so your site's source has to live in a GitHub repo. WordPress and other database-backed CMSes can't receive a pull request, so there's no realistic way to bolt this on - be honest with yourself here rather than finding out after an install. If your site is Next.js, Astro, Hugo, Jekyll, or anything else whose source lives in git, you're the intended user. See what you need before installing.

Do I need to pay for anything?

Not to run DispatchSEO itself. The free tier (Search Console only) costs $0 forever and self-hosting has no feature limits - see Is the self-hosted version limited? below. You bring your own Claude subscription (next question); beyond that, DispatchSEO never bills you for agent usage - it isn't a per-token service on top of your plan.

What does it cost to run?

The keyword-data tiers stack, and you decide how far up to go:

| Tier | Cost | What you get | | --- | --- | --- | | Search Console only | $0 | Rankings from GSC, keyword ideas from Autocomplete plus your own impression data | | + a free SerpApi key | $0 (250 searches/month) | Live SERP checks, real positions weekly | | + DataForSEO | pay per call | Search volume, keyword difficulty, domain rating |

Free mode finds keywords you can win; paid mode also knows which ones are worth winning. Full breakdown on Google Search Console and Day to day.

Do I need a Claude subscription? Which plan?

Yes - Claude Code is the engine, and it isn't part of the free Claude plan. Pro, Max, Team, and current Enterprise plans all include it; Pro is the cheapest way in if you're starting from nothing. See Install Claude Code for the full plan table and the five-minute setup.

Can I run it on my laptop?

Yes, for a test drive. DispatchSEO works on schedules, and schedules only run while the machine is on - a laptop that sleeps overnight is only running part time. Content builds catch up on their own once it wakes, and Search Console stats mostly catch up too, but daily rank checks are sampled live once a day: a day the machine slept through is a gap in that chart forever, with no way to backfill it. None of this shows up as a false alarm, though - missed schedules are delays, not failures, and the health checks know the difference between "this broke" and "the machine was off." For daily use we recommend something that stays on - a ~$5 VPS, a Raspberry Pi, or a desktop that never sleeps. See Install on your computer and Install on a VPS.

How is this different from SEObot / Outrank / Ahrefs?

Most SEO content tools learn about your product by crawling your homepage - a shallow proxy for something your Claude Code agent already knows in depth, from working in your actual codebase. DispatchSEO doesn't try to replace that knowledge with its own crawler or its own writer model. It's a backend for the agent you already have: MCP tools holding the queue, the keywords, the rankings, and the Search Console data, plus crons that keep that state fresh. The research and the writing happen in your Claude Code, on your own subscription - DispatchSEO is state, scheduling, and an approval gate around it, not a competing content engine.

Will Google penalize AI-written content?

Google's own guidance is that velocity and authorship aren't the signal - low-value, mass-produced pages are, whoever wrote them. DispatchSEO's guardrails target exactly that risk: a flat cap of one guide a day per site (no burst publishing), a deterministic sameness check that compares each new guide against your site's own back catalogue rather than just competitors' (which is as far as most commercial SEO tools check), a live SERP check before writing so the angle is actually winnable, and - unless you turn on full auto mode - a human approval step before anything ships. None of that is a guarantee. It's the same discipline a careful human writer would apply, applied consistently every time.

How long until I see results?

SEO is slow, and DispatchSEO's dashboard says so in plain language instead of pretending otherwise. The honest shape of it:

| Stage | Typically | What's happening | | --- | --- | --- | | Foundation | Months 1-2 | Content is being built and indexed | | First signals | Month 3 | Google starts showing your pages in results | | Earning clicks | Months 4-7 | Pages start earning real clicks | | Compounding | Months 6-12+ | Authority builds; every new guide starts from a stronger base |

A real site can run ahead of or behind this - it's the typical schedule, not a promise - and the dashboard's Home page tells you which stage you're actually in, computed from your own data instead of a countdown timer.

Can I manage more than one site?

Yes. One deployment manages any number of sites - each project gets its own MCP token, its own queue, its own data, and its own settings. Add the next one from the dashboard the same way you added the first. See Connect your site.

What happens if I stop using it?

Nothing is locked in. Your published content already lives in your own repo as ordinary commits - it stays exactly as published whether DispatchSEO keeps running or not. Uninstalling removes the dashboard, the schedules, and DispatchSEO's own database; it never touches your site's repo. See Uninstalling cleanly.

Is the self-hosted version limited vs the cloud one?

No feature limits either way. Everything the paid cloud does, the self-hosted repo does today, in your own accounts, at $0 beyond whichever paid data tier you choose. The cloud version sells convenience, not capability: bundled keyword data on one bill, a one-click Google connection instead of the service-account ritual, and no machine of your own to keep running.

Can I edit or reject what the agent writes?

Yes. Every guide or tool arrives as a normal pull request against your repo - review it, request changes, edit it directly, or close it, same as any other PR. In semi-automatic mode (the default) nothing merges without you pressing Merge; in automatic mode a page merges itself once its checks pass, but your repo's normal git history still lets you revert it. See Day to day.

What model does it use? Can I change it?

Whatever your own Claude Code is already configured to use. DispatchSEO doesn't pin a model - it runs your agent, on your plan, with whatever default or manually chosen model your Claude Code session already has. Change it the same way you'd change it for any other Claude Code work.

Where does my data live?

Self-hosted: entirely in the Postgres container the install creates on your own machine, reachable only over Docker's internal network - never Supabase, never our servers. Hosted (dispatchseo.com): Supabase, operated by the maintainer. Either way, your site's actual content lives in your own GitHub repo, not in DispatchSEO's database. Full detail on Security and your data.

Is it really open source?

Yes - AGPL-3.0. In one sentence: use it, self-host it, fork it, but if you run a modified version as a service for other people, you have to share that source too.

What if my site doesn't have a blog yet?

Not a blocker. The setup wizard asks, and "not sure" is a valid answer - Claude Code checks your repo during setup and decides what to add. See The setup wizard, step by step.

What happens when my GitHub token expires?

Nothing breaks loudly - one-tap merging (and, on a Docker install using the bundled builder, all content building) quietly stops working on the date you picked when creating it. Come back to the GitHub connection step and paste a fresh token; nothing else needs redoing. See Troubleshooting.

What happens if a scheduled job breaks?

You get a red banner on the dashboard's Home page, and an email if you set one up - never silence. A job that's merely skipped (setup incomplete, or a sleeping laptop) is treated differently from a job that actually failed, and DispatchSEO is careful to only alert on the second kind. See Troubleshooting.