KoalaWriter Review: Best AI and SEO Writing Tool?
I tested Koala Writer to find out if it was worth the hype. Amid so many other AI writing tool options (Scalenut, ContentShake, Jasper AI, Copy AI, Agility Writer to name just a few), is Koala Writer good enough to be worth the $9+/month? Or more!
My TL;DR: KoalaWriter is one of the better content creation tools for people who want to create 10+ articles per month.
It's not for casual explorers, or anyone just starting out in their blogging journey. In fact, I think the paid plans of $9/month are functionally useless, since it results in just 1-2 blog posts per month if you're using their GPT4 model.
But for bigger businesses, affiliate marketers, niche site owners? Koala AI writer is by far the best AI content creator I've come across. All the features make it perfect, cost-effective, and simple to create quality content in bulk.
In this KoalaWriter review, I'll offer an unbiased opinion about whether it's worth $9 a month (or more) to get AI generated content.
What is Koala AI Writer?
Koala AI is a content generator that focuses on SEO. Unlike many other AI tools, this one actually pulls in real time search results, and is able to link to sources.
Koala AI also has an AI chat option, similar to ChatGPT.
I normally use a combination of MarketMuse and ChatGPT for my articles, and I thought Koala Writer sounded like a perfect combination of the two.
What are Koala Writer features?
Koala AI has two sections: the AI chat, and the AI writing tool. I'll briefly discuss the key features of each.
Koala Writer
Koala Writer is the company's main claim to fame. It works in a very simple way.
First, choose your article type. I used Blog Post for my samples. You can also create a product description, an Amazon review,
Then, simply input your keyword, select the GPT version, decide whether you want to use default SEO, manual SEO, or AI-powered SEO. Then choose if you want to use the AI image generator or include YouTube videos, a tone of voice, language, country, and point of view – I, you, or he/she/they.
I will note that for the GPT3.5 version both my custom “Zulie” tone and the SEO tone were not very different. Can you guess which one is which?
(Minor pet peeve: I find it so annoying when people say SEO Optimization. SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization! You're saying Search Engine Optimization Optimization!)
Finally, opt in for real-time search results to include links to up-to-date data, choose whether to enable the outline editor, whether you want an FAQ section, and whether you want key takeaways.
This was my favorite feature by far.
There are additional advanced options, including URLs to link to, a custom outline option, more title instructions, including another section, and disabling intros/conclusions.
Then press “Create Article” and you're away.
Extra features
There were a few other nice-to-haves I'd like to mention:
Integration with WordPress. For businesses or any content creator looking to scale, you want a one-click publishing tool. I liked this.
Integration with Google Sheets. Using their API, you can get ChatGPT responses directly in a Google Sheet. I confess, I don't really understand the benefit of this? Koala AI didn't explain the purpose in their help doc on the subject.
Live Amazon data for affiliate articles. Again, for bloggers who want valuable content creation at scale, this is a great option, especially when combined with the insert URL feature. You can say, “write article on cats. include Amazon affiliate link to cat toys.” And done, money in the bank.
Bulk writing mode. It's simple, you just provide a bunch of comma-separated keywords, press “Bulk Create” then come back a few hours later to see all your content done. Again, this shows Koala AI is definitely geared towards content generation at scale.
How much does Koala AI Writer cost?
Koala AI Writer costs between $0-$2,000 a month. For my math, I'll calculate how much it costs to create a 2,000 word blog post, using either GPT3.5 or GPT4, because using GPT4 counts 5x towards your word count.
You can get the free version, which gives you 5,000 lifetime words on the GPT3.5 version. The free plan does not include access to GPT4, AI-powered SEO, live Amazon data, or real-time search results integration.
Cost per article: $0
Essentials costs $9/month. It gets you real-time search results, AI-powered SEO, or any other integrations. It gives you 15k words, or 3k words using GPT4. From here on out, each incremental increase gets you more words.
Cost per 2k word article: $1.20. If you use GPT4, it's $6/article.
Starter costs $25/month.
$1.11 per article on 3.5, or $5.55 for GPT4.
Professional costs $49/month.
That works out to $0.98 per article on GPT3, or $4.90 per article on GPT4.
Boost costs $99/month.
That works out to $0.79 per article, or $3.96 on GPT4.
Growth costs $179/month.
That's $0.72 per article, or $3.58 on GPT4.
Elite costs $350/month.
That's $0.70 per article, or $3.50 using GPT4.
Note that you may run up against your Koalawriter limit – e.g. on the $9/plan, I can only create 1.6 “articles" before I run out of words.
Each plan also comes with additional access to the AI chatbot it calls Koala Chat, but since it's literally just a skin on ChatGPT I don't see the point of including it.
In short, with the Koala AI tool, you can expect to pay somewhere between $3.50-$6.00 per article if you're using GPT4, or $0.70-$1.20 per article if you're happy with v3.5.
Does this AI Writer create high quality content?
This is a biased answer, but it's truthful to me: I don't think any AI writer can create true quality content. It's good in terms of SEO. It writes long form content pretty well, comprehensively, and we'll see if the MarketMuse'd version of my article ends up ranking.
But to me, quality content means something I'd pay to read. Something I might see on the Atlantic, or as part of a newsletter I love. I have not found a single tool or AI writer that can create truly high quality content by that definition.
That's not to say it can't pass AI detection. When I pasted my unchanged article into Content At Scale's AI detector, it got “Hard to Tell” though it flagged lots of the content as robotic.
My test with Koala Writer
For my Koalawriter review, I asked Koala AI to generate two articles, one using the ChatGPT 3.5 version, and one using GPT4. This is because:
You can access v3.5 on the free version of Koala Writer
Using v4 costs 5x as many words against your paid plan, meaning realistically it's just one article per month if you're on the lowest paying plan. On the Professional plan, at $49/month, you'd get 100,000 words per month. On the GPT4 version, assuming each article is ~2k words, that means you get 10 articles a month for $50.
Basically, I wanted to see if the more expensive AI writer was worth it, and if there was a real difference in tone and quality content.
I'll be honest: I didn't notice a difference. Both were pretty bland to me. If there was a difference, I wouldn't say it's worth 5x as many words, let alone the 25x as much that Koala AI claims it pays to access GPT4.
SEO results of Koala Writer
I don't just want a tool that can create content mindlessly; I've got ChatGPT for that. I want something that will create ranking content. So part of my Koala Writer review is analyzing its effectiveness at SEO.
To do this, I pasted the content of the GPT4 blog post into MarketMuse. It did not score very high (only 33), though I was able to punch it up to a higher score in around 45 minutes.
MarketMuse is an SEO tool that helps you improve your content to be more likely to rank by including key words at a particular density.
I don't know whether MarketMuse or Koala AI has a better idea of SERP and SEO data, but my money is on MarketMuse since SEO is what the company is all about, whereas Koala AI is more of an AI content creation engine with SEO benefits.
In short? The SEO results of Koala Writer are good, but not great, and likely need some improvements on behalf of the writer.
Who would I recommend KoalaWriter to?
Koala Writer is a great AI powered writing tool for:
Amazon affiliate articles
Niche website owners
Experienced bloggers who can quickly edit
Anyone creating content at scale who isn't precious about tone of voice
Anyone thinking about SEO
I would not recommend this AI writer for:
Beginner bloggers just getting started with writing
Anyone with a personal blog
Anyone who loves the content creation process
People who write think pieces or anything opinionated
I'm kind of in the middle. I'm starting to take SEO seriously, and I'd love to have a tool for that. But I also love writing for its own sake.
AI content still reads very stilted and inorganic to me, so I find that for me, Koala AI was best as an outline editor. I did like the outline editor, because it helped me get rid of the more repetitive sections and focus on quality, but for a pure outline editor on its own, I can use ChatGPT.
Koala Writer Vs…
I think Koala Writer is the best AI content generator I've tested for SEO content. It's awesome for writing:
bloggers who blog as a business (i.e. not hobby bloggers)
niche blogs
Affiliate blogs
I don't think it's great for writing:
Social media content
Opinionated content
Personal content
But let's see how it stacks up to its competitors (other AI writer tools) in terms of quality, price, and other features. I compared it to ChatGPT, Jasper AI, and Copy.ai.
In short, for an SEO AI writer tool, Koalawriter is best.
What do other KoalaWriter reviews say?
The testimonials were very promising. I reached out to both the folks featured on the testimonial page, though neither have gotten back to me yet, but both sounded genuine and organic.
Both also wrote their own KoalaWriter reviews on their website.
I also checked Reddit communities for more organic reviews.
From /Cole_South: “When it comes to totally hands off one click blog writing, Koala is the best imo. I use ChatGPT (via API in Google Sheets) for more programmatic stuff, and Zimmwriter occasionally for something really specific.” [Emphasis mine].
However, /SEOpub said: “Seems kind of dumb to pay for Koala. It's just a reskin of ChatGPT.”
Interestingly, I was not able to find any results of folks saying that Koala was great for ranking. I'll let you know how the article I tested with it ranks in a few months.
User Experience and Interface
I found the platform very easy to use, though that's true of many AI tools. What I liked about ti was that it was very streamlined. It does one thing – create SEO'd articles – and it does it well, with no additional feature bloat or unneeded improvements.
My main complaint is that the help documentation was weirdly difficult to find, only linked at the very, very bottom of the home page. It also wasn't very comprehensive.
Good luck if you want to read more about any features, because there's very little additional help or explanation on the subject.
How responsive is their customer support?
I reached out to Customer Support twice. First, I reached out to ask if I could have a free trial of Koala since I was planning on writing a review.
No word, but I was asking for free stuff, so fair enough.
Then, a few days later after purchasing, I asked for some clarification between default SEO optimization and AI-powered SEO optimization. So far no word, either, which is more concerning.
I will say that the discord group seemed active, and the creators of Koala were commenting and replying to things there. I asked my question in the Discord and didn’t instantly receive an answer, but I will update if/when I get a reply.
Does KoalaWriter integrate with other tools or platforms?
As I mentioned, Koala integrates with Google Sheets for more programmatic content, along with WordPress for one-click publishing. (Though I wouldn’t
Pros and Cons
Strengths of KoalaWriter:
One of the better content creation tools for those producing 10+ articles per month.
Cost-effective and simple for creating quality content in bulk, especially for bigger businesses, affiliate marketers, and niche site owners.
Focuses on SEO and pulls in real-time search results, linking to sources.
Provides a variety of features like choosing article type, keyword input, GPT version selection, SEO options, AI image generator, tone of voice, language, country, and point of view selection.
Integration with Google Sheets to get ChatGPT responses directly.
Provides live Amazon data for affiliate articles.
Features a bulk writing mode for content generation at scale.
Offers a range of pricing plans with different features and word limits.
Streamlined platform focused on creating SEO articles without unnecessary features.
User-friendly interface and simple writing process.
Weaknesses of KoalaWriter:
Not suitable for casual users or beginners in blogging.
Paid plans, especially the $9/month plan, may not offer sufficient value for those using the GPT4 model.
The difference in content quality between GPT3.5 and GPT4 versions is not significant, despite the higher cost associated with GPT4.
The content produced may not always be of high quality by certain standards.
The SEO results are good but not exceptional, often requiring additional optimization.
Help documentation is hard to find and not comprehensive.
Customer support responsiveness is questionable, with some queries going unanswered.
Some users view KoalaWriter as just a reskin of ChatGPT.
May not be suitable for those producing opinionated content, personal content, or social media content.
Conclusion
If you're a business who requires a large volume of content, you want it to rank (or be rankable with less effort) and you aren't precious about your writing tone, then KoalaWriter is great for you.
If any of those doesn't apply, I recommend you stick with ChatGPT's free version or do your own writing.
FAQ
What is the Koala Writer writing process like?
Very simple. It has a super user friendly interface, just some toggles to switch on/off, some text boxes to fill out, and then a keyword input.
Does Koala Writer use advanced AI algorithms?
No more advanced that GPT, which is the engine Koala Writer sits on top of.
Will you stay subscribed Koala Writer?
As mentioned, it personally isn't a great fit since I'm not creating content at scale for it to be cost-effective for me to even stay on the $9/month plan.
What was the Koala Writer discord group like?
When I popped in, it was pretty active, with around 400 users.