Comparison
Revive is the default answer for self-serve ad serving, and it has earned that — it has been around, in one form or another, since about 2000. Here is where we differ, including where they win.
| Revive Adserver Hosted | Vrtasyn | |
|---|---|---|
| Free tier | None — $10/month minimum, no trial | 5,000 requests/month, no card, no expiry |
| Entry price | $10/mo for 1M requests | $9/mo for 1M requests (free below 5k) |
| 5M requests | $50/month | $29/month |
| Time to first ad | Account created "up to one business day" after payment | Immediate — sign in and you have an account |
| Stats freshness | Summarised once per hour | Near real time |
| Export your data | Cannot be exported on cancellation | CSV export, any time |
| Conversion & revenue tracking | Conversion counting | Click-ID attribution with order value and ROAS |
| Self-serve advertiser checkout | Not offered | Media kit page with card checkout |
| Interface | The open-source Revive admin | Three concepts: sites, placements, campaigns |
| Creative formats | Image, HTML and third-party tags | Image, text, native, video, HTML and third-party tags |
| First-party ad serving | Not possible — one shared domain | ads.yoursite.com, so no third-party domain loads on your pages |
| Disclosure labels | Not built in | Per-placement label, e.g. "Sponsored Advertisement" |
| Diagnostics | A campaign that stops serving does so silently | Tells you exactly why an ad is not showing |
Revive details are taken from their published pricing page and FAQ. If something here is out of date, tell us and we'll correct it. Worth saying plainly: Revive's download edition is open source and free to self-host — if you want to run your own server, that is a perfectly good choice and we don't try to beat it.
There's no automatic importer yet — you'd rebuild your advertisers, campaigns and placements by hand. For most small publishers that's under an hour, and the free tier lets you set it all up in parallel before swapping the tag. If you have a big account, tell us and we'll help move it.
Start free and set it up alongsideThe free tier is enough to run a real sponsor. Nothing to cancel if you decide against it.
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