I learned over years of using Appsumo that cheap can end up wasting you a lot of time. This tool is good for anyone who can't afford the better tools out there and wants a basic intro into the SEO world. My advice to the founders would be to just focus on one thing and do it better than the competition, then branch, if that's possible.

I entered a keyword in the explorer tool and it returned 0 results. I then compared it to Ahrefs which returned a ton of useful information including pages that rank for those words, related words etc. etc.

This tool is not reliable for keyword research.

There are some paid directory and blog post opportunities with very low-cost links. The competitor research tools seem decent but pretty shallow in terms of what you can do with the analysis

I'd say getting a 1 month membership with SEMRush or Ahrefs and using that month religiously to do research and decide on a plan would be much more useful.