SaaS Competitor Churn & Negative Review Poacher

Finds real, recent public posts from customers who are frustrated with a competitor (price hikes, billing problems, support failures, outages, or plans to cancel or switch). For each competitor you get verified post links, a category for every complaint, the most common weakness right now, and a tactful positioning hook. Competitors with nothing verified are free.

Built for SaaS founders, product marketers, growth teams and agencies who want to know why customers are leaving a competitor this month and how to position against it.

Who it's for

• Founders and PMMs looking for live competitive intel and messaging angles
• Growth and demand-gen teams writing "switch from X" ads, landing pages and comparison pages
• SDRs and agencies who want to know which pain points to lead with
• Clay and automation users who want a weekly competitor-pain column

How it works

1. For each competitor it runs several targeted searches at once: X posts about switching or cancelling ("switching from X", "cancel X", "X alternative"), pricing, billing, renewal and support complaints, replies to the brand's own X account, plus recent Reddit posts in the brand's subreddit and in communities like r/CustomerSuccess and r/smallbusiness.
2. Every candidate post goes through strict checks:
   • Real and specific: the link must be a single post that actually appeared in that run's live search results. Listing pages and search pages are rejected.
   • Recent: X dates are decoded from the post ID and Reddit dates come from a public Reddit archive. Undated or out-of-window posts are dropped.
   • First-person paying customer: second-hand stories, news commentary, free-plan limit gripes and non-users are dropped.
   • The competitor's fault: complaints about third-party rules (e.g. WhatsApp messaging windows, app-store policies, GDPR) are dropped.
   • A strong signal: passing mentions, feature wishes and mild UI annoyances are dropped.
   • Not a vendor: people selling or promoting an alternative are dropped, including founders posting in r/SaaS.
   • One row per author.
3. Auto-widen: if nothing is verified within your lookback window (default 30 days), it retries once with a wider window (60 days, capped at 90). Each result shows the window actually used in lookback_days_used.

Works best on widely-used tools

This Actor shines on popular products with active customer conversation (HubSpot, Mailchimp, Zendesk and similar). Niche or quiet competitors often have no verifiable recent complaints. Those come back as an empty row and are not charged.

What you get for each competitor

Field	What it is
competitor_name	The competitor scanned
frustrated_users_found	Verified posts: public handle/username as shown, platform, post_url, complaint_category (pricing_hike, bug_or_outage, bad_support, missing_feature, other), one-sentence summary, approx_date, and date_source
top_competitor_weakness_this_month	The most common complaint theme across the verified posts
poaching_angle_hook	A generic, respectful positioning line built around that weakness and your advantage
has_recent_signal / charged	true only when at least one verified post was found
lookback_days_used	30 by default, or the wider window if auto-widen kicked in
cached_result	true if served from the 24-hour cache

Example input

{
  "competitors": ["HubSpot", "Mailchimp"],
  "your_product_advantage": "Flat, transparent pricing with no contact-count surprises and live chat support for every plan.",
  "max_users_per_competitor": 5,
  "lookback_days": 30,
  "use_cache": true
}

Example output

Real results from test runs on Oct 22, 2026, paraphrased and anonymized for display (the dataset contains the public post link and handle):

Competitor	Platform	Category	What the customer said (paraphrased)	Date
HubSpot	X	pricing_hike	Upset about a 22% per-seat increase tied to AI features they didn't want	Oct 21
HubSpot	Reddit	pricing_hike	Customer since 2015, angry at a large bill for a barely-used hub	Oct 21
HubSpot	X	bad_support	Cancelled the annual plan after sales never answered a request to go monthly	Oct 20
Mailchimp	Reddit	bad_support	Paying customer of nearly 10 years, account disabled right after a payment, no support reply for days	Oct 13
Mailchimp	X	pricing_hike	Billed for unsubscribed contacts and comparing costs before renewal	Oct 20
Zendesk	X	bad_support	Four weeks of emails with nine different support reps and only canned answers	Oct 21
A quiet niche tool	–	–	No verified complaints found	free

Example hook (HubSpot): "Teams scaling their CRM often hit surprise costs and delayed support when changing plans. Flat pricing and live chat on every tier keep things simple and responsive from day one."

Public posts only, and no creepy outreach

The Actor reads only publicly available posts and never logs in anywhere. Hooks are written as generic positioning for ads, landing pages and cold messaging. They never name the individual and never say or imply "I saw your post". Use the post links to understand the market, and follow platform rules and anti-spam laws if you contact anyone.

Pricing

Pay-per-event: $0.25 per competitor scan that returns at least one verified complaint (event competitor-scan), plus a negligible Apify start fee. Competitors with nothing verified are free, and failed lookups are free too. Use maximum cost per run to cap spend. The 24-hour cache returns identical inputs without re-running the search.

Free Apify plan users can scan up to 2 competitors per run.

Pairs well with

• Live X & Web B2B Lead Enricher + Cold Email Icebreaker: enrich the prospects you target with your new positioning, and get a personalized, recent-activity icebreaker.
• B2B Trigger Event Radar: find which target accounts have a buying signal right now (funding, exec hires, launches).
• Journalist, Podcast & Creator Pitch Dossier Generator: pitch your "why teams are switching" story to the right journalists and podcasters.

Integrations

• Apify API: start runs and fetch results with the REST API or the run-sync-get-dataset-items endpoint (JavaScript and Python clients available).
• Zapier, Make, and n8n: run it on a schedule and push the weekly competitor-pain report to Slack, Notion, a sheet or your CRM.
• Schedules and webhooks: run it every Monday and get notified when results are ready.
• AI agents: callable as a tool through the Apify MCP server.
• Exports: JSON, CSV, Excel, or HTML from the Console.

FAQ

Where does the data come from? Public X posts, Reddit (through live search and a public Reddit archive), and other public pages, researched live at run time.

Can it make up posts? Every charged post must be a single-post link that appeared in that run's live search results or was fetched from the Reddit archive, with a verified recent date. Anything that can't be verified is dropped, and if nothing survives the scan is free.

Why did my competitor come back empty? Quiet or niche tools often have no recent public complaints. The Actor already retries with a wider window. Empty results cost nothing, so try again next week or raise lookback_days (up to 90).

Why are most results from X and Reddit? That's where customers vent in public with dated, linkable posts. Review sites rarely expose individual dated reviews to search, so they seldom pass verification.

Can I use the handles for outreach? The handles are public, but the Actor is designed for market intelligence and positioning. If you reach out, be helpful, never reference the person's post, and follow platform rules and anti-spam laws (CAN-SPAM, GDPR, etc.).

Support

Found a bug or want a feature? Open an issue on the Actor's Issues tab and I'll respond quickly.