Yext alternative: listings you claim yourself and keep when the subscription ends

What does Yext do well?

Yext solves a real problem: a business's name, address, phone and hours drift across dozens of directories, and search engines notice when they disagree. Yext takes one copy of your details and pushes it to a network of publishers, so a changed phone number or a new holiday schedule goes out once instead of being edited in thirty places. For a company with ten locations, that is office time saved every month. Large brands buy it through Yext's listings platform, which asks for a demo and shows no price. Small businesses are now pointed to Corvo, which Yext built on the same listings technology.

The question for a service business with one or two locations is whether the sync is worth the subscription, and what you are left with when it stops.

What does Yext cost in November 2026?

The answer changed this fall. In October 2026, Yext's plans page listed four one-location plans from $199 to $999 a year on 12-month terms. On November 3, 2026, the same address redirected to Corvo. Yext's product release of September 1, 2026 introduced Corvo AI as an early version of a new product for small business owners: it texts the owner recommendations for local marketing, and the release said it was available for free.

Corvo's site, which says it is built by Yext, listed two tiers when we read it on November 3, 2026:

• Corvo Free: $0. The page says it keeps your details right on Google, Apple, Bing and Facebook, and that nothing goes live until you approve the change.
• Corvo Plus: $40 a month, billed monthly with no annual plan. It adds more search and directory sites and help with how the business shows up in AI search.

We could not find the old $199 to $999 plans on any Yext page, so we no longer quote them. Over three years, Corvo Plus is $1,440, our arithmetic on the list price. The product is new, so check the page yourself before you buy.

What happens to your listings when you cancel Yext?

Corvo's page does not say. It says the free plan keeps your details right on the four big sites "for good", but it does not explain what happens to those listings, or to the extra directories Plus reaches, if you stop paying or stop using Corvo. Ask before you connect your listings, and get the answer in writing.

Yext's earlier answer is still useful, because Corvo runs on Yext's listings technology. When we read the FAQ on Yext's plans page in October 2026, it said cancelling does not overwrite the updates made through Yext and that Yext will not force listings to revert. It also said Yext stops sending your data to publishers, and that each listing then follows that publisher's normal process, which may change your listings over time. That page now redirects, so we could not re-check the wording in November 2026. Treat it as Yext's policy as of October 2026.

If that still holds, the day you cancel, nothing is deleted. Over the following months, directories go back to building your listing from whatever sources they normally use, and if those sources carry an old address or a dead phone number, the listing can drift back toward them. Whether that happens to you depends on how clean the underlying data was before Yext, and on whether you claimed the important listings in your own accounts.

Semrush Local describes the same outcome. Its help article on cancelling listing management says Semrush will stop distributing and updating your business information across online directories, that the listing data will remain in the directories and become subject to each publisher's normal data compilation process, and that this may result in your business listings changing over time. Two vendors, one rule: the sync is what you rent.

How do BrightLocal, Semrush Local and Synup compare?

Three other services sell listing management. Their pricing pages were read in October 2026; the Corvo row was read on November 3, 2026.

BrightLocal is the odd one out, in a useful way. Its subscription plans are for tracking rankings, syncing listings and managing reviews, but its Citation Builder is sold per listing, starting at $2 a citation (its FAQ puts a single citation at $3.20, with $2 the bulk-credit rate), with what the page calls zero recurring fees and citations you own forever. That is a different model: you pay once to have a listing created or corrected in a directory, and it stays there with no subscription behind it. The page also lists a managed local SEO service at $1,299 a month and a 14-day trial with no card.

Semrush Local lists Base at $30 a month per location and Pro at $60, both billed annually; Pro adds listing management and review generation. Monthly-billing prices are not shown, and the page does not say whether a core Semrush subscription is required, so ask. Synup lists Solo at $49 a month for one location, with every feature on every plan, a 14-day trial and monthly plans you cancel before the next renewal; what happens to listings afterward is not addressed on the page. Hibu also sells listings as part of its packages, but it does not publish prices, so we state none.

Which listings matter for a service business?

A listing service's pitch rests on the size of its network. For a plumber or a lawn company, much of the value sits in a short list: Google Business Profile, which feeds Google Search and Maps; Bing Places, which feeds Bing and the assistants that use it; Apple Business, which feeds Apple Maps on every iPhone; and a handful of directories your customers actually use, such as Yelp and whichever local or trade directories show up when you search your own services in your own town. Beyond that, the value of each additional directory drops fast, and consistency matters more than count.

All three of the big ones are free to claim. Google's own Business Profile page answers the cost question in its FAQ: creating a profile and listing a business on Google costs nothing. Microsoft's help center for Bing Places calls it a free service for claiming or adding listings. Apple's March 2026 newsroom post says Apple Business is available as a free service. Our local SEO checklist puts them in order.

How do you claim listings directly?

1. Write down one version of your details. Legal name as customers know it, the address or service area, the main phone number, the website, hours and categories. Keep it in a document the office can find. Every listing gets this exact version.
2. Claim and verify Google first. Our guides on Google Business Profile for contractors and verifying your profile walk through it. Make the company's account the primary owner, not an employee's or an agency's.
3. Add Bing and Apple. Bing Places can import your Google listing; Apple Business takes an afternoon. See setting up Bing Places and setting up your Apple Business listing.
4. Search for yourself and fix what you find. Search your company name plus each town you serve. Claim or correct the directories that appear. A one-time citation service can handle the long tail here, and because it is paid once, nothing expires.
5. Put the logins in a password manager the company controls. Listings claimed under a departed employee's email are the most common reason owners end up paying to fix listings they already had.
6. Review twice a year. Hours, phone and categories, in each account. It takes an hour.

This is what we do inside our local SEO and AI search service: claim the profiles in the client's own accounts, make the client the primary owner, and keep the details consistent across the directories that search engines and AI assistants cross-check. When the engagement ends, the listings do not notice.

When is a listings service still the right call?

Be fair to the model. A subscription earns its price when you have many locations, when your hours change often, or when nobody in the office will ever log in to six directories to fix a phone number. Franchise systems and regional companies with a dozen branches are the customers Yext was built for. If that is you, pick the vendor whose cancellation terms you have read, and claim Google, Bing and Apple in your own accounts anyway, so the three that matter most never depend on the sync.

For a company with one shop and a few trucks, the arithmetic usually points the other way: an afternoon of claiming, a one-time citation order for the rest, and a twice-yearly check. Nothing renews, and nothing drifts when a subscription ends, because there is none.

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