AdPlugg vs Revive Adserver Comparison 2026
AdPlugg is hosted for you, free to 100,000 impressions a month and a small metered fee above that. Revive Adserver is different in kind: free, open source software you install on your own server, so campaigns, zones and delivery logs stay entirely under your control and nothing takes a cut of what you invoice. Its own hosted edition starts at $10 a month for anybody who wants the software without running a server. The real trade is not price but time: Revive costs an afternoon of setup and ongoing maintenance that AdPlugg simply does not ask for.
Ad serving that starts free and bills by impression
Ad server you download and run yourself
At a glance
- Both have a genuinely free tier.
Side by side
AdPlugg | Revive Adserver | |
|---|---|---|
| Starting price | From $10 | Free |
| Pricing model (they differ) | Free plan, paid tiers | Free |
| Free tier | Yes | Yes |
| Billing | Monthly or annual | Not stated |
| Free trial | Not stated | Not stated |
| API | Not stated | Not stated |
AdPlugg
Ad serving that starts free and bills by impression
AdPlugg serves and reports on ads you sold yourself, with a WordPress plugin for sites that live there and tags for everything else. The free tier runs a hundred thousand impressions a month, which covers a small site outright. Above that the monthly fee is small and the real cost is metered per thousand impressions, published as a table rather than quoted. Nobody here is finding you advertisers.
Our note
Work out your monthly impressions before comparing this against AdButler or Broadstreet, because the flat-fee servers cost more at the bottom and stop surprising you at the top. AdPlugg wins for a site under a hundred thousand impressions by a distance, and the arithmetic reverses somewhere in the millions.
Revive Adserver
Ad server you download and run yourself
Revive Adserver is software you install on your own hosting, so it does the counting rather than the selling. Campaigns, zones, targeting and delivery reports all live on a server you control, which means nothing sits between you and the advertiser and nothing takes a share of what you invoice. Setting it up is a PHP application and a database, and that is a real afternoon of work. Publishers who have already sold the slot are who this is for.
Why people weigh these two
- Revive Adserver instead of AdPlugg
- Revive Adserver is free because you run it on your own server, with no monthly fee or metered impression rate like AdPlugg's.
- AdPlugg instead of Revive Adserver
- AdPlugg starts free and then bills by impression served, hosted rather than the self-installed PHP application Revive Adserver runs on your own server.
Which one should you pick
Take AdPlugg if you want to be serving ads today without installing anything. It is free to 100,000 impressions a month, then a small fee plus a published metered rate, and there is no server, database or upgrade path to maintain on your end.
Take Revive Adserver if keeping the data and the delivery logs on your own infrastructure matters more than convenience, and someone on the team is comfortable maintaining a PHP application. The software itself costs nothing, and its own hosted edition is as low as $10 a month if the server work is unwelcome. Budget for the maintenance rather than the licence: this pays off for a site running ads continuously, and rarely for one selling a sponsorship a quarter.
Common questions
- Which one is actually free?
- Both have a real free option, in different forms. AdPlugg is free to 100,000 impressions a month, described as forever free rather than a trial. Revive Adserver's downloadable software has no price at all; the cost that appears instead is your own time to install, patch and back up a PHP application and database.
- Do I need to run my own server for either?
- Only for Revive Adserver, and only if you skip its own hosted edition, which starts at $10 a month. AdPlugg is hosted from the start, with a WordPress plugin for sites that live there and ad tags for everywhere else, so there is no server of your own at any tier.
- Does either take a cut of what I sell?
- No. AdPlugg charges a small monthly fee plus a metered rate per thousand impressions above its free tier, not a share of revenue. Revive Adserver takes nothing at all: the software is free, and nothing sits between the advertiser and your invoice.
- Which is less work to maintain?
- AdPlugg, clearly. It is hosted, so there is no upgrade path or database backup to own. Revive Adserver's self-hosted edition is a real afternoon of setup and ongoing maintenance afterwards, the actual cost of choosing it over its own $10 a month hosted edition or over AdPlugg entirely.
Ratings are the average of reviews readers left. The facts are stated by each tool’s own listing and are not verified by CloutStack. How we make money.