A lot of smaller creators and merchants choose to work with affiliate networks. But, there are many benefits that come with designing your own affiliate program that lets you work hands-on with your affiliates. For instance, you don’t have to follow the rules of a network. You also won’t need to list your products in the same catalog as your competitors. Perhaps the best reason of all is that you won’t have to pay affiliate network fees.
With regard to affiliate marketing programs, the more proactive you are, the higher your chances of success. But, you’ll need the right tools to communicate, collaborate, and measure your performance marketing in real-time so you can establish the efficacy of your affiliate network. One way to set yourself up for success is to use affiliate software.
Read the rest of this guide to discover the best affiliate software options currently available to you.
PartnerStack
PartnerStack is the best overall affiliate software with in-depth analytics and reports, and simple but efficient automated payouts.
Impact.com
Impact.com features a wide range of partnerships and fraud protection, letting you generate new revenue with ease.
Referral Rock
Referral Rock is perfect if you want to scale your efforts quickly. It comes with referral tracking and numerous 3rd-party integrations.
Everflow
Everflow is an excellent choice for marketing because you can connect all major social media networks with integrations.
Tapfiliate
Tapfiliate is ideal for growing businesses due to a highly-detailed dashboard, enhanced social sharing, and great support.
What is the Best Affiliate Software?
1. PartnerStack
Best Overall Affiliate Software (Price Available On Request)
The best affiliate software will help you stay competitive by providing you with the tools to enhance the way you do business. You’ll be able to automate operations that are essential to attract leads and make more sales.
PartnerStack is an all-in-one platform to help you power your partner ecosystem. With it, you can attract and recruit high-quality partners; train and empower them with best-in-class resources, and track every partner-sourced lead from one dashboard.
The platform automates all the tough aspects of launching and scaling a partnership. You’ll be able to build a scalable process for recruiting and onboarding partners into your program, as well as rewarding your affiliates for conversions. You can even include bonuses to empower partners to become top performers.
Key Features:
- Automated Payouts: Incentivize your partners with automated payouts and commissions.
- Reports and Insights: Get in-depth analytics and reporting to help you improve performance across the entire team.
- Global B2B Partner Network: Tap into PartnerStack’s marketplace with over 65,000 active SaaS partners who are already successful on the platform.
Pricing:
PartnerStack doesn’t provide pricing on its website. You can fill out a form on the site to get a custom quote that is tailored to your unique growth objectives. All plans come with access to B2B-focused partners which allows you to promote your affiliate program to the thousands of affiliate, referral, and reseller partners on the platform’s marketplace.
2. Impact.com
Best Partnership Management Tool To Drive New Revenue (Price Available on Request)
Impact’s partner management platform automates all types of partnerships from brand to brand to affiliates to help you scale to new levels.
You’ll be able to expand your program and grow your business rapidly with affiliates, influencers, publishers, and other strategic business partners. Discover and recruit new partners with automated affiliate marketing campaigns to nurture prospects and leads.
Impact makes it easy to contract and pay newcomers. Negotiate payout terms and credit partners for driving incremental value. Use the software’s powerful device analysis feature to track traffic from your affiliate partners across all properties and devices. You can do it all from your dashboard with this comprehensive solution.
Key Features:
- Wide Range of Partnerships: In addition to affiliates, Impact.com also gives you access to B2B, commerce content publishers, influencers, and more.
- Fraud Protection: Automatically monitor partners to ensure that they comply with your guidelines, and protect your affiliate program from bad actors who want to defraud you.
- Scaled Partner Marketing: Engage and train partners with consistent marketing about products and incentives to supercharge their productivity and increase revenue.
Pricing:
If you’re ready to create sustainable growth for your business through partnerships with affiliates, influencers, and publishers from all over the world, then request a demo with the platform’s sales team. They’ll get back to you to show you how you can use this platform to handle the entire lifecycle.
3. Referral Rock
Best Affiliate Software to Scale and Track Word-Of-Mouth (Free Trial, Then $200/Month)
Referral Rock focuses mainly on helping you scale word-of-mouth to get more shares and referrals. You’ll be able to boost brand awareness from satisfied customers using automated referral programs.
Allow customers to join your program and refer a friend through email, social media, or any other eCommerce system. Integrations with a variety of sales and marketing tools make sharing seamless throughout various customer touch points.
The platform allows you to lean in and be proactive in getting referrals by giving advocates a reason to share and keeping your fans in the loop.
Key Feature:
- Best-in-Class Referral Tracking: Track all your referrals to get insights on word-of-mouth activity so you can optimize the sharing experience.
- Third-Party Integrations: You can track customer data through your CRM or any other system of record you use.
- Dedicated Customer Success Manager: Prove ROI quickly with expert services to onboard and tailor the program to meet your unique needs.
Pricing:
Referral Rock has three pricing plans starting from $200/month for the Starter plan. This includes 10,000 members and standard integrations, branding, and rewards. You also get 24/7 chat support and you can start for free.
4. Everflow
Best Affiliate Marketing Software to Track, Manage, and Invite Affiliates ($750/Month)
Everflow is a partner marketing platform that helps you amplify your results from all marketing channels.
You’ll be able to manage and track every relationship, dive deep into analytics to automate insights into actions, and go beyond conversions with the attribution feature.
From pre-launch to hyper-scale, you’ll have a clear view of your entire plan from one place. Attract affiliates, track every channel’s performance, prevent coupon poaching, connect your CRM data to grow relationships, and manage all of this at scale with a customizable white-label platform.
Key Features:
- Media Buying: Everflow allows you to connect and optimize Facebook, TikTok, and Google Ads through integrations.
- Deep Analytics: Use the events tracking and variance reports to break down each placement’s performance and compare granular data across any two time periods.
- Global Payments: You can pay your partners at scale with full compliance no matter where they are around the world.
Pricing:
Everflow gives you full platform access for $750/month. The Core plan comes with everything you need to track and manage every type of affiliate, influencer, or strategic partnership. You can even consolidate performance reporting from your media buys. There are dedicated onboarding and support to help you hit the ground running.
5. Tapfiliate
Best Affiliate Tracking Software for Growing Businesses (Free Trial, Then $59/Month)
This affiliate tracking software integrates seamlessly with Shopify to help you track commissions earned by any of your referring partners.
Some of the platform’s most prominent features include brand asset management which makes it easier for you to provide affiliates with pre-made brand assets that they can use to effectively promote your products.
For instance, you can upload logos, HTML banners, and social media templates to ensure all their marketing stays on brand.
Another great feature is the top affiliate bonuses feature which allows you to reward your best-performing partners by issuing bonuses whenever they achieve predetermined goals.
Key Features:
- Affiliate Autopilot: Tapfiliate makes it easy to onboard affiliates. You can provide them with an affiliate dashboard with everything they need to promote your business.
- Enhanced Social Sharing: The enhanced social affiliate sharing feature allows you to control your messaging and boost awareness with social content.
- Multi-Language Support: This is a great feature to help you expand your audience and connect with international customers.
Pricing:
You can try Tapfiliate for free by signing up for a 14-day trial on the website. You’ll get access to affiliate coupons, recruitment tools, real-time reporting, and automation features. Plans start from $59/month and higher-tier plans include features like unlimited tracking, access to the partner networks, and multilevel marketing.
6. Trackdesk
Best For Managing Complex Affiliate Programs (Free Trial, Then $149/Month)
Trackdesk has a tracking source feature that lets you see the web page users click from. This is useful data for businesses with particularly high shopping cart abandonment rates. You can use it to see where the failed checkouts and loss of conversions come from so you can shift your strategy.
This feature also tells you the type of content users were engaged with, such as webinars, Google search, banner ads, chatbots, or third-party sites like Facebook, Shopify, or Paypal. With this data, marketers and advertisers will have the context they need to vastly improve their campaigns.
Key Features:
- Easy Integration: Track desk integrates with Shopify, PayPal, Zapier, etc. in just minutes. All you have to do is sign up and follow the simple guidelines.
- Customizable Commission Groups: If you have diverse affiliates, you can keep your tears organized into customizable commission groups.
- Onboarding Support: The platform’s experts personally guide you to set up your affiliate program quickly and effortlessly.
Pricing:
You can take advantage of Trackdesk’s 14-day free trial to test out the software and see if it’s a great fit for your business. The premium plan costs $149/month and comes with 10M tracking requests, direct linking, location targeting, and real-time reporting. There is no setup fee and you can cancel at any time.
7. Affiliatly
Best Affiliate Tracking App For eCommerce Stores ($16/Month)
Affiliatly is an easy-to-use affiliate tracking app for your eCommerce store. It allows you to control and track your entire program right from your browser. The software comes with extensive settings that let you control every aspect of your affiliate campaigns.
You can upload image banners for affiliates to use when promoting your product. Manage affiliates individually to see the stats for each account. Allow affiliates to easily generate links for your products, and pay affiliates seamlessly with gift cards for your store.
The platform comes with a whole range of tools to help you track activity and performance, boost your traffic, and make more sales. You’ll also find powerful integrations with a range of business apps like Ecwid, Shopify, BigCommerce, and more.
Key Features:
- Easy to Use: This affiliate tracking app provides you with a fully working affiliate program in just minutes.
- 90-Day Free Trial: The platform offers a lengthy 90-day trial with no credit card required. This way, you can be sure of the platform’s quality before upgrading to a premium plan.
- Affordable Plans: Starting from just $16/month, this is one of the most affordable affiliate software solutions on the market.
Pricing:
Affiliatly has 6 growth-focused plans, starting from $16/month for the “Starter” plan. This caters to up to 50 affiliates, and you can upgrade as your needs grow. The “Pro Unlimited” plan costs $129/month and allows you to have unlimited affiliates.
8. Refersion
Best For Fast-Growing Affiliate or Influencer Programs (Free Trial, Then $99/Month)
Refersion affiliate marketing network also doubles as a tool to launch promotion networks and create smarter brand partnerships. The platform has partnered with Shopify and Amazon to bring you affiliate marketing software with all the tools to recruit, manage, and track your affiliate program success.
The software comes with powerful campaign and management tools. You’ll be able to easily onboard your affiliates and get real-time reports of performance across all your affiliate programs.
The affiliate discovery and recruiting feature helps you grow your eCommerce sales by connecting you with profitable affiliate partners from Refersion’s 3.6 million premium affiliates and content publishers.
Key Features:
- Easy Integrations: Refersion makes it easy to connect your eCommerce platform with popular marketing apps and shopping carts.
- Payment and Taxes: Offer custom commissions with multiple payment options (including automated and direct).
- Attribution and Privacy: Track sales easily with GDPR and CCPA-compliant first-party and multi-domain tracking.
Pricing:
Refersion offers a free 14-day trial with access to all the platform’s core features. To get started, simply choose your shopping cart platform and follow the prompts for seamless setup. After the trial ends, you can upgrade to the Professional plan for $99/month.
9. Post Affiliate Pro
Best Affiliate Marketing Software For Multiple Affiliate Programs (Free Trial, Then $129/Month)
Post Affiliate Pro is a well-established leader in affiliate software. The platform has multiple use cases, which makes it perfect for every side of affiliate marketing. You can use it to create and direct any number of affiliate programs (or even entire affiliate networks).
Responsible for billions of annual transactions, this affiliate software can help you expand your marketing channels. It comes with tools to streamline your sales efforts. One of the main benefits of using this affiliate software is the tracking feature.
Every impression, lead, click, and sale is tracked. Cookies are returned from the advertiser’s server to the tracking software, and the data is gathered for consolidation. This way, you’ll never miss any important information.
Key Features:
- Accurate Tracking: Accurately track all your referrals, cookies, conversion rates, and payouts with this built-in affiliate tracking feature.
- Promotional Materials: Save time and money by creating banners, coupons, affiliate links, etc. on your dashboard.
- Powerful Automation: Improve productivity and save time with automation on your affiliate management platform.
Pricing:
You can try Post Affiliate Pro for free by signing up on the website. At the end of the free trial, you can upgrade to one of the premium plans starting from $129/month for the Pro plan. You’ll get access to all the features you need to create a simple affiliate marketing program for your business with unlimited affiliates and the ability to make up to 1 million tracking requests each month.
10. LeadDyno
Best For eCommerce Stores and Saas Businesses (Free Trial, Then $49/Month)
LeadDyno is a powerful platform whose core features include tools to build your team, quickly onboard affiliates, and customize your campaign to match your brand.
It allows you to work with affiliates professionally, giving you the power to empower and motivate your team.
For instance, you can pay affiliates in multiple ways. Communicate with them through chat or email, and there are also automatic functions to help you save time when managing affiliates, such as auto-tier commission, auto-generate coupon, and auto-discount features.
Key Features:
- Easy Setup: No developers are needed to set up your affiliate program. You can be up and running in just a few minutes.
- Robust Analytics: Get a clear view of the top affiliates in your team, and the most popular products that generate the highest sales.
- Automation Features: Automate the majority of your affiliate management tasks to help you grow your program and increase sales.
Pricing:
LeadDyno offers a free 30-day trial to access time-saving affiliate management tools. At the end of the trial, you can upgrade to one of the paid plans to unlock unlimited affiliates, campaigns, transactions, and affiliate payouts.
11. Rewardful
Best For Instant Affiliate and Referral Programs for Stripe (Free Trial, Then $29/Month)
Rewardful is a popular affiliate tracking platform that’s designed for quick and easy setup. To get started, just connect your Stripe and Paddle account and the platform will do the rest to track referrals, discounts, and commissions.
It has features to help businesses track clicks and leads from affiliates using links or tracking codes. You can generate tracking codes with the affiliate URLs that contain the ID and campaign number.
This information is then parsed to the advertisers’ website where it’s associated with a cookie to identify things like the landing page, user ID, visit date, sales closing information, and expiry date.
Key Features:
- All-in-One Affiliate Software: Manage all your programs under one roof using a single, on-brand, white-labeled dashboard or app.
- Unique Program Features: Make your program private, public, or invite-only. You can also provide secure logins for partners to access their links, stats, and commissions.
- Live Customer Support: Rewardful’s friendly customer support team is always on hand to assist you along the way.
Pricing:
Rewardful lets you test out the software for free for 14 days by signing up on the website. You’ll get full access to the affiliate software for Stripe, allowing you to start leveraging your most untapped growth channel – affiliates. Premium plans start from $29/month and include unlimited affiliates, visitors, and third-party integrations.
12. TUNE
Best For Managing Partnerships Across Web and Mobile (Free Trial, Then $599/Month)
TUNE is a company that offers a variety of software solutions for affiliate marketers. The platform provides tools to track every type of performance partnership, including affiliates, influencers, ad networks, and publisher businesses.
The software allows you to track your progress anywhere, including desktop, mobile, and app. You’ll find performance automated tools to help you save time while boosting your net profit.
The platform has cookie-less server postback tracking, and you’ll get accurate, real-time data reports to keep track of each of your campaigns. The tracking source feature lets you see where your conversions (and failed checkouts) come from. You can study trends to maximize click-through rates and skyrocket sales conversion.
Key Features:
- Proactive Fraud Prevention: Prevent situations where marketers try to scam your brand by making fake orders to qualify for commissions or sending spam traffic to your offer.
- Automated Workflow: The platform offers automated workflow and payout schemes to simplify the affiliate payment process.
- Real-Time Reporting: Get accurate real-time data reports to gauge the performance of your campaigns and affiliates.
Pricing:
TUNE has three plans for businesses of different sizes. The Bootstrap plan costs $599/month paid annually, and comes with features like partner payments and invoicing, campaign management, promo codes, and advanced targeting. You can request a free trial on the website to test drive the software.
13. Kartra
Best For Flexible Commissions and Payment Milestones (Free Trial, Then $99/Month)
Kartra’s affiliate management feature allows you to manage an army of affiliates promoting your products. The platform provides you with tools to recruit new talent and optimize your existing business relationships from one simple and organized dashboard.
Kartra affiliate management replaces a number of tools, which means you get to save time and money. See all your affiliate partners at a glance and know how much, and by when to pay each one of them.
You can set flexible commissions globally or based on individual products. Use a percentage or fixed dollar value. Set up different commission tiers each with its own individual commission structure – you are in full control.
Key Features:
- Comprehensive Affiliate Profiling: Kartra makes affiliate management easy by allowing you to review all relevant data from personal details, analytics, and performance.
- Powerful Analytics: Never miss a beat or a dollar with a clear view of your earnings per click, total affiliate revenue, sales, rebills, conversions, and other metrics.
- Custom Affiliate Portals: You can use Kartra Pages to build stunning affiliate sign-up landing pages using pre-made templates.
Pricing:
Kartra pricing starts from $99/month for the Starter plan. This allows you to handle up to 2,500 leads on one custom domain. You can send up to 15,000 emails per month and host up to 100 pages.
14. Ventture
Best For Selling Digital Information Products (Free Plan, Then $99/Month)
Ventture has everything you need in affiliate management software. You’ll find tools to recruit and build your team. Customize all your marketing materials with your brand’s colors and logo. Create customized links, coupons, and other media to help affiliate merchants promote your brand.
The platform also lets you review every conversion recorded so you can approve or deny it. When it comes time to reward your team, you can pay them through PayPal, store credit, or manually. You’ll also find it easy to add bonuses and create auto-tier commission structures that help motivate your team.
Key Features:
- Easy to Start: The platform provides you with tools to start a membership website, build an online school, create an online store, or do whatever else you want.
- Powerful Analytics: There are built-in analytics tools that let you track your affiliates’ overall clicks, orders, and sales.
- Automation and Integrations: Ventture lets you connect and automate your favorite cloud applications.
Pricing:
Ventture offers a free plan for up to 1,000 contacts. When you’re ready to grow, you can upgrade to the Basic plan for $49/month to get more accounts for staff and clients, as well as unlimited products, file uploads, and many other features.
15. UpPromote
Best Affiliate Software for Beginners (Free Plan, Then $21.99/Month)
This affiliate management software offers easy setup and onboarding. It has automatic tracking of affiliate performance and referrals. You also get auto-generated referral links and coupons to make it easier for your affiliates to make sales.
Premium features include fraud protection, in-app chat, emails, and auto-tier commissions. You’ll also find easy integrations with PayPal, Mailchimp, Klaviyo, and many other tools. The platform is fully customizable and you can get 24/7 support in a variety of languages.
Key Features:
- Real-Time Tracking: See how your affiliates are performing in real-time so you can make necessary adjustments to strategies.
- Robust Affiliate Management: Provide affiliates with promotion resources and customize everything to meet your needs.
- Built-in Communication Channels: Support your team and grow your business with built-in communication channels.
Pricing:
UpPromote has a free plan that comes with all the basics to start an affiliate campaign. You can customize affiliate registration forms, track affiliate links and coupons, send automated emails, and get analytics and reporting for your campaign. If you want more options to help you build and grow your affiliate team, you can upgrade to one of the premium plans starting from $21.99/month.
16. iDevAffiliate
Best affiliate management software with self-hosted or cloud-hosted options ($39/Month)
This affiliate marketing platform comes packed full of features to simplify your work. You can sign up risk-free and have an affiliate program up and running in minutes.
Features include geo-targeting, SEO linking, lead tracking, tier recruiting, and coupon code commissioning. There are dozens of other popular tools that you’ll find extremely helpful whether you are a brand-new affiliate marketer or a seasoned veteran.
Key Features:
- Brand Identity: Users on the Cloud Premium plan can use their own subdomain for account location and inbound linking.
- Social Media Sharing: Let your affiliates market to Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, and Pinterest to increase your social media following.
- Built-In Onboarding: Enable up to 10 tiers in the multi-tier feature so your affiliates can earn from others they recruit.
Pricing:
iDevAffiliate offers a cloud service and a self-hosted version. Plans start from $39/month for the cloud option, and there are no contracts or transaction fees. You get unlimited affiliates, unlimited commissions, and up to 50,000 clicks (traffic) per month.
17. FlexOffers
Best For Discovering Strategic Affiliate Partnerships (Pricing Provided upon Request)
FlexOffers makes it easy for you to promote your product with a turnkey, cost-effective solution. You’ll be able to access thousands of diverse publishers instantly. Leverage a focused publisher recruitment strategy to boost your sales without increasing your overhead.
When you sign-up, you get experienced account management and a dedicated compliance team. The platform also has a robust fraud detection system.
Just like any other internet business process, affiliate marketing is vulnerable to fraud. That’s why FlexOffers provides built-in fraud detection features to make sure you’re doing business in a safe way by looking for tricks like simulated chatbot clicks, IP-changing software, and inflated affiliate metrics.
Key Features:
- Custom Solutions: FlexOffers goes beyond traditional affiliate practices to design a system that adapts to your particular business model.
- Cooking-Less Tracking: Enjoy access to a comprehensive tracking solution that ensures uninterrupted monitoring.
- Reporting and Analytics: Get real-time traffic tracking data and see all sales by visitors referred to your website.
Pricing:
FlexOffers provides pricing upon request. Simply fill out the form on the website, and the support team will get back to you via email.
18. Affise
Best Partner Marketing Platform For Merchants and Creators ($500/Month)
Affise allows you to track, manage, and scale any number of partnership marketing campaigns. The platform provides you with a range of tools to help you harness the power of data so you can maximize your marketing spend.
In addition to improving your performance, you’ll also be able to expand your reach. Find new partners with AffiseReach and create profit-making relationships.
You can request a demo or try this feature free for 15 days to experience for yourself why it’s so much more efficient than finding customers through traditional channels.
Key Features:
- Built-In Partnerships Network: The Affise ecosystem accelerates your business growth by widening your income streams through new partnerships.
- Unlimited Scalability: The software will help you save time and scale faster by automating data tracking and utilization.
- Custom Data Driven Dashboards: Affise puts you in the driver’s seat by allowing you to create a platform where you can manage all your brand’s data in one place.
Pricing:
Affise offers an “Entry” plan for small agencies and networks that manage a limited number of campaigns. This will give you access to the core features for $500/month. You’ll get 40,000 conversions, 15M impressions, and one tracking domain.
19. Circlewise
Best For Powering In-House Affiliate Marketing Programs (Price Available on the Website)
Circlewise will help you grow your business through the power of partnerships. It’s a great solution for businesses with in-house affiliate programs. You’ll be able to diversify and consolidate all your partnerships under one roof.
Automate and outsource manual legwork to make partnerships and more profitable revenue growth drivers for your business.
Key Features:
- Publisher Recruitment: Continuously recruit new publishers through the platform’s open marketplace.
- Easy Payouts: The platform handles all the billing and payments to publishers based on the transactions approved by you.
- Customizable Reports: Eliminate the need for Excel or any other external tools and do all your performance analysis for all traffic channels in one place.
Pricing:
Circlewise doesn’t provide pricing on the website, but you can get in touch with the support team to schedule a call. They’ll get back to you promptly to show you how the platform can help you grow your business through partnerships.
20. Scaleo
Best For Simplicity and Ease-Of-Use (Free Trial, Then $299/Month)
Scaleo provides you with a simple way to recruit and train affiliates, as well as track and analyze your affiliate business.
You can handle every aspect of your affiliate marketing from one convenient place. The platform has an easy-to-use interface and you get support from a dedicated manager. You’ll be able to leverage tools like real-time reporting, integrations, and affiliate management tools to create a seamless experience for your partners.
You’ll also be able to track how effective your affiliates are in real-time and reward them appropriately. This way, you can retain your top talent, keep your partners satisfied, and create even more opportunities for growth.
Key Features:
- Anti-Fraud Logic: This built-in feature combines and analyzes internal and external measuring points to find and eliminate fraud traffic in real-time.
- Multi Currencies: Add offers in multiple currencies so you never have to worry about fluctuations in the exchange rate.
- Tracking Affiliate Feature: You’ll be able to identify top-performing affiliates by looking at overall traffic and engagement metrics.
Pricing:
Scaleo offers a free 14-day trial to test out the main features of the platform. If the affiliate tracking software is a great fit for your business, you can upgrade to a premium plan for $299/month. This comes with all the core features, including anti-fraud logic, a custom domain with SSL, and email and chat support.
What is Affiliate Software?
Affiliate software (also called affiliate marketing software, affiliate tracking software, or affiliate management software) is a solution used to track every aspect of affiliate program management, including referral, recommendation, and endorsement of a product or service.
The software connects everyone in the affiliate marketing structure, including:
- Publishers: These can be affiliates, bloggers, influencers, or brand advocates.
- Customers: These are the people receiving the product recommendation.
- Merchants: This includes advertisers, retailers, businesses, companies, or brands.
- Networks: Networks have a payment center and curated offers for affiliates to promote.
It tracks things such as:
- User-client IP detection
- Browser detection
- Marketer’s affiliate referral
- Advertiser’s completed transaction
At a minimum, affiliate software automates tasks associated with running affiliate programs, including tracking clicks, reporting sales, calculating commissions, handling affiliate payments, and more.
Your affiliate marketing tracking software should allow you to track all your eCommerce strategies and automate all processes across different channels. It should also allow you to measure the efforts of all parties involved to determine the cost-effectiveness of the strategies being used.
Types of Affiliate Software
Free Scripts: Free affiliate program scripts allow you to manage affiliate partners, track referrals, and handle payouts – basically everything that affiliate marketing software does. If you have the technical expertise, you can use these to create an affiliate program for your website.
Premium Software Packages: Premium affiliate software packages like the ones listed in this guide are SaaS (Software as a Service) solutions that come with all the features you need to create an affiliate program for your business in minutes, and with no coding knowledge required.
Affiliate software can either be hosted remotely or installed on your server. Some operate independently of affiliate networks while others partner with them.
What Features to Look For in Affiliate Software
When looking for the best affiliate software for your business, there are certain essential features to consider, such as cookie window options, commission structure flexibility, and payout options that are aligned with your business and audience.
In addition to those essential features, you must also consider the following:
- Robust Tracking Feature: At a minimum, your affiliate software should be able to track and report commission-triggering actions like clicks, sales, and registrations from affiliate links. Your platform should provide you with all the important tracking metrics like impressions, page views, and more.
- Integrations: Affiliate marketing is often used in conjunction with many other marketing tools, such as PPC, SEM, ORM, SMM, SEO, and email marketing. Choose software that makes it easy for you to manage all the different marketing/advertising channels you use.
- Fraud Detection Feature: Not all affiliates are above board, which is why it’s important to choose software that comes with built-in tools to detect fraud, such as chatbot clicks, IP changing software, and inaccurate affiliate metrics.
- Customizability: If you are an affiliate merchant that runs a 100% in-house affiliate program, then you’ll need to choose software that you can customize to handle specific transactions and reports.
- Online Store Compatibility and Payout Options: Choose software that integrates seamlessly with your eCommerce platform. Make sure the tool syncs with your PayPal or bank account for a streamlined process that lets you pay your affiliates with just a few clicks.
- Additional Features: Depending on your needs, you might choose software that allows you to set up a panel of affiliates and give them the ability to create their own platforms. So, you’ll need features that enable you to write program rules and policies.
- Pricing: The costs of affiliate software range widely. You must take your time to find the right solution with the features you need at an affordable price. Fortunately, most platforms listed here offer basic programs for beginners with features like simple payout methods and scalable plans with minimal transaction fees.
Affiliate Software Summary & Top Picks
Affiliate software creates growth opportunities. It makes it easy for you to recruit affiliate partners, train them, help them effectively market your products, and reward them for their efforts.
With the tools listed here, you never have to worry about random, unpredictable, and erratic results. Now, you can get consistent, reliable, and scalable referrals to help you scale your business. Use the information in this guide to help you choose the right affiliate software for your business and start enjoying the benefits right now.
PartnerStack
PartnerStack is the best overall affiliate software with in-depth analytics and reports, and simple but efficient automated payouts.
Impact.com
Impact.com features a wide range of partnerships and fraud protection, letting you generate new revenue with ease.
Referral Rock
Referral Rock is perfect if you want to scale your efforts quickly. It comes with referral tracking and numerous 3rd-party integrations.
Everflow
Everflow is an excellent choice for marketing because you can connect all major social media networks with integrations.
Tapfiliate
Tapfiliate is ideal for growing businesses due to a highly-detailed dashboard, enhanced social sharing, and great support.