4 Best Affiliate Tracking and Management Software for WordPress

Are you looking for a tool to track and manage your affiliates?

Affiliate marketing is a proven way to increase awareness about your business and products. This is why most large businesses like Amazon, eBay, and Hilton have made it an integral part of their marketing strategy.

In this article, we will compare some of the best affiliate tracking and management software for WordPress and highlight their pros and cons.

Why Add an Affiliate Program to Your Business?

Affiliate marketing allows you to build a sales army to reach more potential customers instantly.

The best part about it is that you only pay affiliates when they make a sale. It’s a great way to make more money online and grow your revenue.

Managing that affiliate team on your own can be a lot of work, however. You need to keep track of each affiliate and their sales and then pay their commission regularly after they start making sales.

Luckily, using the right affiliate management software will make it easy.

If you’re thinking of adding an affiliate program to your online store, you’re in the right place.

Let’s take a look at the best affiliate management solutions for WordPress.

1. AffiliateWP

AffiliateWP is the best affiliate tracking and management software that is actually built as a WordPress plugin.

It was developed by Pippin Williamson and Andrew Munro, the folks behind Easy Digital Downloads. It beats other solutions regarding cost-effectiveness and the control it offers over your affiliate program.

AffiliateWP is a reliable system in the market and is used by other WordPress plugin developers to sell their products. This is a great solution for those looking to build a small group of hand-picked affiliates.

The best part about AffiliateWP is that you get a 14-day money-back guarantee. That’s a lot of time to try the plugin and see if it meets your needs.

We use AffiliateWP to power the affiliate program for our stores like Smash Balloon and SearchWP.

Pros

• A one-time purchase entitles you to a year of support and updates. License plans start from $134.55 per year.
• You run your own affiliate program on your own site and build your own network.
• Complete integration with Easy Digital Downloads, WooCommerce, iThemes Exchange, and other popular WordPress eCommerce plugins.
• Real-time reporting for you and your affiliates.
• See your top-performing affiliates and build lasting partnerships without paying hefty fees.
• You get a 14-day money-back guarantee.
• A bulk payment option is available for PayPal and integrated Payouts services to make your life easy.

Cons

• You manage everything, including plugin updates, ensure tracking is done properly, etc.
• The plugin runs on your WordPress hosting server, which means you’ll need more resources if your site is large.
• You don’t have access to an existing network of affiliates, so you will have to bring affiliates to sign up for your program.

Get started with the AffiliateWP plugin!

2. Easy Affiliate

Easy Affiliate, formerly known as Affiliate Royale, is one of the best affiliate marketing plugins for WordPress. The software is easy to use and offers many features to track and manage your affiliates.

It offers an all-in-one solution to create a self-hosted affiliate program. From your WordPress dashboard, you can easily manage affiliates and get real-time reports to track their performance.

You also get a fraud detection feature that alerts you of suspicious affiliate behavior. The software integrates with WooCommerce, MemberPress, PayPal, and email marketing services.

Pros

• Easy Affiliate is super simple to use, and you can add an affiliate program in just a few clicks.
• With its affiliate dashboard, you can manage and monitor different affiliates, edit their accounts, download their links and banners, and view payment history.
• The software offers detailed reports to track the performance of your affiliates and even lets you set up different commission levels along with commission tracking for each user.
• You can also secure your payments through the fraud detection feature and flag suspicious affiliate behavior before you pay your partners.
• Easy Affiliate lets you create custom affiliate tracking links and supports Pretty Links, so your URLs are short, clean, and memorable.
• Seamless integration with eCommerce platforms like WooCommerce and Easy Digital Downloads, payment services like PayPal, and email marketing tools like ConvertKit.

Cons

• Easy Affiliate doesn’t offer a free trial to test the software before making a purchase.
• There isn’t a network of affiliates you can use to grow your business instantly. You’ll have to reach out to people to join your affiliate program, which can be time-consuming.

Get started with the Easy Affiliate plugin!

3. ShareASale

ShareASale is one of the most popular affiliate networks on the web. It’s easy to get started and also offers access to its vast network of affiliate marketers.

They have been in business for more than 20 years and have over 270,000 affiliates in their network.

We use ShareASale for our WPBeginner family of products, such as OptinMonster and WPForms.

In our experience as a merchant, ShareASale has been great to work with. The per transaction fee they charge definitely adds up, and we no longer recommend it for smaller stores.

Pros

• The software is hosted on the ShareASale server, so you don’t need to worry about managing or updating it.
• ShareASale takes care of tracking and sending payments to each affiliate, which saves time.
• You get access to the large network of affiliate marketers on ShareASale.
• No monthly recurring fee, and you only pay a small percentage when an affiliate makes a sale.
• Some other features of ShareASale are real-time tracking, segmentation of top performers, and connecting multiple sites into one account.

Cons

• Terrible User Interface – You get used to it, but at first sight, it’s not pretty.
• There is a one-time setup fee of $625, and there’s a recurring transaction fee.
• $35 monthly transaction fee and new merchants are given a 30-day grace period. We have never had an issue meeting this after the grace period.

Get started with the ShareASale plugin!

4. Impact

Impact offers an affiliate marketing solution where you pay only for the affiliates you work with and not the network fees.

This significantly reduces the cost as you pay only for the platform and the number of affiliates you work with.

Impact lets you track customer interactions across different devices. Its cross-device tracking feature gives you a detailed picture of your customer journey and the devices your affiliates and customers are using.

The software also has tracking options that help you accurately measure your affiliate campaigns. There is also fraud protection, so you can easily identify suspicious affiliates before payout.

Pros

• Provides better analytics and insights into your marketing campaign.
• You see exactly who is bringing you more sales and developing strategic partnerships accordingly.
• Powerful user-interface
• Other features include mobile tracking, SEO-friendly URLs, coupon tracking, and integration with Salesforce and other CRM platforms.
• Fraud protection helps you securely payout affiliates.

Cons

• Monthly recurring fee, but you don’t pay the network fee for each affiliate that you bring, which can be a perk for larger programs.
• A smaller network of affiliate marketers.

Get started with the Impact plugin!

Which Affiliate Tracking Software Should You Choose?

You need to choose a solution based on your own budget and requirements. If you’re looking for a cost-effective solution for WordPress, then we recommend going with either AffiliateWP or Easy Affiliate.

Both are excellent options, and AffiliateWP’s payout services really give you the best of both worlds.

If you want more advanced features and don’t mind the per-transaction cost and higher fees, then ShareASale is the way to go.

We hope this article helped you find the best affiliate tracking software for your WordPress site. You may also want to look at our other WordPress guides for affiliate tracking and management sites.

Best WordPress Guides for Affiliate Marketing Sites

• How to Create an Affiliate Product Box (No Coding Required)
• How to Cloak Affiliate Links on Your WordPress Site
• How to Build an Amazon Affiliate Store Using WordPress
• How to Easily Add an Affiliate Program in WooCommerce
• How to Add Affiliate Disclosure for Each Blog Post Automatically
• WooCommerce Made Simple: A Step-by-Step Tutorial [+ Resources]
• Best WooCommerce Plugins for Your Store (Most are FREE)
• How to Start Your Own Podcast (Step by Step)

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