Definitive Guide to the Top 10 Affiliate Tracking Platforms

27-Aug-2024
Definitive Guide to the Top 10 Affiliate Tracking Platforms

Affiliate marketing is primarily brainstorming and part implementation, so it’s important to dedicate as much time to strategy mapping as possible. With the right affiliate tracking platform, the manual part of the job is done for you.

Still, the number of affiliate marketing platforms can be overwhelming. With so many different interfaces and features, how do you choose the right one?

In this article, we’ve compiled a list of the 10 best affiliate programs that excel in different areas so you can determine what’s top priority for you.


List of the Top 10 Affiliate Tracking Platforms

The global affiliate marketing market is expected to grow at a CAGR of 7.9% between 2023-2031. As more brands launch affiliate programs, the competition is intensifying, making it essential to find new ways of generating revenue.

The right campaign tracking platform can help you reach your marketing goals and secure your spot in the industry. We’ll help you better understand your needs and present you with free vs. paid affiliate tracking options.

Check out some of our top picks for affiliate marketing software, starting with our Offer18 platform:

1. Offer18: Best Overall Affiliate Tracking Platform

Offer18 is an all-purpose affiliate tracking solution for affiliate management and KPI monitoring. We use traffic identifiers that go beyond the traditional, phasing out the need for cookies and other traditional tracking methods. Gain access to 87+ lead metrics, ensuring your campaigns reach the right KPIs and deliver maximum impact.

Keep your partners in the loop by exporting comprehensive reports that showcase your progress. Use deep link attribution to learn which part of your marketing strategy works and optimize it as you go.

We serve businesses of all sizes, which is why we offer multi-level capping to ensure your campaigns don’t exceed your budget. Limit the number of clicks, sales, conversions, and affiliate payouts for better cost control.

Finally, our integrated fraud detection system will ensure your campaigns are free of bots, spam clicks, and fraudulent activity. Get real results in real time and grow your business at a steady pace.

Ready to experience the power of our software? Start with a free trial and explore all the features risk-free . With basic plans starting at just $49, our affiliate marketing software provides everything you need to reach your target numbers.


2. Everflow: Best for Affiliate Tracking

Everflow is a top-notch affiliate tracking platform with all the necessary baseline metrics for affiliate campaigns. However, its true value lies in its powerful tracking capabilities that go beyond just clicks and leads. It lets you track organic growth to see where your traffic is coming from and automatically get the revenue, payout, and profit for each affiliate.

Most importantly, Everflow lets you evaluate engagement, not just sales. Get deeper insights into each offer, like the number of impressions, RPM, CPM, gross clicks, etc. This means you can track non-revenue-driving engagements like memberships, subscriptions, newsletters, and so on.

A special feature of Everflow is the Direct Linking tool that shows you traffic sources via URLs. It lets you know exactly what affiliate pulled which customer and on what offer.

Demo and Pricing

Pricing-wise, it’s hard to gauge how affordable (or not) Everflow is. It doesn’t offer any pricing plans, and the only way to find out the cost of the software is by requesting a quote. However, a demo is available free of charge to those who sign up via their company.

Pros:

  • Mobile app tracking

  • QR code tracking for offline marketing

  • DocuSign integration for onboarding

Cons:

  • Assigns most of the engagement to first-touch attribution

  • No transparent pricing


3. Post Affiliate Pro: Best for Affiliate Evaluation

Post Affiliate Pro offers comprehensive affiliate tracking software for businesses of all sizes. You can use it to create affiliate programs from scratch and get the needed information on your target audience and their pain points.

For each campaign, you can get trend reports like overall impressions, repeated impressions, and unique impressions (the same goes for clicks). See which links perform best, as well as who your most successful affiliates are and why. This will help you create better commission structures tailored to your campaign needs.

Another benefit of using Post Affiliate Pro is not needing to create promotional materials. Need banners, coupons, or smartlinks? The software can generate them according to your instructions.

Demo and Pricing

Post Affiliate Pro offers 3 pricing plans: Pro (for a single starter campaign), Pro Ultimate (for a more elaborate campaign), and Network (for multiple campaigns). You can request a two-week trial (for personal email) or a 1-month trial (for business email) before committing to see if Post Affiliate Pro is the right choice for you.

Pros:

  • Free software setup

  • 24/7 customer support

  • Unlimited number of affiliates for all plans

Cons:

  • Lacks user-friendliness

  • Steep prices for affiliate beginners

  • Extra fee for certain features except for the Network plan


4. Tapfiliate: Best for In-depth Analysis

Tapfiliate provides neat affiliate software targeting e-commerce, retail, SaaS, and online subscription services. It features an all-in-one dashboard where you can add and pay affiliates, track conversion, chat with influencers, and much more.

With Tapfiliate, you can use 30+ integrations, including Javascript, REST API, and Zapier. Once you’ve integrated your favorite tools, you can add affiliates one by one or in bulk via .CSV import. When it comes to paying your affiliates, you can choose between recurring, lifetime, fixed, and percentage-based commissions.

The best part of Tapfiliate is that you can track affiliate links on a granular scale. For example, you can use the subID parameter to get unique insights into each link as well as use deep linking for a more targeted user experience. Other features include cookieless conversion tracking and customized cookie time.

Demo and Pricing

Tapfiliate offers annual and monthly payment plans. You can choose between the Essential, Pro, and Enterprise plans based on your company size and tracking needs. You can try the Essential and Pro plans for free with a 14-day trial.

Pros:

  • Affordable starter plan

  • User-friendly

  • Incredible integration capabilities

Cons:

  • Requires credit card info for trial


5. LeadDyno: Best for Brand Representation

LeadDyno offers a unified affiliate marketing dashboard that lets you really make your campaigns your own. Thanks to its powerful customization abilities, you can make your brand shine through the program by adding your logo, color scheme, and custom CSS.

Thanks to the all-in-one approach, you can track coupons, referral links, emails, and social media ads in the same dashboard. The tracking links are an added bonus and let you keep tabs on links to any content form. Combine them with the What’s Selling feature to get an idea of what products sell the best.

Still, the integrations are where LeadDyno really shines. You can integrate 25+ of your go-to finance and marketing tools. Its unlimited commission plans let you set flat-fee, tiered, and percentage-based payouts via PayPal, Coinbase, and Webhook.

Demo and Pricing

You can try LeadDyno for free for 1 month, after which you’ll have to choose between the Lite, Essential, Advanced, and Unlimited plans. The pricing starts at $49, which is a great starting point for those just dipping their toes into affiliate marketing.

Pros:

  • No credit card needed for trial

  • Affordable for absolute beginners

  • Top-notch integration capabilities

Cons:

  • Weak support

  • Lacks more advanced features


6. Trackdesk: Best for Absolute Beginners

Trackdesk is a beginner-friendly campaign tracking platform with a forever-free plan up to $1,000 monthly revenue. Its affordability might lead you to think it lacks features when, in reality, it has robust tracking capabilities, including CPA, CPS, and CPL tracking. It’s the ideal platform to build your affiliate marketing programs from scratch.

With Trackdesk, you can integrate over 100+ marketing and finance platforms, including WooCommerce, PayPal, Zapier, and Shopify. It also offers various payment methods for your affiliates, like e-wallets, bank transfers, and crypto.

Trackdesk offers wide customization of your affiliate campaigns. You can track the results of your offline marketing strategy, target specific device types, and set custom cookie times.

Demo and Pricing

If you want to get started with Trackdesk, you can choose between the forever-free, Starter, Business, and Enterprise plans. The prices change as you remove or add features, which gives you a lot of flexibility. You can manage an unlimited number of affiliates, generate unlimited links, and send unlimited tracking requests regardless of the plan.

Pros:

  • Easy custom reports

  • Great customer support

  • Completely free to start

Cons:

  • Occasional bugs


7. Refersion: Best for Affiliate Networking

Refersion is one of the few affiliate tracking platforms with its own affiliate marketplace. This helps brands connect with affiliates with similar interests and goals and foster long-term partnerships.

Once you find affiliates, you can easily complete the onboarding process by importing them at once. Tracking is just as easy, and Refersion allows first-party tracking that follows GDPR and CCPA compliance for safety and security. You can track leads across blogs, newsletters, email, and much more.

When it’s time to pay your affiliates, you can do it automatically by integrating each affiliate’s payment method with the dashboard. This feature also includes built-in tax form management for organized finances.

Demo and Pricing

You can get started with Refersion for completely free by signing up for the 14-day trial. If you’re satisfied with the features, you can choose one of 3 plans – Professional, Business, or Enterprise. Pricing starts at $99 when paid annually, which is not the cheapest option on our list.

Pros:

  • Powerful tracking capabilities

  • Simplifies the search for affiliates

  • Ease of use

Cons:

  • Quite pricey

  • List of affiliates isn’t very expansive

  • Tracking isn’t always accurate


8. Affise:

Affise is a popular performance marketing platform with a vast range of affiliate marketing features. It presents a dashboard with your affiliates and the click dates, offers, and payouts of each, giving you a clear overview of their performance.

Tracking the performance of your affiliates is vital for a successful affiliate marketing strategy, so Affise offers automatic performance tracking where you can set reminders to get reports on completed work. Pair this with AI prediction features like revenue prediction to find out the trends before they happen.

To ensure fraud protection, Affise lets you track VPNs, spam clicks, proxies, fake traffic, double IPs, and fraud databases. It prides itself on being one of the most secure affiliate marketing platforms, following all data rules and regulations.

Demo and Pricing

Affise offers various pricing plans, including a 14-day trial with free cancellation. The paid plans start from $499 a month, and some offer custom pricing, usually for larger-scale businesses. There’s also the freemium plan, which lets you use it free forever but requires payment for certain features.

Pros:

  • Easy to manage

  • Great for newbies

  • Quick response

Cons:

  • Could use more features

  • Occasional glitches


9. Voluum: Best for Teamwork

Voluum is another great affiliate tracker that supports e-commerce, lead gen, mobile app tracking, and much more. It allows you to monitor any ad regardless of its format or where it’s published.

With Voluum, you can track 30+ KPIs for each lead you get (conversions, clicks, sales, impressions). Thanks to the Traffic Distribution AI feature, you can find out what your best-performing offers are and redirect your traffic there.

Finally, Voluum is excellent for teamwork. If you have a large work team, you can create groups within the platform and manage access levels for each. Grant unique permissions to individual members and generate progress reports to have all your employees and clients up-to-date in real time.

Demo and Pricing

You can try Voluum for free by signing up for the 14-day demo. The paid plans are split into Individual and Business, with the former starting at $179 a month, billed semi-annually, and the latter at $539, billed annually.

Pros:

  • Robust AI tools

  • Free demo

  • In-depth KPI analysis

Cons:

  • Expensive

  • Issues with payments


10. CAKE: Best for Custom Targeting

CAKE is an affiliate marketing platform that performs real-time analysis of your partners and campaigns. Its best feature is the custom targeting option, which lets you segment and target your audience based on location, device, and browser.

CAKE boasts a white-labeled interface with full customization capabilities to make your brand shine. Most processes are automated, including payments and taxes – all that’s left for you to do is come up with campaign ideas.

With CAKE, you don’t have to worry about encountering problems with the software. The platform offers 24/7 support for any inquiries users might have. Additionally, all your data is protected via the robust anti-fraud features, which prevent bots and fake leads.

Demo and Pricing

You can try CAKE for free by signing up for the demo. However, it’s not mentioned how long you can use the demo or how much the actual software costs. You’d have to reach out to the customer support team for the details.

Pros:

  • Responsive customer support

  • User-friendly interface

  • Granular data analysis

Cons:

Only custom pricing available


Offer18: The Only Affiliate Marketing Software You Need

All our top picks offer great value, but they might not tick every box for you. By choosing Offer18, you’ll get:

  • Everflow’s tracking capabilities

  • CAKE’s custom targeting features

  • TrackDesk’s ease of use

  • Tapfiliate’s analysis powers, and much more.

Register for our free trial and make the best choice for your business.



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