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AffiliateWP Review: Is It the Best Affiliate Program Plugin?

affiliatewp review features and pricing

Are you looking for the best affiliate marketing tool to boost your sales? Do you want to know if AffiliateWP is the right affiliate program plugin for you?

AffiliateWP is a popular affiliate marketing plugin that lets you create referral programs on your WordPress site with ease. It offers many powerful affiliate registration, tracking, and management features.

At IsItWP, we create in-depth reviews about plugins. But to do this, we always ensure that we test out the plugin first to give you a first-hand account. But in this case, we actually did not just test out AffiliateWP; we use it for our affiliate programs. As a result, we have firsthand experience using this affiliate plugin over a long period of time.

To ensure we did not miss anything, we also looked at third-party review websites to get unbiased opinions about AffiliateWP.

In this AffiliateWP review, we’ll check out everything this plugin has to offer, including the pricing, features, ease of use, customization, pros and cons, and more. And to give you a complete picture, we’ll also see how this tool stacks up against its competitors.

How Does an Affiliate Program Work?

Affiliate marketing is one of the most popular ways to make money online. You can think of an affiliate as a third-party store showcasing your product in exchange for a commission.

It creates a win-win situation for the 2 parties involved: the business owners and the affiliates.

In simple steps, this is how an affiliate program works:

  1. As a business owner, you start an affiliate program and allow people to sign up as affiliate members.
  2. When an affiliate joins your program, they get an affiliate link with a unique tracking code. They can use this link to promote your products and services on their own blog or website.
  3. When visitors to an affiliate’s site click on the affiliate link, they will be redirected to your website, where they can buy the product/service.
  4. As a reward for bringing customers to your business, you pay the affiliates a commission depending on the number of sales they make.

With an affiliate program, you can boost sales and conversion products through your affiliate referrals. It’s one of the best ways to promote and sell your products online and reach out to potential customers.

But, as you can see, affiliate marketing involves many parties. As a result, it can be hard to track which affiliate member brought in which customer. Paying your affiliates, tracking performance, and managing the links can also be difficult.

A good solution to this is to use an affiliate program plugin that can help you with all this!

Let us look at what AffiliateWP offers in this review to see if it is the right one for you.

AffiliateWP Overview

affiliatewp homepage

AffiliateWP is the #1 affiliate management plugin for WordPress sites that helps businesses grow and make more money.

With AffiliateWP, you can create a full-fledged affiliate marketing campaign for your business. It lets you easily manage all your affiliates and referrals right inside your WordPress admin panel.

AffiliateWP is designed to look and feel just like your WordPress dashboard. So, there’s no learning curve to this plugin. If you know WordPress, you’ll find the AffiliateWP dashboard easy to navigate and use.

You can track your affiliates to see how much revenue they’re bringing in. And the best part is the built-in payment management system lets you make payments to your affiliates without leaving your site.

Other than this, you get several integration options with major WordPress plugins like Easy Digital Downloads, WooCommerce, and more.

AffiliateWP Review

affiliatewp

With that said, we have broken this AffiliateWP review into several sections to help you easily navigate through the article. If you want to skip to any section, simply select one of the links below.

With that out of the way, let us get into the review.

Installation & Set Up

One thing we noticed while using AffiliateWP across our properties was how easy it is to install and set it up. First of all, it offers 3 plans, allowing you to find a package that suits your budget and needs easily.

So, to get started, head to the official AffiliateWP website and purchase a plan. After this, log into your AffiliateWP account and navigate to Downloads. Here, download the plugin’s ZIP file to your PC. While on this page, also copy the License Key; you will need it later to activate the pro version.

affiliatewp download zip file

After this, go to your WordPress account and navigate to Plugins » Add New Plugin. Then, drag and drop the ZIP file to the upload area, install it, and activate it like you would any other plugin.

If you face any problems, check out this article on how to install a plugin.

Once you activate the plugin, you will automatically be redirected to the “Setup Wizard.” This feature allows you to set up the plugin, following a step-by-step process so you do not forget anything.

Enter the “License Key” in the text bar provided on the first page of the Setup Wizard and click “Continue.” At this point, the pro plugin is fully activated and ready to use. But the Setup Wizard helps with more than just that.

affiliatewp setup wizard license key

Then, on the next page, you have the option to integrate AffiliateWP with different plugins to help track your affiliate links. Use the checkboxes to connect AffiliateWP with tools like Contact Form 7, Easy Digital Downloads, LifterLMS, WPForms, WP Simple Pay, and more.

Once you are done, hit Continue to go to the next page.

affiliatewp setup wizard step 2

Next, use checkboxes once again to select “Affiliate Payouts.” Here, you can pick “Payouts Service,” which lets you pay your affiliates directly from a debit or credit card, automating the cashout process.

You can also select “Affiliate Payouts,” which allows you to pay out your affiliates with one click. On top of this, you can pick Manual Payouts, letting you pay your affiliates via Skrill, bank transfer, PayPal, and more. Once done, hit “Continue” like in the previous steps.

affiliatewp setup wizard affiliate payouts

On the next page of the Setup Wizard, you will set up Commissions and Growth Tools.

First, set the “Currency” you want to use from a dropdown menu of over 50 currencies. Interestingly, you can even select Bitcoin as your mode of payment from this list. Then, configure the Commission Amount. You can set this either as a percentage or a flat rate, ensuring AffiliateWP adapts to your business model.

affiliatewp setup wizard commissions

After this, move to the “Growth Tools” section, where you can set different tools with checkboxes as well. You can install All in One SEO, WP Mail SMTP, Uncanny Automator, and more. You can also enable Landing Pages and Social Proof Notifications from PushEngage.

Remember that these tools are optional. So, only mark tools that you need to reduce confusion and keep your site light.

affiliatewp setup wizard growth tools

Once you hit “Continue” in this step, AffiliateWP will automatically install the plugins and tools selected to your WordPress dashboard.

Finally, on the last page of the Setup Wizard, you get a congratulatory alert letting you know that the configuration was successful.

Proceed by selecting “Finish Setup and Exit.”

affiliatewp setup wizard complete

That’s it! You are ready to use AffiliateWP. As you can see, installing and setting up this affiliate plugin takes just a few minutes. Plus, the Set Up Wizard allows you to configure the plugin without missing a step. The good thing is you can easily change the settings you added using the Setup Wizard whenever you want.

Next, let us look at AffilateWP’s customization options.

Customization

What really stuck out for us when we started using AffiliateWP was the customization options. As mentioned, affiliate programs can quickly get complicated and overwhelming. The solution is to set up the affiliate management plugin to suit your needs, affiliates, and potential customers.

And AffiliateWP can do this in spades!

We will start by looking at the customization options under “Registration & Management.”

You can find these customization options under AffiliateWP » Settings » Affiliates. Here, you can select pages from the dropdown menu to connect to your Affiliate Account Page, Affiliate Login Page, Affiliate Registration Page, and Terms of Use Page.

These pages can help your affiliates log in and manage their affiliate account from the front end of your website. This means they do not need to access your WordPress backend, maintaining your site security.

You may wonder what you should do if you do not have these pages published. Don’t worry; AffiliateWP creates them automatically once you install it.

But, all the same, we will show you how to create these access pages with AffiliateWP under the “Ease of Use” section in this review.

affiliatewp registration and management settings

Now, you may want more control over the affiliates that sign up to your website.

To help with this, AffiliateWP allows you to use checkboxes to Allow Affiliate Registration. If you leave this box unchecked, you will need to create the affiliate accounts yourself. Again, this is a simple process, and you just need to add affiliate details.

On top of this, you can vet every affiliate before their account is live by marking the Require Approval checkbox.

Individual user metrics are one of the most important things when it comes to affiliate programs. You need to make it easy for you and your affiliates to identify and track affiliate links from the get-go.

First, you can customize the “Starting Affiliate ID.” By default, your affiliate IDs start with “1.” So, your first affiliate will be allocated “1” as their affiliate ID.

affiliatewp id setup

Then you can also customize your “Referral Variable URL” through a text bar. By default, the Referral Variable URL is set as “ref.” You can leave it like that or use another phrase to make it feel more personal.

On top of this, you can customize the Default Referral Format between the “ID” and “Username” with a dropdown menu.

For context, if your Referral Variable remains as “ref,” the first affiliate on your site will get an affiliate link like:

  • Default Referral Format set as ID: https://mysite.com/?ref=1
  • Default Referral Format set as Username: https://mysite.com/?ref=username
affiliatewp referral variable

Next, you can allow your affiliates to easily share their affiliate links to trusted and priority websites straight from the affiliate accounts. To do this, you can use checkboxes to enable them to share links to sites like Facebook, LinkedIn, X(Formerly Twitter), email, and QR code.

affiliatewp sharing options

Apart from that, you can also assign pages or posts on your WordPress website with a checkbox to specific affiliates as their landing pages.

This can help make them feel more credible in front of potential users and bring more direct traffic to your site. At the same time, This helps you work with affiliates who do not run their own websites, making it more convenient for them.

Now, some users may not want to click on affiliate links because they look spammy. To help with this, AffiliateWP allows them to link directly to your site without an affiliate link. You can mark the Allow Direct Link Tracking to ensure you still measure metrics without the affiliate link.

affiliatewp affiliate landing pages

One of the biggest issues of running an affiliate program is that many users do not convert immediately. Some may take a few days, and others can even take a few weeks to become customers. But at the end of the day, your affiliate still converted them. If you do not track the links properly, this time duration can result in the affiliate who referred them not getting paid.

So, how does AffiliateWP help you track affiliate links correctly?

One way this affiliate plugin helps with this is by allowing you to customize the cookie duration.

With this feature, You can set up the “Cookie Expiration” in days. By default, AffiliateWP sets the cookie expiration to 30 days. This means the affiliate will still get their commission as long as the user converts within the period.

But since the user may also have clicked on affiliate links from different members, you can go a step further and use a checkbox to enable “Credit Last Refer.” This means the last affiliate link they clicked receives the commission.

Apart from that, you can use checkboxes to exclude shipping and tax costs from the referral calculations. This can help you lower your commission amount to properly reflect the actual sale.

affiliatewp cookie expiration

You can also set up “Cookie Sharing” with a checkbox. This allows your affiliates to get the commission even if the potential customers land on a subdomain of your website. This is especially useful if you run a multisite.

Apart from that, you can also blacklist websites and block them from generating referrals. This allows you to have better control over the website sources your referrals use to bring in customers. As a result, you can control the quality of leads and clients you get.

affiliatewp tracking setup

Now, all this information can be confusing to your referral team.

To help with this, you can customize the “Registration Form Description” to ensure your referrals are always well-informed. This message will be displayed above the payout service registration form fields. You can explain how and why they should register for your affiliate program.

And to ensure affiliates are always paid, you can also customize the “Payout Service Notice.” This will be displayed at the top of each tab of the Affiliate Area for the members who have not registered their payout accounts.

affiliatewp registration form description

As you can see, AffiliateWP has plenty of customization options. You can personalize almost every feature to make it easier for you to manage your affiliates. At the same time, it comes with customization features geared towards affiliates and potential customers, ensuring they both enjoy a better user experience.

Next, let us look at how easy it is to use AffiliateWP.

Ease of Use

Now, as you have seen above, there is a lot that goes into creating a successful affiliate campaign. The last thing you need is your affiliate marketing tool to make things even more difficult. Luckily, this affiliate management plugin streamlines the creation process, making it easy to use.

To show you this, let us create an affiliate program with AffiliateWP.

First, we need to set the registration form, login page, and affiliate area. This allows your referrals to navigate your affiliate features without accessing your backend. Sure, you can create a login page and registration form with any page builder you want.

But, as mentioned, AffiliateWP comes with ready-made pages to help you with this. In fact, it automatically creates a registration form, Affiliate Area, and other essential pages by default to ensure you have all the basics in place.

But you can still create and customize these access pages if you want.

To create a page with AffiliateWP, select a new page or post. Then, on the default WordPress page editor, use the search bar to find “AffiliateWP Blocks.” We should mention that every block comes fully loaded with all the page elements needed for the task.

For example, you can use the Affiliate Area, Affiliate Login, Affiliate Content, and more to create your page by just dragging and dropping the block to the area on the page you want.

For example, if we use the “Affiliate Login” block when you make the page live, it will contain the Username, Password, and Login elements. Your affiliates also get a “Remember Me” checkbox and a “Lost Your Password” link.

affiliatewp affiliate login block

If you use the Affiliate Area block, AffiliateWP automatically ensures it is only accessible to logged-in members. On their dashboard, they get tabs for Affiliate URLs, Statistics, Graphs, Payouts, Settings, and more.

The tabs displayed depend on the settings and customizations you have made. So, they may vary.

affiliatewp affiliate area block

The best part about using AffiliateWP WordPress blocks to build pages is that they take the styling and colors of your theme. This means they do not look out of place on your site.

That’s it. You do not need to customize the page further, even though you can do so with other WordPress blocks. You can use the WordPress default blocks to personalize the page and add elements you want just like any other page or post.

Once you have your affiliate pages ready, it is time to create your first affiliate program.

To do this, navigate to AffiliateWP » Setup in your WordPress dashboard to create the first affiliate registration form. This signup form allows your users to register as affiliates on your site.

On this page, you will notice that the steps are clearly labeled, ensuring you do not miss anything. Begin with the top tab on the page labeled “Create Your First Affiliate Registration Form.” Since this form is automatically created, you do not need to do anything else unless you want to.

affiliatewp affiliate registration form sample

If you want to customize this form, you can follow the steps we showed you above on creating pages with AffiliateWP blocks.

On the next step, labeled “Add your First Affiliate,” make yourself the first affiliate so that you can test out the affiliate management plugin.

Next, go to the “Level Up Your Affiliate Area.” This is a premium plugin accessible on high-end plans that helps improve the user experience of your affiliates. Though this step is optional, it is still highly recommended.

On the last tab, AffiliateWP will ask you to set up the Payouts Service if you haven’t already done so. Selecting the “Connect Your Site” link will redirect you to the AffiliateWP » Settings to complete this task.

With all that sorted, you can now use AffiliateWP to register affiliates, assign affiliate links, and accept leads from their refer links.

affiliatewp setup

Now let us look at AffiliateWP features and how to use them to run your affiliate programs on WordPress.

AffiliateWP Features: What Does AffiliateWP Offer

AffiliateWP offers powerful features to help you register, manage, track, and even pay your affiliates. We’ll go over each of these features one by one.

1. User-friendly Affiliate Area

One of the most powerful features that sets AffiliateWP apart from the other plugins is its built-in Affiliate Area.

As mentioned, when you install AffiliateWP, it creates a dedicated Affiliate Area page on your WordPress site by default. Users can register and log in to their affiliate accounts here.

login register affiliatewp

Every affiliate gets a dedicated front-end dashboard to track their performance so that they can view their earnings and conversion rates. They can also generate their referral URLs here.

referral url generator affiliatewp

The features and tracking options are neatly categorized in tabs, making it easy for the affiliates to keep track of their earnings.

statistics affiliate area

These are the tabs that you’ll find in the Affiliate Area page dashboard:

  • Affiliate URLs: Lets affiliates generate their own custom affiliate links to promote your products
  • Statistics: Affiliates can view all the data about their paid and unpaid earnings, number of referrals, commission percentages, and more
  • Graphs: Displays the reports of the affiliates’ performance in graphical diagrams
  • Referrals: Contains a list of the referrals made by the affiliate which includes data like amount earned, status (paid or unpaid), and date
  • Visits: Shows the number of visits along with the pages generated by the affiliates URLs
  • Creatives: Allows affiliates to use brand assets such as banners, text links, and other graphics to promote your products on their site
  • Settings: Includes options for affiliates to change their payment email addresses for accepting the commissions

2. Affiliate Payments

The only factor that drives affiliates to promote your business is commission. So, if you want your program to succeed, your payment process must be top-notch.

AffiliateWP makes it incredibly easy to manage your payments. In fact, you can pay your affiliates their commissions straight from your WordPress site. There’s no need to open up multiple tabs and payment processor pages.

AffiliateWP offers an integrated “Payouts Service” that lets you make payments to your affiliates in a few clicks.

payouts service

It lets you choose whether to pay affiliates directly from your bank account, credit card, debit card, or PayPal. On top of this, you can track and pay individual affiliates, but what’s really neat is that you can set global amounts, flat rates, and referral rates.

refferal settings

This will allow you to select multiple affiliates and disburse their payments in one go.

3. Affiliate Tracking and Management

AffiliateWP is packed with tools and features that help you manage all your affiliates and referrals in one place.

admin-affiliates

The interface is simple, and the reports give you all the information you need about affiliate earnings, paid referrals, and traffic they drive to your site.

You can also add new affiliates and edit their details on the same page if you do not want them to do it themselves. This ensures you have better control over your affiliate programs.

You can set up the Referral Rate Type for individual users, and you can choose between a flat rate or a percentage. Or leave it as Site Default. You can even go as far as deciding the individual referral rate.

affiliatewp individual referral setup

AffiliateWP lets you create unlimited affiliates to help market your products and website better.

Aside from affiliate management, you get advanced affiliate registration and tracking features to make your entire affiliate marketing process effortless. These features include:

  • Automatic affiliate creation: When someone registers as an affiliate, a new user account will be created instantly without any admin approval.
  • Manual affiliate approval: Moderate your affiliate registrations manually to check if they meet your requirements and choose who joins your program.
  • Referral link generator: Allow your affiliates to generate their own referral links from the built-in referral generator. It is included in the Affiliate Area page that is created when you install the plugin.
  • Affiliate coupon tracking: Use coupon codes instead of affiliate links to track referrals. You can connect coupon codes to a specific affiliate account and receive rewards and commission rates based on sales.
  • Set cookie expiration: Set the number of days to track the referral tracking cookie for your affiliates.

4. Real-Time Reporting

AffiliateWP comes with a real-time reporting system that provides accurate and reliable data. This keeps you updated about all your affiliates, new referrals, and total earnings.

In the Overview tab of the AffiliateWP plugin, you can view all the important stats and tracking data on one simple dashboard.

admin overview affiliatewp

You can also access the Reports tab to view more detailed insights about your affiliate members and how the program is performing.

5. Customizable Email Notifications

AffiliateWP allows you to send custom email notifications to yourself and your affiliates. You can create custom admin emails that notify you about new referrals, affiliate registrations, earnings reports, and more.

email settings affiliatewp

To make sure your affiliates are always updated, you can send emails to notify them about important information or milestones. So, for instance, you can email them when their application is accepted or if they’ve made a new sale from their referral links.

6. Integrations with Popular Plugins and Services

AffiliateWP lets you connect with a wide list of WordPress plugins and third-party services. These integrations help you add more features to improve your affiliate marketing program.

affiliatewp integration

The popular integrations include WooCommerce, WPForms, Easy Digital Downloads, Give, MemberPress, Gravity Forms, and WP Simple Pay, to name just a few.

You can connect with these integrations and access services like eCommerce, contact forms, paid subscription plans, file downloads, and more.

integrations affiliatewp

All of these integrations help you improve your site’s engagement and user experience.

7. Export/Import Affiliate Data

AffiliateWP lets you export your affiliates and referral data on a CSV file. This allows sharing your reports with team members offline, upload them to other software, or save them for accounting and bookkeeping purposes.

affiliatewp import export

At the same time, AffiliateWP allows you to import affiliate reports and data from other plugins. So you don’t need to manually add affiliate information which saves so much time.

8. Free and Pro Addons

This affiliate marketing tool has all the features to start your affiliate marketing program quickly. And what’s more? There’s a wide range of addons to extend the functionality of the plugin.

With your AffiliateWP installation, you get both free and paid add-ons.

  • Official Free Addons: The free AffiliateWP addons are available as soon as you install the plugin on your site. AffiliateWP offers +21 official free addons, including Affiliate QR Codes, Blocks, Allowed Products, LeaderBoard, and more.
  • Pro Addons : These addons come with the higher-end plan of AffiliateWP. So, if you’re on the Professional Plan, you’ll automatically get access to all 36+ pro addons. Some of the AffiliateWP pro addons are REST API Extended, Affiliate Landing Pages, Custom Affiliate Slugs, Lifetime Commissions, PayPal Payouts, and more. The good thing is you can upgrade to the Professional plan anytime you want to upscale your affiliate program.
affiliatewp addons

On top of this, you’ll find many third-party add-ons on the WordPress repository. These are not offered by the plugin itself but rather by other developers. This means if you need support for these addons, you’ll need to contact the original developers.

AffiliateWP Documentation & Support

Now, one thing we really enjoy about AffiliateWP documentation is that it starts from the homepage. Here, you get features listed accompanied with screenshots and other graphics to help you understand what it can do.

Select Help Center » Documentation on your homepage to access the documentation page.

affiliatewp help center

This directs you to a page where the posts are placed in tabs according to category. Each tab is labeled with the number of articles under the category.

affiliatewp documentation page

When you select a tab, it opens to a page where all the articles in this category are listed in order to make it easy to navigate. You also get the other categories listed on the left. On top of that, there is a search bar so you can quickly find exactly what you are looking for.

We like how the documentation articles are well-written and easy to follow. You find screenshots so that you can visualize the explanation, making it easy to understand.

Customer Support is one of the most important factors to consider when choosing any WordPress plugin for your site. More often than not, you will need help from the developers or support team to overcome any hurdles or get more information on how to use the plugin.

AffiliateWP offers the best support team that you can reach out to anytime you have an issue.

Now to contact a customer representative, go to Help Center » Support. This takes you to a page where you can contact support in 2 ways. You can either submit a support ticket or complete a form.

affiliatewp support options

Select Complete a Form if you have a question about pre-sales or general inquiries. You can access this form whether you are a customer or not.

You will fill out your information and the message text box where you will describe your issue. Plus, you have the option to also fill out the Website text bar and the “What can we help you with today?” dropdown.

If you are a customer you can use the “Submit a Support Ticket” button.

This redirects you to your AffiliateWP Account under Support. Just like the contact form, the ticket is also easy to complete.

In fact, it is already prefilled with the user information you signed up with, making it even simpler.

Now, with your user information already filled out, all you have to do is add your website and check a box on the “What can we help you with today?” list. After this, type your issue in the “Issue/Message” box and submit the ticket.

affiliatewp ticket form

The support team will contact you in 24 hours during weekdays. Support hours are Monday through Friday, 9 am to 5 pm EST (UTC-5). You may wait longer for a response if you submit your ticket on the weekend.

AffiliateWP Pricing

AffiliateWP offers 3 premium plans that are carefully designed to match the needs of different types of WordPress websites.

affiliatewp pricing

The Personal plan starts at $149.60 per year and it can be used for 1 site. This includes all the core features and the integrated Payouts Service. Along with this, you get access to the official free addons.

For 3 sites, you need to get the Plus plan, which starts at $199.60 per year. You get all the features and addons available in the personal plan.

With the Professional plan, which starts at $299.60 per year, you get access to additional pro addons such as Affiliate Portal, Zapier for AffiliateWP, Direct Link Tracking, and more. And you can use this for up to 10 sites.

Even though AffiliateWP does not have a free version of the plugin, you get a 14-day money-back guarantee, no questions asked. As a result, you can test out the plugin and get a refund if you do not like it.

Pros & Cons

Pros:

  • We found that the setup process, especially with the setup wizard, was seamless and quick.
  • It integrates well with popular plugins like WooCommerce, WPForms, and Easy Digital Downloads, which makes it versatile.
  • We can manage all our affiliates from a simple, user-friendly dashboard.
  • We love that we can customize cookie duration and referral tracking, making it adaptable to different affiliate strategies.
  • Setting up and sending custom email alerts to affiliates about new referrals and earnings is easy.
  • The real-time reporting gives us clear, up-to-date data on affiliate performance.

Cons:

  • Accessing the full range of features, including pro addons, required a higher-end plan, which could be expensive for smaller businesses.
  • While the interface is WordPress-friendly, new users unfamiliar with affiliate marketing might find it overwhelming initially.

FAQs: AffiliateWP Review

Is AffiliateWP free?

No, AffiliateWP is a premium WordPress plugin and does not have a free version. But, it offers a range of pricing plans, allowing you to choose a package based on your needs. Plus, you get a 14-day money-back guarantee, no questions asked, so you can test it before committing.

How does AffiliateWP use cookies?

AffiliateWP uses cookies to ensure that affiliates get credit for referred sales, even after a visitor returns to the site within a specified number of days. This is done by storing the affiliate tracking data in a cookie so the referral remains intact even if the customer doesn’t purchase right away. The best part is you can set up cookie expiration manually to have flexibility in tracking affiliate sales over an extended period.

Does AffiliateWP support multi-currency?

Yes, AffiliateWP supports multi-currency setups. You can configure a manual exchange rate or connect to an exchange rate API to ensure your currency conversions stay up-to-date automatically. This provides flexibility and allows you to create global affiliate programs.

Does AffiliateWP support all websites?

AffiliateWP only works on WordPress websites. However, it integrates with a wide range of WordPress plugins for eCommerce, membership, and other site types, giving you the ability to manage affiliate programs for almost any kind of business setup.

Final Verdict: Is AffiliateWP the Best Affiliate Management Plugin?

Running an affiliate program on your site needs proper organization and management. It would be like recruiting a large pool of salespeople to go out and sell your product.

For the program to be successful, you’ll really need to stay on top of things to make sure everything goes smoothly, payments are made on time, and affiliates are happy.

So does AffiliateWP match up to our high expectations?

After reviewing everything there is to know about this plugin, we can confidently say that AffiliateWP is hands down the best affiliate plugin for WordPress.

The affiliate management plugin was created just for WordPress which makes it a very special product. Its ease of use alone makes this plugin really stand out.

Plus, you’ll get all the features you need to recruit, manage, and track your affiliate members.

Added to that, you’ll get actionable insights into their performance so you can make data-driven decisions about your affiliate program.

To recap, some of the highlights of the AffiliateWP plugin are:

  • Beginner-friendly and easy to set up
  • Accurate and real-time reporting system
  • Dedicated Affiliates Area for members
  • Automatic and manual affiliate creation
  • Coupon codes for affiliate accounts
  • Popular integrations such as WooCommerce, MemberPress, PayPal, and more
  • Custom email notifications for admins and affiliates
  • Integrated Payouts Service to manage payments inside WordPress

How Does AffiliateWP Beat the Competition?

There are many affiliate management tools in the market. However, the unique features that AffiliateWP offers are unmatched by any other affiliate tools out there.

In this section, we’ll go over what sets AffiliateWP apart from the competition.

1. Easy to Set Up and Use

With AffiliateWP, you can set up a professional affiliate program with all the bells and whistles in a matter of minutes.

All you have to do is download and install the WordPress affiliate plugin on your WordPress site. If you need help installing it, you can check out our guide on how to install a WordPress plugin.

Then, all it takes is just a few clicks to configure the settings to match your needs. The plugin is designed to be DIY, so you can handle it all without the help of a professional developer, and you’ll never need to touch a line of code.

2. Built for WordPress Users

AffiliateWP is designed to be similar to the WordPress interface. All of its features are carefully designed to adapt to WordPress and to give you a familiar experience.

This means you won’t need to learn how to use a new dashboard to figure out where everything is. The AffiliateWP dashboard is simple yet well-organized, so you can find what you’re looking for without any hassle.

3. Site Speed and Performance

AffiliateWP is a powerful tool that lets you manage all your affiliates and track reports on your WordPress site. However, you don’t need to worry about it affecting your site speed.

It is built with the best practices and speed in mind, so no matter how big your affiliate network is, it doesn’t slow down your site. Also, the plugin ensures the best performance as it is updated regularly.

4. Does More Than Just Tracking Affiliates

AffiliateWP is packed with features to make it easy for you to run an affiliate program. At the same time, it’s designed to provide an optimal experience for your affiliate members as well.

Here are a few such features that are worth noting:

  • Pretty Affiliate URLs: Referral links usually bear tracking codes and this can make the URL look long and messy. With this feature, your affiliate links will be masked with shorter links that are neat and presentable.
  • Spam Protection: Let’s you enable reCAPTCHA to prevent bots and hackers from registering on your affiliate site.
  • Supports shortcodes: Get WordPress-friendly shortcodes to embed the affiliate login form and registration form anywhere on your site.
  • Sharing brand assets: Provide creative solutions to your affiliates, such as banners, text links, and graphics to promote sales on their own website.
  • Translation ready: Set up your affiliate site in any language you want. It can be fully internationalized and translated into any language.

5. Developer Friendly

AffiliateWP is great for developers as it gives them full control over the user interface and custom coding. So if you’re code-savvy and want to add your own custom codes, you can easily do that with AffiliateWP.

It is a flexible plugin with tons of customization options and WP-CLI integration.

6. Suitable for All Types of Business

Whether you run an eCommerce website or sell your own products online, AffiliateWP helps you market your products so you get better conversions.

The affiliate system is designed to be scalable so both small and large businesses can use it.

Added to that, there are tiered pricing plans, so you’ll easily find a plan that matches your budget. You can get started on the lower end and upgrade as you grow.

AffiliateWP Alternatives

AffiliateWP is our top choice if you want to start your own affiliate programs. However, if you’re looking for alternative options, then we recommend Easy Affiliate.

easy affiliate homepage

Easy Affiliate lets you set up a self-hosted affiliate program. And you’ll get features like the affiliate dashboard, real-time reporting, 1-click payouts, and no transaction fees. The highlight here is that it’s a bit cheaper than AffiliateWP. Plans start at just $99.60 a year.

Interested to know more about this plugin? Read our complete Easy Affiliate Review.

If you’re looking to start an affiliate marketing program to generate more sales and manage it all with ease, then AffiliateWP is the right plugin for you.

Even if you are a complete beginner, you can set up and run your affiliate program without the need for coding skills and expensive developers.

AffiliateWP is a great tool you can use to boost your sales, improve SEO, and grow your business.

We hope you enjoyed reading our AffiliateWP review. If you want to learn other ways to make money online, here is an article on building an auction site With WordPress.

Apart from that, here are other articles you may be interested in reading.

The first article lists the best affiliate cloaking plugins to ensure your links look less spammy. The next post teaches you all the ins and outs of affiliate marketing. While the last tutorial walks you through creating an Amazon Affiliate Store.

With that said, we give AffiliateWP a 5/5 star rating. Here’s the breakdown of our review score:

Overall
Rating Star FullRating Star FullRating Star FullRating Star FullRating Star Full   5.0 / 5.0
Features
Rating Star FullRating Star FullRating Star FullRating Star FullRating Star Full   5.0 / 5.0
Performance
Rating Star FullRating Star FullRating Star FullRating Star FullRating Star Full   5.0 / 5.0
Support
Rating Star FullRating Star FullRating Star FullRating Star FullRating Star Full   5.0 / 5.0
Ease of Use
Rating Star FullRating Star FullRating Star FullRating Star FullRating Star Full   5.0 / 5.0
Pricing
Rating Star FullRating Star FullRating Star FullRating Star FullRating Star Full   5.0 / 5.0
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