AffiliateWP

Planning to set up your own referral program, and wondering whether AffiliateWP is the right plugin to help you achieve that goal?

With more than 30,000 users, AffiliateWP is a popular plugin that promises to help you create a successful referral program in WordPress or WooCommerce. According to their website, AffiliateWP can help you track and calculate commissions, and pay affiliates with ease thanks to a convenient, 1-click payment feature.

But is AffiliateWP worth the hype? 

To help you find the right affiliate management plugin for your WordPress website, I’ve put AffiliateWP to the test. In this post, I’ll be diving into its features, support, and pricing, so you can decide whether you need to install AffiliateWP ASAP – or look for an alternative affiliate management plugin.

AffiliateWP Review: Why Use It in WordPress?

Did you know that affiliate marketing can significantly boost your website traffic and sales?

AffiliateWP is a powerful affiliate tracking and management tool for businesses that want to start their own referral program. Unlike other affiliate software, AffiliateWP is built as an easy-to-use WordPress plugin.

I’ve found that you can use AffiliateWP to set up an affiliate program in just a few minutes, and then easily monitor clicks, sales, and payments. In fact, AffiliateWP lets you pay your affiliates with a single click, via Stripe or PayPal.

You can add an unlimited number of affiliate partners, to reach as many potential new customers as possible. With built-in smart fraud detection, you can be confident that you’re working with genuine partners and rewarding legitimate clicks and conversions, no matter how big your referral program gets.

After adding your partners, AffiliateWP creates detailed reports so you can see what’s working and what’s not. You can then use this insight to fine-tune your activities and create an effective content plan in WordPress.

These reports would be invaluable when it comes to identifying your top-performing partners, and then rewarding them with extra perks and bonuses, in order to keep them motivated.

In addition, when testing AffiliateWP I found that it integrates seamlessly with many popular plugins and platforms including MemberPress, PayPal, WooCommerce, and Easy Digital Downloads. With that in mind, I’m confident that you could add AffiliateWP to an existing membership site, blog, business website, or eCommerce store with ease.

AffiliateWP Review: The Right Affiliate Management Plugin for You?

With a referral program, you can introduce your website to a completely new audience, and grow your business online. However, creating and managing your own affiliate network manually can take a lot of work.

Wouldn’t it be great if you could reap all the benefits of a referral program, without any of the hassle? Keep reading this AffiliateWP review, to see if it’s the secret to achieving that goal.

1. Easy Affiliate Registration

Your registration form is the first point of contact with new affiliates. It sets the tone for the rest of the relationship, so it’s important to make a good first impression.

After installing and activating AffiliateWP, it automatically adds a registration form to your site, so new partners can start signing up straight away.

To save time, AffiliateWP can approve new affiliates automatically, or you can moderate each signup so you have complete control over your network.

There’s even an AI Affiliate Review feature that saved me a ton of time when receiving and reviewing applications. It gives you an Accept or Reject recommendation, along with a valid reason for each suggestion.

No matter whether you use automatic, AI, or manual approval, AffiliateWP will automatically create an account for each approved affiliate.

The affiliate can then log into their account using their email address and password, and see their brand-new dashboard.

From here, the affiliate can create their own referral links using the built-in referral generator.

This means new signups can start promoting your business straight away, without waiting for any links from you.

In my experience, these kinds of automated workflows can save you hours of time, especially as your site grows and attracts more applications. It can also keep your network running smoothly, even if you get lots of new signups in a short space of time.

2. User-Friendly Affiliate Dashboard

AffiliateWP automatically creates a custom affiliate dashboard.

This is perfect for sharing everything partners need to know about your products, sales, coupons, and much more. I’ve found this feature improves the onboarding process so new affiliates can start selling straight away.

Affiliates can also use this dashboard to track their performance, view their earnings, and track conversion rates.

The affiliate dashboard is neatly organized into tabs so your partners can also find the information they need. This means they won’t be contacting you, to ask for help!

After testing AffiliateWP with multiple themes, I’m confident that integrates perfectly with all well-coded WordPress themes, so the dashboard will look like a natural part of your website rather than third-party content.

Want to customize the default dashboard? No problem – you can use Affiliate Area Tabs to create your own custom tabs.

Each tab is linked to a WordPress page so you can add content using the familiar WordPress content editor.

3. Upload Unlimited Creatives

Creatives are resources that help affiliates promote your business. Some common examples are your website logo, product photos, banner ads, text documents, and custom landing pages.

With AffiliateWP, you can upload as many creative resources as you want, directly from the WordPress dashboard.

If you don’t already have resources, then you can create some using web design software. I recommend something like Canva.

After uploading these resources, affiliates can access them at any time from the ‘Creatives’ tab in their affiliate dashboard.

In this way, you can easily distribute helpful resources to countless affiliate partners.

4. Affiliate Landing Pages

In my experience, many internet users are suspicious about affiliate links and will try to avoid clicking on them. That’s bad news for your referral program, but there are some ways around it. To start, you may want to create landing pages for your partners instead.

Your partners can promote these pages without using an affiliate URL. A lot of the time, this gets you some extra clicks and conversions, especially from people who typically avoid affiliate links.

With AffiliateWP, you can create landing pages using the familiar WordPress block editor and then assign the page to a specific partner.

This made it easy for me to create unique pages that were optimized for individual affiliate partners, and their specific audiences.

Another option is creating affiliate landing pages using a page builder.

I use SeedProd as it’s the best page builder on the market, and lets me create landing pages, sales pages, and even affiliate landing pages without having to write a single line of code.

No matter what page builder you use, you can easily share your landing pages with partners via the affiliate dashboard.

5. Smart Global Commission Rules

With AffiliateWP, you can easily set the global commission rules and referral rates that best suit your business.

You can choose between one-time, recurring payments, tiered, lifetime, and personalized commissions. For example, if you sell physical products then I find it often makes sense to pay a percentage-based commission.

If you sell digital downloads that all have similar pricing, then you may prefer to offer a flat rate commission instead.

These global rules can save you a ton of time and effort. However, you can also override the rules for individual affiliates if you need to.

I’ve seen many websites use this technique to reward their highest-performing affiliates, or keep their biggest affiliate partners happy with higher rates.

6. Customizable Email Notifications

As a busy website owner, it can be difficult to properly monitor a thriving referral program. If that’s the case, then you’ll be happy to learn that AffiliateWP can send automated emails to your WordPress admin email. For example, AffiliateWP can alert you to new registrations so you can respond to them straight away.

AffiliateWP can also send automated notifications to your affiliate partners. For example, you might notify them about each sale that comes from their referral link, or when their application gets accepted.

In this way, you can create stronger relationships with your partners and keep them engaged with your program, without lots of extra manual work. It’s perfect for anyone who already has a mile-long To Do list!

Even better, all these emails are fully customizable, so you can strengthen your branding by adding your own logo and messaging.

Pro Tip: You’ll want to make sure your emails arrive safely in the affiliate’s inbox, and not in the spam folder. I’m a big fan of using an SMTP service provider to improve email deliverability rates and fix any problems, like WordPress not sending emails reliably.

7. Affiliate Leaderboards

There’s many factors that go into running a successful referral network. However, keeping your affiliates motivated and engaged is right up there at the top of the list!

One popular trick that I’ve seen time and time again, is encouraging competition between affiliates. With that in mind, AffiliateWP can add an affiliate leaderboard to any page, post, or widget-ready area using a shortcode.

By highlighting your top earner’s performance, you can show other affiliates what’s possible. This can push them to work harder and remain with your referral network in the hope of getting similar results.

To inspire even more competition, you might combine the leaderboard with perks such as higher commission rates for your top 5 partners. Trust me, it works!

8. Vanity Affiliate Coupons and Tracking

People are much more likely to make a purchase if they think they’re getting a good deal. With that in mind, affiliate coupons can help your partners stand out from the competition. These are unique codes that affiliates can share, rather than posting a referral URL.

If you want to use affiliate coupons, then you’ll need to track how each code is being used, so you can credit the right affiliate with each click and sale.

The good news is that AffiliateWP comes with built-in coupon tracking so you can connect each code to a specific affiliate account.

The affiliate gets awarded a referral, every time a customer uses their coupon.

After testing the plugin, I found that AffiliateWP’s coupon tracking works perfectly with all the major eCommerce platforms including MemberPress, WooCommerce, and Easy Digital Downloads. You just need to check a box in the plugin’s settings.

You can also use AffiliateWP to create vanity coupon codes that feature the partner’s unique branding, similar to cloaking affiliate links.

This is perfect for harnessing the relationship and trust an affiliate already has with their audience and customers.

Unique and eye-catching coupon codes can also help your partners stand out on social media, forums, and any other place where they share their vanity codes.

9. Advanced Affiliate Tracking

I’ve found that some affiliate management plugins use complex layouts or ask you to use external tracking software and tools. By contrast, AffiliateWP’s advanced affiliate tracking lets you manage all your affiliates and referrals without ever leaving the WordPress dashboard.

To start, it shows detailed statistics for each affiliate, so you can accurately track the total earnings, number of referrals sent, and total visits generated by each partner. This makes conversion tracking simple.

You can even track each referral an affiliate sends you via AffiliateWP’s referral tracking dashboard. Here, you can decide whether to accept or reject each individual referral.

If you reject a referral, then AffiliateWP will no longer take it into account when calculating the affiliate’s commission. With that said, you can be confident you’re always sending partners the correct amount.

If you get a new affiliate partner, then you can add that person and edit their details in the same area of the WordPress dashboard.

You can also remove non-performing affiliates from the admin area.

10. Easy 1-Click Payouts 

The best way to keep your affiliates motivated, is to send them the right amount of commission, on time. If you don’t pay them on time or force them to navigate complex invoicing and payment processes, then your partners will likely leave your referral program.

Thankfully, AffiliateWP has an integrated Payouts Service so you can pay all your affiliate partners directly from the WordPress dashboard using a bank account or debit card.

AffiliateWP’s Payouts Service uses Stripe as the payment processor, so it’s easy to get started. Simply sign up for the Payouts Service plan that works for you and then connect it to your AffiliateWP account.

After that, you can track and pay individual affiliates, or you can save time by setting global amounts, flat rates, and referral rates.

With features like that, you can be confident that each affiliate is getting the right amount of commission, no matter how big your program gets.

Even better, AffiliateWP offers 1-click payouts that go directly to your partners’ bank accounts, saving you a ton of time. You can use 1-click payouts with a few affiliates, or pay your entire network with the click of a button.

You can also easily customize the payment receipts and invoices and handle tax agreements from the AffiliateWP dashboard. In my experience, this is far easier than using a separate invoice plugin or accounting software.

11. Export/Import Affiliate and Referral Data

Sometimes, you may want to share your affiliate data with team members who don’t have access to WordPress. For example, you might need to share data with your marketing team, but don’t want to create a new user account for each person. You may also need to import the data into your CRM app.

With AffiliateWP, you can export all your affiliate and referral data as a CSV file. 

Have you previously used a different affiliate marketing tool or plugin?

You can import all that third-party data into AffiliateWP using the built-in import/export tool. This can save you a ton of time and effort compared to adding all the information manually.

12. Advanced Protection Against Affiliate Fraud

Affiliate marketing fraud is a big problem for all businesses, so it’s important to take WordPress security seriously. To prevent revenue loss, AffiliateWP comes with built-in smart fraud detection technology. In my opinion, that’s a must-have feature for any referral network!

By default, you’ll need to approve all new affiliates manually. This gives you an early opportunity to spot any fraudulent submissions.

You can also customize the affiliate signup form, to gather more information about potential partners. For example, I experimented with fields that ask for the person’s website URL and payment email, so I could learn more about them.

Another option is adding reCAPTCHA to your registration form to stop spambots and scripts from joining your affiliate program.

By default, AffiliateWP tracks and displays all the URLs that send you affiliate traffic. This makes it easier to spot suspicious links and traffic, so you can take steps to block them. For example, you can block specific IP addresses in WordPress.

In addition, AffiliateWP can flag and reject self-referrals, where an affiliate uses their own link to get a discount on your products. Similarly, AffiliateWP can flag and reject any referrals that come from non-approved sites. That’s a few less things to worry about!

Finally, you may want to set an expected conversion rate. AffiliateWP will then flag any partners who have a conversion rate that’s outside the expected range.

13. Integrations with Popular Plugins and Services

This AffiliateWP review won’t be complete without looking at the various plugins and services it’s compatible with. According to the website, it’s compatible with a range of plugins, but over the course of this review I tested it with WooCommerce, WPForms, Easy Digital Downloads, MemberPress, Gravity Forms, and WP Simple Pay, and it worked perfectly.

By integrating these must have WordPress plugins and services with AffiliateWP you can create a more engaging affiliate network and user experience. For example, you might customize the affiliate forms using a dedicated form plugin like WPForms.

I can also imagine using AffiliateWP to add an affiliate program to membership sites created using a solution like MemberPress. For example, if you sell online courses, then you can use the AffiliateWP MemberPress integration to attract more members and learners to your site.

14. Community and Professional Support

AffiliateWP has everything you need to create and manage a successful referral network. However, sometimes you may have questions, or need some extra help.

If you prefer to research yourself, then AffiliateWP has in-depth documentation. I found this to be a great resource while writing this post.

There’s also the AffiliateWP blog where I found detailed, how-to guides covering all the plugin’s major features.

The AffiliateWP team also publishes best practices, tips, and general advice on how to add an affiliate program in WooCommerce and other eCommerce platforms.

You’ll also get access to professional support.

Simply log into your AffiliateWP account and complete a quick form, and the AffiliateWP team will get back to you as soon as possible.

AffiliateWP Review: Pricing Plans

Unlike some other affiliate management plugins, AffiliateWP doesn’t charge monthly fees. Instead, you can purchase a yearly license and then send an unlimited number of payouts, to an unlimited number of affiliate partners.

To support businesses of all sizes, AffiliateWP offers three licensing plans.

• Personal. For $149.60 per year, this plan has everything you need to create a successful referral program including reliable affiliate tracking, one-click payouts, an affiliate dashboard, and more. If you’re just getting started with your WordPress blog or website, then I’d highly recommend the Personal plan.
• Plus. Priced at $199.60 per year, Plus allows you to use AffiliateWP on 2 websites. If you want to grow your program fast, then Plus can offer a commission for signup referrals and a signup bonus. You can also keep affiliates engaged with real-time push notifications, which is a feature I haven’t seen in many other affiliate referral plugins.
• Professional. Do you run a portfolio of websites? For $299.60, Professional allows you to use AffiliateWP on up to 10 websites. It also has extra tools that can protect you against affiliate fraud. To strengthen your branding, the Professional plan allows you to customize the affiliate dashboard, affiliate area, and your program’s landing pages.

AffiliateWP Review: Is it Worth It?

To wrap up this comprehensive AffiliateWP review, I’m confident that it’s a great affiliate management plugin.

If you’re just getting started, then AffiliateWP Personal is an affordable plan that has everything you need to set up your own referral program.

However, if you want to recruit lots of affiliate partners quickly, then Plus has some extra tools that can help grow your referral program. In particular, you can offer bonuses to affiliates who successfully recruit new users. I’ve seen many businesses use this exact same technique to set up a successful affiliate program, fast.

Finally, if you have lots of blogs or websites, then Professional lets you use AffiliateWP on up to 10 websites. You can also add your own branding to key areas such as the affiliate dashboard, so this is perfect if you prefer to use white labelled tools.

FAQs: AffiliateWP Review

What is the best affiliate plugin for WordPress?

I’d always recommend choosing a solution based on your own unique budget and needs. However, after testing a range of different affiliate management software, I’d recommend AffiliateWP as a cost-effective solution for WordPress. It also offers a stand-out bulk payment option for PayPal and integrated Payouts services, which promises to make your life super easy.

Is AffiliateWP free?

There isn’t a free version of AffiliateWP, but they do offer a 14-day money-back guarantee. This means you can try AffiliateWP risk-free and if it doesn’t fit your needs, then you can get your money back.

Does AffiliateWP support all websites?

AffiliateWP is only available as a WordPress plugin, so it doesn’t work on any other platforms. However, it integrates with Easy Digital Downloads, WooCommerce, iThemes Exchange, and many other popular WordPress eCommerce plugins. This means you can add a referral program to practically any kind of WordPress website.

Does WPBeginner use AffiliateWP?

Yes! We use AffiliateWP to power the affiliate program for our stores like Smash Balloon, Easy Digital Downloads, and SearchWP.

How do I install AffiliateWP?

You can install and activate AffiliateWP, just like any other WordPress plugin. For more complete instructions, I’d recommend checking out WPBeginner’s guide on how to create a referral program in WordPress.

I hope this AffiliateWP review helped you decide whether it’s the right affiliate management plugin for you. You can also check out WPBeginner’s guide on how to create a contact form, or see our expert pick of the best live chat software.

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