Are affiliate marketing tools worth your time?
Affiliate marketing allows you to trade your 9-5 lifestyle for one that comes with more flexibility and freedom.
And that’s the dream, isn’t it?
The idea is that you promote other brand’s products, earning a commission every time someone makes a purchase—thanks to your marketing efforts.
Affiliate marketing makes for a win-win situation.
It helps marketers earn revenues, and allows product creators to expand their market.
But—things aren’t as simple as they sound.
Due to the growing popularity of affiliate marketing, the competition in the field is higher than ever.
And so, a successful affiliate program requires tons of research, optimization, and content creation. It’s a lot of work.
Fortunately, there are online tools that can help.
But since there are far too many, we have rounded up a list of 21 of the best affiliate marketing tools. Ready to ace your digital marketing efforts with the right affiliate marketing tools?
Affiliate marketing is performance-based.
Exactly what does that mean?
In simple words, the better you perform, the more money you make. And if you don’t perform, i.e, if you fail to generate any sales, you simply don’t get paid.
If this sounds daunting, remind yourself that when done right, affiliate marketing can help you make thousands of dollars while you sleep.
In fact, as per PayScale, the average annual salary of an affiliate marketer in the US is $56,283.
Image via PayScale
That being said, creating an affiliate program from scratch can be overwhelming, especially if you’re just starting off.
To speed things up, you should invest in an affiliate marketing tool.
Trust us, you won’t regret it.
Keep reading to learn about 7 of the best tools, their key features, pros, cons, and some smart tips.
Image via LeadDyno
We simply ought to start our list of the best affiliate marketing tools with LeadDyno. Founded in 2014, LeadDyno is an affiliate tracking software that has tracked over 70M+ referrals to date.
What’s more, the software helped its clients generate over $200M+ in affiliate sales in 2020 alone.
How, you may ask?
Let’s take a look at the key features offered by LeadDyno.
Features
Pros
Cons
Tool Level
Usability
Price
Like many other affiliate marketing tools, LeadDyno allows users to test out all the features for free for 30 days. Here are the various plans and their details:
Pro Tip: You can set up custom affiliate dashboards for each of your affiliates, giving them access to all the information needed to promote your products.
Image via LinkTrust
From ad networks to advertisers to agencies, LinkTrust is one of the top affiliate marketing tools that has something for everybody.
An industry leader in performance marketing, LinkTrust makes it easy for users to create, manage, and monitor their affiliate marketing campaigns.
Features
Pros
Cons
Tool Level
Usability
Price
LinkTrust offers a free trial for 14 days. Check out its paid plans:
Pro Tip: Impress your clients by easily sharing LinkTrust’s intuitive business dashboards with them.
Image via Post Affiliate Pro
Post Affiliate Pro is undoubtedly one of the best affiliate marketing tools out there. It comes with a spectacular system that’s intuitive, fast, and infinitely expandable.
What else can Post Affiliate Pro do?
Let’s find out…
Features
Pros
Cons
Tool Level
Usability
Price
Post Affiliate Pro allows users to try the platform for free for 14 days. Check out its paid plans:
Pro Tip:The software’s SmartLinks feature automatically chooses destination URLs for a link or banner, based on the visitor’s device and geo location.
Image via AnyTrack
If you are looking for affiliate marketing tools that believe in the ‘less is more’ approach, it’s AnyTrack. With this platform, a single line of code will enable you to monitor and track all your affiliate campaigns and integrate them with your Google Analytics and Facebook Pixel.
This is one of the affiliate marketing tools that primarily caters to digital marketers who want to grow their affiliate income quickly. Let’s take a look at the features that make AnyTrack one of the sought-after affiliate marketing tools.
Features
Pros
Cons
Tool Level
Usability
Price
A 14-day free trial is available for all of AnyTrack’s plans. Check them out below:
Pro Tip: Use the conversion data scraped by AnyTrack to optimize your ads and improve your sales conversion rate.
Image via Affise
According to their clients, Affise is one of the most reliable affiliate marketing tools because it offers the best customer support in the industry.
After all, not many affiliate marketing tools can boast a global presence in more than 100 countries, and a whopping 97% customer satisfaction!
Here’s why you must check it out too…
Features
Pros
Cons
Tool Level
Usability
Price
A 30-day trial is available with one of Affise’s plans. Here are the two plans and their details:
Pro Tip: If you want to migrate to Affise from any other affiliate marketing tools, don’t worry. This is one of the best affiliate marketing tools that have a solution dedicated for this purpose—CPAPI.
Image via Awin
Awin is a spectacular affiliate marketing tool that connects sellers to a network of over 225,000 active publishers and 16,500 advertisers. Moreover, it comes with a suite of awesome tools that paves the way for highly profitable campaigns.
Features
Pros
Cons
Tool Level
Usability
Price
Pro Tip: eep close tabs on the ‘News and Events’ section on Awin’s website. You’ll be sure to discover some juicy tips to up your affiliate marketing game.
Image via Pretty Links
Most affiliate marketers know of the pains of long affiliate links. Pretty Links comes along to kick these concerns to the curb. It is essentially a WordPress plugin that transforms these ugly links into pretty, easy to share, and memorable ones.
As a powerful plugin for affiliate management, link management, shortlinks and automation, the tool offers a range of features to help you add, manage, and organize affiliate links.
This is one of the few affiliate marketing tools designed to work well with WordPress.
Want to know the best part?
You don’t need coding skills or technical knowledge to use this plugin.
And that’s not it.
As one of the smartest affiliate marketing tools, Pretty Links also helps you brand your links in just a few clicks. How cool is that?
Now, let’s explore what else this tool can do.
Features
Pros
Cons
Tool Level
Usability
Price
Unfortunately, Pretty Links doesn’t come with a free trial. Check out the paid plans you can choose from:
Pro Tip: Use Pretty Links’ Replacements feature to automatically add links to chosen keywords across your website.
Image via ClickMeter
If you're not familiar with ClickMeter, it's a nifty little tool that can help you track the performance of your affiliate marketing campaigns. Founded in 2012, the platform has evolved rapidly to a comprehensive link management tool.
Given its diverse features, ClickMeter is an obvious entrant in the list of the best affiliate marketing tools.
Features
Pros
Cons
Tool Level
Usability
Price
All the plans offer 100+features including conversion and revenue tracking.
Pro Tip: You can connect to Google Analytics to monitor the clicked links that arrive at your site.
Image via Tapfiliate
If you’re looking for the top affiliate marketing tools that streamline onboarding of affiliates and automate your marketing tasks, Tapfiliate is a great choice.
The mid-priced cloud software solution assists you in building and sustaining affiliate partnership with custom sign-up forms, dashboards and commission structures.
Tapfiliate claims to have a 93% customer support success rate, which is the reason why over 200 businesses have signed up for it.
Explore the features, pros, and cons to see if you should add this in your list of affiliate marketing tools to consider in 2023.
Features
Pros
Cons
Tool Level
Usability
Price
A 14-day free trial is on offer for all of these three plans:
Pro Tip: You can set higher commission rates during the festive season temporarily to help affiliates spread the love.
Image via MaxBounty
Are there any affiliate marketing tools that help you quickly boost your advertising revenue with a top affiliate site but pay only for results? We recommend MaxBounty, a CPA-based (cost per action) affiliate website. Apart from being named 2021’s top CPA Network, the successful affiliate site registered a record growth in affiliates, campaigns and brands in 2022.
Not surprisingly, they have some big brands on board including Microsoft and McAfee.
Intrigued? Let’s check out some of the awesome features that make this one of the best affiliate marketing tools.
Features
Pros
Cons
Tool Level
Usability
Price
Pro Tip: Track the daily performance of your affiliate marketing campaign by its clicks, leads, sales and cost.
Image via Refersion
If you are an e-commerce brand, Refersion is one of the best affiliate marketing tools to invest in. As one of the favorite affiliate marketing tools of marketers, Refersion offers seamless integration with top ecommerce platforms. This makes it easy to attract, manage and connect with affiliate networks.
Here are the features that qualify Refersion as one of the top notch affiliate marketing tools:
Features
Pros
Cons
Tool Level
Usability
Price
A defining feature of top affiliate marketing tools is the free trial option. Refersion offers a 14-day free trial to check out the affiliate marketing tool’s features.
Pro Tip: You can request custom analytics reports from the Refersion team to get granular insights on your marketing campaigns.
Image via Ambassador
Next up on our list of the best affiliate marketing tools is Ambassador, a powerhouse referral and affiliate marketing tool. With this tool in your kitty, you can build beautifully branded and customized omnichannel campaigns that deliver results.
Case studies posted by Ambassador show their clients were able to generate 8X more revenue than the investment they made in the affiliate marketing tool.
So, should you go ahead and sign up? Let’s take a closer look at the features that make this one of the best affiliate marketing tools.
Features
Pros
Cons
Tool Level
Usability
Price
While Ambassador offers the following types of plans, you will need to contact them to get a quote.
Pro Tip: Motivate your affiliates with branded images, offers and other material to share across their network.
Image via Easy Affiliate
Easy Affiliate is one of the relatively new affiliate marketing tools in the market. The WordPress plugin allows you to easily create a self-hosted affiliate marketing program for your ecommerce store or WordPress site.
Right from recruiting the right people to giving access to a branded affiliate dashboard, Easy Affiliate gives you full control of the affiliate marketing process.
When you see the features and pros of this tool, you will see why we have listed this as one of the best affiliate marketing tools.
Features
Pros
Cons
Tool Level
Usability
Price
While there is no free trial, Easy Affiliate offers a 100% money-back guarantee with a 14-day trial. Here are the paid plans:
Pro Tip: You can choose which affiliate applicants you want to onboard with the Affiliate Application process.
Image via Voluum
Real time tracking? Check. Secure interface? Check. Seamless affiliate data? Check. As one of the cutting edge affiliate marketing tools in the industry, Voluum ticks all the right boxes. The platform allows affiliate marketers to track, optimize, and manage organic and paid advertisting sources from one platform.
Founded in 2015, Voluum has earned the distinction of being one of the fastest growing companies in Europe.
Let’s check out its features, pros, and cons to understand why Voluum deserves to be on the list of the top affiliate marketing tools.
Features
Pros
Cons
Tool Level
Usability
Price
Pro Tip: Access data on all your affiliate campaigns on-the-go with Voluum’s mobile app. This is also one of the reasons why Voluum features in our list of the best affiliate marketing tools.
Image via WhatRunsWhere
To craft a winning digital marketing strategy, using the top affiliate marketing tools is as important as performing detailed competitor analysis. Knowing what your competitors profitable ads, affiliate offers, and strategies are is the first step to designing a successful affiliate program.
For this, you need specific affiliate marketing tools that spy on your competitors to give you granular details on their strategy. This is exactly the forte of WhatRunsWhere.
Let’s see how it helps you do competitor analysis to learn why it’s on this list of the best affiliate marketing tools.
Features
Pros
Cons
Tool Level
Usability
Price
Pro Tip: Combining this syping tool with top affiliate marketing tools will give you the best results.
Image via Tune
Tune is just what you need if you are looking for flexible affiliate marketing tools that allow you to easily manage all your marketing partnerships.
Founded in 2009, Tune is one of the first SaaS based affiliate marketing tools in the digital marketing industry. The cloud-based platform helps you optimize affiliate partnerships across different affiliate networks and channels.
So, what exactly makes Tune qualify as one of our favorite affiliate marketing tools? Read on:
Features
Pros
Cons
Tool Level
Usability
Price
Pro Tip: Use the direct deposit feature to pay your affiliate marketers in time and keep them happy.
Image via Everflow
Everflow is one of the favorite affiliate marketing tools for agencies that are looking to set up a successful online business. This is one of few affiliate marketing tools that cater to marketers who want to manage influencers, followers, and customers from one single place.
This affiliate marketing tool is rated highly by most users.
Here’s a quick look at its top features, pros, and cons to help you make an informed decision on investing in top-rated affiliate marketing tools.
Features
Pros
Cons
Tool Level
Usability
Price
Everflow offers two types of plans:
Pro Tip: Use SmartSwitch to block traffic from low-quality sources to elevate your affiliate marketing game.
Image via ClickInc
ClickInc is among the oldest affiliate marketing tools that has been around for over a decade and offer an easy way to manage your affiliate program. According to the information on their site, they are currently managing many large accounts in different domains. Some of these accounts have over 5,000 affiliates.
What’s more, the platform has received positive feedback from customers across the world. If you are interested in an affordable and easy-to-use affiliate business tool, it’s worth giving ClickInc a shot.
So, what exactly does ClickInc offer?
Let’s check it out.
Features
Pros
Cons
Tool Level
Usability
Price
ClickInc offers a 30-day free trial for each of its three paid plans:
Pro Tip: Assign different affiliate managers for various product categories in your online store who manage your affiliates.
Image via Impact
Think the world of affiliate management is complex?
Impact is one of the smart affiliate marketing tools in the industry that simplify affiliate partnership management for you.
Since its inception in 2008, Impact has grown to become one of the world’s leading partnership management platforms. Whether you are an affiliate marketer, agency, or brand, you can build rewarding marketing partnerships using Impact.
Here’s a closer look at its features that contribute to the tool featuring in the list of cutting-edge affiliate marketing tools.
Features
Pros
Cons
Tool Level
Usability
Price
Pro Tip: Onboard exclusive affiliates and partners with Impact’s Branded Sign Up links. Easy to see why Impact is one of the best affiliate marketing tools, isn’t it?
Image via Offer18
Reasonable pricing and a host of great features are the USPs of Offer18, one of the favorite affiliate marketing tools for agencies and brands. With several awards under its belt and a 95% customer satisfaction score, Offer18 is easily one of the best affiliate marketing tools in the industry.
As always, we will take a peek into the features, pros, and cons that ensure Offer18 is on the list of highly-rated affiliate marketing tools.
Features
Pros
Cons
Tool Level
Usability
Price
You can try out the features of the tool with a 30-day free trial. Here are its paid plans:
Pro Tip: Evaluate your affiliate marketing strategy by creating engaging visuals of reports by using charts, pivot-tables, and other features.
Image via ShareASale
Want to invest in a good affiliate marketing tool to boost your sales? No worries. With ShareASale, you do this easily by partnering with a vast network of affiliates.
As one of the favorite affiliate marketing tools for marketers and agencies, ShareASale has been around since 2000.
Now, for its features, pricing, pros, and cons:
Features
Pros
Cons
Tool Level
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Price
Pro Tip: You can track sales even when there are no clicks when customers use exclusive coupon codes.
Image via AffTrack
AffTrack has been offering solutions such as real-time tracking and conversion data for affiliate marketers since 2009.
As one of the most versatile affiliate marketing tools, it gives you great value for money.
Here are its notable features.
Features
Pros
Cons
Tool Level
Usability
Price
Pro Tip: Keep your affiliates engaged and informed of offers with automatic messages and alerts.
Q1. Which platform is the best for affiliate marketing?
A. Some of the best platforms for affiliate marketing are:
Q2. What exactly is affiliate marketing?
A. Affiliate marketing is a type of performance-based marketing where product creators reward affiliates for each visitor, customer, or lead generated by the affiliates’ marketing efforts.
Q3. How do I become an affiliate marketer?
A. If you want to become an affiliate marketer, here’s a 7-step checklist you can follow:
Q4. How much can I make in affiliate marketing?
A. Although affiliate marketing can be pretty lucrative, it takes time and effort to build your business. The average annual salary of an affiliate marketer in the US is $56,283.
Q5. Is affiliate marketing easy?
A. Affiliate marketing can be a bit tricky when you’re just starting off. What makes things even tougher is the ever-increasing competition.
However, if you invest in the right affiliate marketing tools, this type of marketing can be super easy and lucrative.
Q6. Are there any free affiliate marketing tools?
A. Almost all the tools mentioned in this article offer a free trial that lets you test the features. However, if you really want to gain from your affiliate program, it’s best advised to invest money into a tool of your choice.
Q7. How can I start affiliate marketing for free?
A.Two ways to get started with affiliate marketing for free are:
Q8. What are the best affiliate marketing tools for a WordPress website?
A. Pretty Links is undoubtedly one of the best affiliate marketing tools for a WordPress website. However, several affiliate tools of the day have WordPress plugins.
Q9. What are the benefits of affiliate marketing?
A. As for marketers, affiliate marketing can be a great source of income. On the other hand, the benefits of using affiliate marketers for businesses are as follows:
Q10. Is affiliate marketing worth it in 2023?
A. Yes. Affiliate marketing is still a lucrative industry in 2023, and will continue to be so for years to come. Just because competition has increased, doesn’t mean that there’s no scope to excel.
Whether you’re a product creator or an affiliate marketer, these tools can help you make more money online.
Starting out with affiliate marketing can be a lot like navigating murky waters.
It requires trial and error, and coming up with an effective content strategy can be pretty time-consuming.
So, narrow down on your requirements, and try to gauge which of these tools fits your needs best.
If you’ve got a lot to do with WordPress, Pretty Links would probably be your best bet. On the other hand, if you’re looking for a one-stop shop to create, execute, and monitor affiliate campaigns, do consider LeadDyno and LinkTrust. And finally, if access to a large affiliate network is high on your priority list, you could largely benefit from AnyTrack.
Point being, spare some time to assess your needs before you go on to invest in a tool.
Now, have you used any affiliate marketing tool that’s not on this list? Tell us about your experience in the comments below.
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