Initial thoughts after deploying the AffiliateWP plugin on a busy site.
It’s amazing! But of course…what else did you expect from Sandhills Development? Anything made by Pippin (of Pippin’s Plugins) is always going to be A-grade top class stuff.
Let’s cover the plugin very quickly and why I think many WordPress sites should using it.
1. Best coded
Coded clean, updated and maintained by an A-level development team. Anything Pippin and Sandhills Development does is always the best.
2. Incredible features
You may think that you only need one or two main affiliate-tracking features but trust me, you will really appreciate all that AffiliateWP can do. Here are just a few below that saved my life (and not found in other affiliate plugins):
- Automatic payouts – this is huge! Saves you from time-consuming affiliate payments if you have many affiliates.
- Cookie tracking across multiple sites – being able to track sales even if they visited one site, but purchased from from another.
- Changing affiliate urls – so links look better and not so salesy.
- Direct link tracking – approved sites will automatically credit the referrer for any inbound links from that site.
- PayPal payouts – quickly pay everyone out in a few clients right from your WordPress dashboard.
- Zapier integration – I use this to automatically add new affiliates to my email newsletter. Also to automatically add affiliate banners to a Google Drive folder.
3. Many add-ons and integrations
Tons and tons, too many to list. See the add-ons page for yourself. Whatever popular ecommerce or membership software you’re using, I’m confident AffiliateWP will work with it. It’ll add tons of possibilities for growing your business.
- I’m also releasing my own addon plugin for AffiliateWP. Be on the lookout! 😉
4. Lifetime pricing
Yes, they have a yearly fee if you buy one of the small plans. But I didn’t hesitate at all jumping on their lifetime plan. It’s ONE PAYMENT of $499 and you get to use it on unlimited number of sites, access to all add-ons and integrations, lifetime updates and email support.
Best affiliate plugin on the market
Have I tried every affiliate plugin on the market? No. But I still strongly feel AffiliateWP is the best by far. Best code, cleanest looking, tons of features and integrations. Great support and ongoing development.
Don’t worry, I made sure I liked the plugin by testing with the single-site $99/year license and then paid the difference to upgrade to lifetime after 5 months. One of the best decisions ever.
- Try AffiliateWP today (affiliate link)
I like AffiliateWP so much I built 2 addons for it:
- A (free) migration script to go from Affiliate Royale to AffiliateWP.
- A (paid) addon to track conversions and visits from an external site. Details coming soon.
Do you have any experience with standalone affiliate systems like postaffilate pro or idevaffiliate? I have several clients that use those and have always stayed away from plugin based solutions… The only other thing would be the ability to send commissions from other sites to the system, is there any functionality like that?
I have one very large client in particular that has 3 sites that all run through one install of postaffiliate pro.. or are systems like those on a whole different level?
I’ve never tried Post Affiliate Pro or iDevAffiliate but I can tell you that AffiliateWP is used by many theme and plugin developers in the community. In regards to being able to track commissions for visits sent from external sites…yes, it can do that! There’s the official addon called “External Referral Links” and also I made my own 3rd-party one called “External Tracker for AffiliateWP” which has more features.
Since I don’t have firsthand knowledge about your system, I can’t answer your question. If you can share a private Loom video of your backend, I can give you a quick yes or no but it’s best that you test yourself. AffiliateWP is definitely worth it. They have a no-questions-asked refund policy, too.