What is Affiliate Marketing Software?

Think of these affiliate marketing tools as your digital “scorekeeper” for your link-based partners. 

They meticulously track every action your affiliates take—every link click, every lead generated, every sale closed. This ensures that all contributions are accurately recorded and everyone gets the credit they deserve.

It’s all about keeping the score fair and transparent, so you can focus on driving your marketing strategy forward without losing track of the details, while keeping your affiliate partners in the know on their performance and rewards with you.

PartnerStack PartnerStack
4.7
Automates and scales B2B SaaS partner programs with a platform for partner management and a network for partner growth. Grow your affiliate, referral, reseller, and distribution partner programs on PartnerStack.
Rewardful Rewardful
4.4
Launch a simple affiliate program quickly. Setup affiliate and referral programs with Stripe & Paddle.
Impact Impact
4.5
Our partnership management platform automates every type of business partnership, at scale. Scale affiliates, influencers, and publishers with a platform and marketplace.
Tapfiliate Tapfiliate
4.3
Affiliate tracking software to grow your business. Create, track and scale your affiliate marketing program.
Everflow Everflow
4.7
Amplify your performance marketing. Analyze the engagement of each conversion, and auto-optimize.
Affise Affise
4.6
Simplifying Partnerships. Track, manage and scale your partnership marketing campaigns.

Key features of the best Affiliate Marketing Software

Typically, these platforms offer features like affiliate onboarding, link tracking, commission management, and performance reporting.

Some, like Impact, have more advanced integration capabilities and robust analytics for B2C. Tools like PartnerStack are standout for B2B SaaS partnerships, while Affise offers powerful automation for ad campaigns.

Also, some, like Rewardful, are point solutions built just to manage affiliate programs, while others, like PartnerStack, are partner platforms to run any type of partner program, including affiliate, and networks to find and recruit more affiliates to your program. 

Benefits of Affiliate Marketing Software

The core benefits are pretty clear: increased sales through scalable partnership channels, better ROI tracking, and time saved through affiliate management automation. Plus, these tools provide rich insights that help you optimize your campaigns continuously.

Affiliate programs can be a great way to benefit more from what media and publishers are writing about you and your category. 

Who uses Affiliate Marketing Software

From startups to large enterprises, any business looking to expand through this specific type of partnership — affiliates — can leverage these tools.

In B2B, generally, companies with more transactional sales, as opposed to relationship sales, are more likely to use affiliate partnerships because the link-based nature of it demands online reach, not relationships, to be successful.

Marketing managers and partnership coordinators find these tools invaluable for reducing the grunt work of their program management so they can focus on strategy and other things that will move the needle.

Implementation of Affiliate Marketing Software

It’s like setting up an email tool.

You’ll need to import your partners, setup your communications to affiliates, and build your reports. You’ll also need to integrate these platforms with your existing systems, set up commission structures, and onboard affiliates.

Platforms like Tapfiliate and Rewardful are praised for their ease of use for getting an SMB’s new affiliate program started, making them great for teams without deep technical resources. More robust solutions like Impact and PartnerStack may take a month or two to setup properly, but are then setup to do a lot more.

Comparing Affiliate Marketing Software

Choosing between these is like picking a car; it depends on what’s important for you.

Want the luxury features most consumers (B2C) desire? Start with Impact.

Do you just need to get from point A to point B for as little as possible? See Rewardful and others like it in economy class.

Looking for something built specific for the terrain of SaaS? PartnerStack is best-in-class.

Pricing: the cost of Affiliate Marketing Software

Pricing varies widely based on features and scale. For instance, basic plans might start around $50 per month, with more sophisticated offerings like Everflow or Impact going up to several hundred or even thousands per month. Often, there’s a commission or a fee per transaction as well.

My experience with Affiliate Marketing software

I have 4+ years of experience working in Demand Gen for PartnerStack. I’ve seen how over hundreds of business software companies run their affiliate programs, and work directly with the team that runs PartnerStack’s own affiliate program.

Author

Joe Kevens B2B SaaS Reviews

I’m the Founder and Editor-In-Chief of B2B SaaS Reviews and the Director of Demand Generation at PartnerStack, the leading platform for partner management and affiliate marketing in B2B SaaS. My experience spans several notable B2B SaaS companies, including Influitive (Advocate Marketing), LevelJump (Sales Enablement, acquired by Salesforce), and Eloqua (Marketing Automation, acquired by Oracle). I hold a Bachelor of Commerce in Marketing Management from Toronto Metropolitan University and a Master of International Business from Queen’s University, with academic exchanges at Copenhagen Business School and Bocconi University.

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