5 Best WordPress Affiliate Management Plugins For 2024

Chances are you’re no stranger to affiliate marketing if you move in digital marketing circles. It’s easy to see that affiliate marketing strategies have the potential to drive a huge amount of growth.

But what’s not so straightforward, is figuring out how to run your own affiliate marketing program. As a website owner, there are some challenges to rewards-based marketing structures that can make it appear like too much work.

Not only do you have a limited amount of time on your hands, but it’s also difficult to figure out where to start.

If you use WordPress to run your sites, you’re in luck. Over the years a myriad of affiliate management plugins have come onto the market to make running your own affiliate program, much simpler.

In the rest of this article, we’ll look at six of the best WordPress affiliate management plugins, with the aim of making your next steps much clearer.

1. AffiliateWP

AffiliateWP

AffiliateWP is the best WordPress affiliate management plugin on the market. With an impressive feature set, solid code and robust support, you’ll have everything you need.

You can set up your affiliate program in minutes and with full integration with popular WordPress eCommerce and Membership plugins, you won’t have annoying compatibility issues to figure out.

The plugin includes a default affiliate registration form, so your users can register as affiliates right away. And the affiliate area allows members to easily track their earnings, performance and to find referral links and creatives.

Referral types can either be flat-rate or percentage rate types and you can set them on a global, per affiliate or per-product basis. Alongside real-time reporting and the ability to set the expiration of cookies, Affiliate WP is a WordPress affiliate plugin that has everything you could possibly need for running your program.

Plans start from $149/year.


2. Tapfiliate

Tapfiliate

Tapfiliate is provides affiliate tracking software for e-commerce and SaaS brands. While it’s not a dedicated WordPress plugin, it does offer a plugin for easier tracking and integration.

There are three essential steps to how Tapfilite works. They are:

  1. Integrate Tapfiliate using their modules or guides. Or, install it manually.
  2. Recruit your affiliates with an invite URL, manually, Email or through the API.
  3. Add creatives for your affiliates to share.

Seems pretty straightforward, doesn’t it? But that’s not all this platform has to offer, because with Tapfiliate you can white-label almost everything, so you can build your affiliate program as a fully branded experience.

With over 36 integrations including Zapier, it’s easy to connect to the tools that matter to you most. Add attractive performance bonuses on top and you have the potential to dramatically increase your sales.

Plans start from $69/month.


3. Post Affiliate Pro

Post Affiliate Pro

Post Affiliate Pro is a little different to the other WordPress plugins on this list, in that its plans include additional fees on top of its base plans. But despite that, it has a wealth of features perfect for building and maintaining an affiliate program.

The commission affiliates can earn on Post Affiliate Pro can be on a per-product or tiered basis. Combined with offline tracking of sales, the reach of your program can also be increased. For an extra fee, users can add monthly support and monitoring.

To increase the reliability of link tracking, the plugin uses first and third-party cookies. And should the worst happen and the cookies fail, there’s the inclusion of IP address tracking to back things up.

Post Affiliate Pro’s interface is completely customisable, giving you full control over how data is presented. For a closer look at how it works before you buy, give their basic demo a go over on their website.

And after you’ve got started, download the iOS and Android apps for real-time data on-the-go. Even your affiliates can use the apps to track their commissions whenever they like. That’s something not many platforms offer their users.

Plans start from $97/month.


4. WP Affiliate Manager

WP Affiliate Manager

A little surprise for this article is the inclusion of WP Affiliate Manager – the only plugin on this list that has a free option for those of you who have a pretty tight budget. What’s more, it’s a cost-effective way to make a start on running an affiliate program.

This plugin offers seamless integration with the likes of:

  • WooCommerce
  • WP eCommerce
  • Simple Shopping Cart

Making it a steal for eCommerce websites. And with real-time reporting, you get a good idea of how things are going at all times. It doesn’t matter how many affiliates you have either. WP Affiliate Manager offers unlimited affiliates for sites both large and small.

Paying your affiliates is just as simple. Set flat rate or percentage based payouts or set each affiliate their own rate. You can adjust affiliates payouts manually and with PayPal’s Mass Pay, you even pay everyone all at once.

Include unlimited creatives, ad impressions and integration with both MailChimp and Infusionsoft, you have a plugin that can cost nothing at all and do a whole lot of management.

A limited free version is available with premium add-ons starting at $29.95.


5. Easy Affiliate

Easy Affiliate Homepage

Easy Affiliate is a simple WordPress affiliate management plugin that allows complete control over your affiliate management efforts.

Designed to be straightforward for both affiliates and program managers, it takes a few minutes to get set up and doesn’t require much of a learning curve to get to grips with how everything works.

You can view a lot of details including the total amount of clicks from each affiliate referral, the total number of sales made and details on your marketing activity. It even provides offline sales tracking.

When it comes to payments, Easy Affiliate has a range of options. Most impressively it supports PayPal Mass Payments, and One Click payments making paying your affiliates incredibly quick and simple.

On the creative side of things, you can upload images and GIFs of any size to use for marketing banners. Also, affiliates can create custom affiliate tracking links, and there is built-in support for Pretty Links.

Plans start at $99.50.


Choosing a WordPress affiliate management plugin

Now that you know what WordPress affiliate plugins are available to manage your affiliate programs, how do you go about choosing the right one for you?

There’s no doubt that each plugin has its own pros and cons and its own price point to go with it. Some of the most important things you should take into account are:

  • The reputation of the companies behind each platform and plugin
  • How long you imagine yourself running your affiliate program for
  • The overall feature set of each plugin compared to your needs
  • How much support you get from each offering
  • Your total budget

The key here is to look at the big picture. How much something costs is one factor. It’s only when you add all other factors into the whole, that you can effectively judge what’s right for you.

That said, our number one pick is AffiliateWP since it has a great feature set, solid support and it’s extendable. If you’d prefer to go down the SaaS route, Tapfiliate is a great option.

Alternatively, if you’d prefer to use an affiliate network with its own built-in database of affiliates, there are plenty of other options. Check out our roundup of the best affiliate networks to learn more.