Trackdesk Affiliate Marketing Tracking Software: Full Review

Imagine being unhappy about your affiliate program’s growth and success.

You’d be surprised, but countless marketing specialists feel just that – the dread of having to work longer hours and spending even more energy on maintaining their partner network, tracking each sale manually, attributing commissions in an Excel sheet, and doing it over and over again.

Brrr! There must be a better way, right?

Exactly!

These days there is no reason why marketing teams would have to manage their affiliate campaigns manually when so many software options are out there!

One such affiliate marketing platform is Trackdesk.

Today we’ll go through Trackdesk’s main feature set, its integrations potential, pricing structure, and reviews. We’ll also share a helpful guide for finding an affiliate marketing program that matches your needs completely. Finally, we will present Tapfiliate – an alternative to Trackdesk for clients who want to rock their affiliate tracking and reporting, and do so in just a few clicks.

Trackdesk is a relatively new market player that’s been launched in 2022.

Interestingly, the company claims that the solution was developed to meet internal needs. The in-house team wanted a powerful product to manage affiliate marketing campaigns for them as affiliate marketers, and they decided to create it from scratch.

Like most affiliate platforms, Trackdesk is focused on automating the workflow, providing reporting, and offering custom payout options while remaining affordable to all types of companies.

Trackdesk Affiliate Marketing Software Features

Trackdesk promises its users an impressive 99,99% uptime and one-click bulk auto-affiliate payouts.

Sounds good, but let’s look at the rest of the key features.

Trackdesk Customization

Affiliate marketing business is a delicate task.

Freshworks reports that 80% of customers are more likely to make a purchase if there is some form of personalization involved. Affiliate partners are no different. They want custom approach, so if you want your conversion rate to jump up, there needs to be an option to personalize campaign goals and commission models, which Trackdesk provides.

The company offers branded affiliate portals; custom domains and landing pages, as well as customizable sign up forms and pages.

Trackdesk Analytics

What about analytics, the heart and soul of any affiliate management software?

Here, Trackdesk boasts a number of advanced features, including a report builder with real-time analytics and customizable reports that claim to provide precise insights by giving clients access to error logs. Users also get performance analytics with an affiliate revenue overview so they can easily keep track of affiliate sales and identify traffic sources and the most valuable business partners.

Overall, Trackdesk provides extensive reporting capabilities that help clients make data-based decisions.

Trackdesk Integrations

Trackdesk promises seamless integration to over 100 different services, including the big market players, such as Shopify, PayPal, WooCommerce, and Zapier. Customers who need integrations with non-supported solutions can reach out to Trackdesk’s support for help.

Trackdesk Automation

Trackdesk provides standard automation capabilities, allowing clients to automate effective campaigns and spend less time on tracking and commission attributing. Paired with real-time monitoring, notifications, and integrations, Trackdesk makes the life of an affiliate marketer less hectic and frees their time for strategic work.

Trackdesk Pricing

Trackdesk differentiates itself from competition as an affiliate marketing software with fair pricing. Though the pricing model they offer is not drastically different from other popular platforms on the market.

Except, it’s dynamic and the amount you end up paying depends on the monthly affiliate revenue, and the $416 per month become $833.

Clients can use the affiliate software for free with up to $1,000 monthly revenue generated by affiliates. The free edition is, understandably, quite limited in terms of functionality and lacks essential features, such as assistance with support, an anti-fraud kit, and customizations.

Once the threshold is reached, customers are required to upgrade to one of the 4 paid-for versions, which start from:

• Starter plan – $67 per month
• Business plan – $249 per month
• Enterprise plan – $416 per month
• Network plan – starting $416 per month

Trackdesk Customer Support

The customer support available to clients varies according to the subscription level.

Free customers get no support and are required to set everything up without help from the team. The Starter plan has on-demand support, and Business clients are eligible for guided onboarding and setup.

Priority live chats are only available to Business, Enterprise, or Network clients. However, if you want comprehensive technical assistance without many limitations, you’ll have to upgrade to Enterprise or Network.

On top of standard support offerings, Trackdesk provides migration services that boast zero downtime during the transition.

Overall, the vast range of support options is good, as it allows picky clients to find the format that works for them. However, this creates additional confusion and can be frustrating when you’re in the middle of a technical crisis and have to figure out what kind of assistance you can get.

Trackdesk Customers

Trackdesk primarily focuses on SaaS, eCommerce, and advertisers. On the website you can find logos of companies from gaming, poker, and private car transfers industries.

With multiple subscription options, the company hopes to cover all types of businesses, from startups with limited budgets to established companies looking for custom and comprehensive solutions.

According to the website, Trackdesk has acquired over 1500 clients, although it’s not clear whether this number includes just current clients or all companies that have ever subscribed to the service.

Trackdesk Reviews

In terms of third-party review platforms, Trackdesk seems to be doing well for itself.

According to Capterra, the affiliate program tool was rated by 62 clients and given an average score of 4.9 for overall experience. G2 demonstrates similar results. With 68 clients rating the solution, Trackdesk sits at a 4.7 average.

While many users praise the solution for its flexibility and quick responses from the tech team, many point out that the promised user-friendly interface is, in fact, more complicated than would be comfortable for a newbie. Other common complaints are regular issues with bugs and insufficient integrations.

Interestingly, out of 6 customer feedbacks listed on Trackdesk’s website under the Premium Support section, 5 led to the ‘Page not found’ error if you tried to follow the link, and one required you to register on the website to view the feedback.

How to Choose the Best Affiliate Tracking Software: A Quick Guide

If you’ve never had an affiliate tracking solution or it’s been a while since you had to choose one, here are the key 9 steps for you to follow to make the best, informed decision.

#1 Identify your key objectives and needs

Everything starts with the Why.

In order for you to make the best choice, start by brainstorming your key goals for the affiliate program.

Avoid generalizations, such as ‘We want more affiliates’.

• Exactly how many affiliates do you want to have?
• Why this number?
• How much should each affiliate generate?
• What is the timeframe for the goals identified?
• Is this goal realistic? Can you objectively achieve that?

Make your goals as specific as possible so you can create an actionable plan for achieving them. You should also be able to track your progress.

Tip: Follow the SMART goals model to elevate your planning.

#2 Research the affiliate tracking options available

There are seemingly endless choices of affiliate marketing platform solutions, and it can feel discouraging. Don’t get overwhelmed and skip this step though!

It’s very important to browse the market and see what alternatives are out there. Once you are locked in with the software, it will be very uncomfortable to move away from it. You’ll need to evaluate, test, and request budgets all over again. On top of that, you’ll also have to explain why the current solution isn’t working and how you made the wrong choice to begin with.

Here’s what you can base your comparison on:

• Company’s lifetime
• Online and real-life reviews
• What customers they cater to (see case studies and testimonials)
• What else is the company doing (for instance, Tapfiliate offers not only affiliate but referral program software)
• The support provided (format, working hours, extra cost or included)
• Feature stack (but more on that in the next step)
• Company’s business model and long-term focus (such as them wanting to move away from affiliate solution development within the next 5 years).

#3 Compare the functionality

The feature set you identify as must-have and good-to-have will depend on the key objectives you’ve set up in step one.

Look at the outlined price lists with full functionality and pick the affiliate trackers that check all the boxes.

Here’s an idea of what you can include in your must-have list:

Tip: Don’t fall for shiny features that sound cool and trendy. Focus on your core list of requirements and lead with it. Few years ago everyone was obsessed with Web3, right now it’s AI. Do you really need either of them to perform your core tasks? Not really, so don’t waste extra dollars on those things.

Never used Tapfiliate to track affiliate marketing performance? Try all the features:

👉 get a 14-day free trial here

#4 Watch out for usability and design

Overall, pay attention to the ease-of-use and how intuitive the interface is. The key goal of the affiliate marketing tracking software is to make your life easier and work smoother, not the other way.

Overly complicated tools are not good, no matter how cool their functionality is. The product you work with needs to be simple enough to not require professional training, and you shouldn’t have difficulties navigating it.

Design-related user experience is more important than we like to think. As many as 88% of users say they won’t return to the brand if their first experience was bad. Now, you won’t be able to just close the window and forget about your affiliate platform. You’ll have to keep on using it and struggling.

Tip: Any solution can seem somewhat tricky when you first start using it. Check out the vendor’s supportive materials, such as manuals, user guides, explanatory videos, customer portal with extra documents. The more content they have, and the more detailed it is, the easier it will be for you to find an answer to a question that might come up at some point.

#5 What about integrations

We’ve already briefly touched on integrations, but it’s worth mentioning again.

Your affiliate marketing platform needs to be compatible with other tools, such as payment gateways, eCommerce platforms like Shopify, and recurring billing tools.

Affiliate tracker is a part of the bigger workflow ecosystem, and if there isn’t a ready integration or option to configure it with REST API, then you’ll spend more time than you save by syncing everything.

#6 Evaluate affordability and value

You can’t run a software evaluation without looking into the pricing details.

When you do, look at the balance of affordability and value. For instance, if you find a product that’s only $10 a month but doesn’t offer reports and automatic bonus attribution, it’s not really a good deal, is it?

Pricing is important, and we all operate on budgets, but make sure you consider total cost of ownership (TCO) that includes not only the cost of the subscription itself, but also migration from the previous solution, the time it takes to learn how to use the solution, and technical support.

#7 Find out their built-in security

In 2020, about 9% of affiliate traffic was fraudulent, and the trend has only gotten worse since then. The affiliate marketing industry is projected to reach $16 billion by the end of 2024, making it extremely lucrative for con artists and scammers.

You need to pay attention to fraud prevention methods and ways of dealing with bad traffic to keep your operations secure and profitable.

• Blacklisting of domains, IPs, and other parameters
• Flagging when affiliate uses their own referral link to make a purchase
• De-duplication based on ID and IP values

Note: Affiliate marketing tools can help you reduce and manage suspicious traffic, but it can’t eliminate or prevent it completely. This has nothing to do with the affiliate tools themselves, but rather the nature of fraud. Just like you can secure the apartment door with locks, but that doesn’t guarantee that thieves won’t make it in some other way.

#8 Run tests, don’t skip them!

We know, it can be so tempting to skip the actual trial of the solution and just pay for the subscription and hope for the best.

Testing, especially if you have multiple solutions to review, can take all your free time and energy.

Still, fight the urge to skip evaluations and just do it. You don’t have to run extremely elaborate tests to understand whether the performance of affiliate marketing tools is to your liking.

Optimize the process, check for key features only, compare the marketing promise with reality, and move on.

Side note: Skip solutions that don’t offer trial licenses. It’s an industry standard to give prospects a chance to play with the software. If they’re hiding it behind a paywall, it’s most likely not that great.

#9 Make sure the customer support is up to your standards

There is no such thing as perfect software.

Everyone has a right to make a mistake, on both your and vendor’s end. If and when a technical issue comes up, you need to have access to top-level support to help you handle it.

Check to see what kind of tech assistance you’ll be entitled to. Some companies don’t offer real support unless you’re on Enterprise edition or something similar. It’s also common for vendors to only work via support tickets and not accept calls or texts in messengers.

There’s no right or wrong way to provide support per se. There is a format that works for you or not, so be sure to look into this matter.

Tapfiliate: a Valuable Alternative for Effective Affiliate Marketing Tracking

Now that we’ve taken a closer look at Trackdesk and discussed the key points that you should pay attention to when choosing an affiliate program software for your company, let’s move on to reviewing Tapfiliate – an established company with over 2000 happy clients.

User-friendly Interface

An intuitive interface is arguably one of the key features of any software, let alone affiliate marketing solutions. As many as 94% of users want straightforward navigation in their digital products and websites.

Companies looking to start an affiliate marketing business can’t afford to spend days and weeks drowning in tech documentation and trying to figure out how something works. That’s why Tapfiliate does its best to strike a balance of comprehensive and detailed functionality with an intuitive interface that doesn’t overwhelm the user.

Advanced real-time reporting

Any modern affiliate management software has to have built-in data analytics functionality, and Tapfiliate naturally offers its clients real-time and detailed reporting on affiliate activity.

The affiliate marketing campaign performance is directly linked to company’s business goals, that’s why detailed reports on affiliate marketing campaign performance is directly linked to a company’s business goals, so detailed reports with actionable insights are a must.

Custom reports with advanced segmentation and a range of filters allow clients to review their affiliate marketing strategy on-the-go and make ad-hoc changes. This means that businesses can make the most of every market condition or trend, and maximize profits while offering excellent benefits to their affiliate partner pool.

For example, you can track conversions by location, product, or particular affiliate, and adapt the bonus for underperforming products or incentivize the most successful affiliates to promote you even harder with increased commission.

 Advanced tracking

Tapfiliate unlocks accurate tracking of clicks, affiliate links, and even coupon codes for offline sales through the conversion tracking feature. As long as the CPA happens via the toggle-able cookie window, it will be automatically and correctly attributed.

Powerful integrations

With 30+ integrations available, Tapfiliate makes sure clients have easy access to the most sought-after online tools. In case there is no ready solution available, REST API helps customers create their own integrations with little hassle.

Seamless affiliate recruitment

Recruitment and onboarding take up a big chunk of affiliate marketing efforts.

Tapfiliate makes sure its clients are off to a good start by helping them turn new customers info affiliates with automation. Every new customer gets a customizable email invitation to join the affiliate network.

Swift affiliate onboarding includes branded dashboard that gives all partners an instant overview of their performance and entices them to be more active with promoting your brand.

Tip: Tapfiliate also supports customer referral programs that you can manage together with affiliate programs via the same console.

Last but not least, as a way to preserve your brand image and tackle affiliate fraud, Tapfiliate offers its users an option to approve all affiliates. This leaves companies in full control over who gets to work with and promote their brand.

In-platform messenger

At Tapfiliate, we’re confident that healthy communication is the key to any partnership.

Our in-platform messenger helps affiliate managers and their partners:

• Stay in touch directly in the system
• Eliminate additional channels, such as emails or external messengers
• Get back to previous notifications and chats to double-check any information

The in-platform messenger comes in 2 versions:

• Basic where the program manager can notify partners about news, bonuses, changes, etc
• Advanced facilitates two-way communication and allows affiliates to share feedback and ask questions.

Flexible commissions

Affiliate commissions are not one-size-fits-all.

It’s paramount for the affiliate tracking platform to offer different types of commissions to tailor to various types of affiliate partners and their performance, otherwise you’ll be missing out on conversions and the campaign performance will be underwhelming.

Tapfiliate offers multiple commission options to keep affiliates engaged and happy.

• Lifetime commission for every purchase made by customers referred through the affiliate partner.
• Recurring commission is designed for subscription-based services to reward affiliates as long as the customer pays for the subscription.
• Flat-fee commission for those looking to keep things simple and minimal.
• Percentage-based commission to customize rewards for different affiliates.
• Product commission, where users can set unique commissions for specific SKUs as a way to manage their inventory.

Moreover, Tapfiliate allows clients to add custom triggers that increase the commission or add a bonus once affiliates get to a certain threshold, for example, when they bring 200 conversions in one month.

Automation

Automation is the key to everything. The most advanced features prove useless, unless you have automation that makes them easy-to-use with minimal time waste.

Tapfiliate knows how precious time is, and that’s why it offers an automated solution that drastically reduces the load on the marketing team. This includes custom triggers for commissions and commission allocation, auto approvals of affiliates and affiliate payouts, automation of workflows via integrations, and even automated dispute handling. Imagine not having to personally deal with sales refunds. What a breeze!

What about pricing?

The solution comes in only 3 different tiers, making it more straightforward and easy for clients to choose from.

• Essential tier – $74 per month
• Pro tier – $124 per month
• Enterprise – custom monthly pricing

Tapfiliate is made to be comprehensive to meet the need of midsize to enterprise clients, but also simple and straightforward enough to fit into the requirements of SMB companies.

The Essential tier has everything a small team needs, while Pro and Enterprise offer feature-stacks with more advanced functionality and flexibility, although customization is available in Essential as well. For example, Essential clients can customize branding, sign-up fields, and cookie time.

Customer support

Tapfiliate offers multiple support formats to ensure each client gets help in the way that’s most convenient to them.

Essential clients can access the tech team by email and live chat. Pro and Enterprise clients also get phone call support and priority queue, while Enterprise clients are additionally entitled to a dedicated personal manager.

Trackdesk Affiliate Management vs Tapfiliate Affiliate Management

Before we sign off, let’s compare Trackdesk and Tapfiliate.

Affiliate Tracking

In terms of affiliate tracking, it is fair to say that both solutions offer robust tracking functionality, allowing users to track their sales in real time and attribute conversions accordingly.

Reporting

Tapfiliate offers customizable dashboards for advanced analytics, while Trackdesk focuses more on multi-device tracking and fraudulent activity prevention.

Affiliate Program Management

Both solutions offer unlimited affiliate partners and onboarding assistance to new clients, although Trackdesk reserves it only for users with paid-for subscription. Flexible commission structures and automated payouts are also available for both affiliate marketing programs.

Tapfiliate provides four types of integrations (pre-built, JS pixel, REST API, and S2S/postback) to ensure clients can fully customize their workflow and create a seamless process regardless of their setup. Tapfiliate is also GDPR-compliant, ensuring users don’t have any issues with regulators.

Pricing

The starting price for Trackdesk is $67/month, and Tapfiliate is $74. Although Trackdesk comes out a little bit cheaper on paper, you need to factor in the dynamic price change that depends on monthly affiliate revenue; and the lack of proper support for this subscription tier which is a huge risk for any business.

The key difference between Tapfiliate and Trackdesk price-wise is that the latter offers a free edition, although it comes with severely limited functionality and no assistance from the vendor.

Support

Tapfiliate provides help and assistance to all clients, including those on trial, while Trackdesk limits their help for free users. While Tapfiliate offers full email support to all paid-for subscription tiers, Trackdesk requires clients to pay a minimum of $416/month with Enterprise to get expert-level tech help via emails.

What do clients say?

Trackdesk and Tapfiliate are comprehensive tools that go side-by-side on review portals, such as Capterra where they are widely praised online for their ease-of-use and affordability. Tapfiliate is often mentioned in terms of its reliable tracking capabilities and deeper integration options.

Trackdesk Affiliate Tracking Software FAQ

What is Trackdesk?

Trackdesk is an affiliate software platform that offers specialized tools for marketing teams to facilitate their affiliate program’s growth. It offers reporting, automation, and integrations to support management of affiliate performance.

What are the limitations of Trackdesk?

Trackdesk has several limitations across its functionality, such as a limited number of integrations available to clients. The solution is also unable to track organic traffic and traffic sources for organic leads. Additionally, given the focus on SMB clients, it is not clear how well the solution will perform with Enterprise clients who require scalability and advanced functionality.

Who are Trackdesk’s competitors?

Trackdesk competes with main market players in the affiliate marketing software field, such as Tapfiliate or Post Affiliate Pro, but it also is in indirect competition with tools, such as Google Analytics as it supports tracking of leads coming in from paid-for sources, such as Google Ads or Facebook Ads.

Want to check out what Tapfiliate can do for you? Get a 14-day free trial here