Voluum Affiliate Marketing Tracking Software: Full Review

An affiliate marketing program can be a blessing or a curse to the business.

Go with the flow and hope for the best, and it will costs you the marketing team’s sanity. Approach it strategically, and you can forget about missed opportunities or wasting your time.

One of the best ways to elevate your affiliate marketing strategy is by implementing affiliate management software. That’s when you can come across Voluum.

But what exactly does Voluum do? What are the key features in it that help affiliate marketeres? Let’s find out together!

Today we’ll look into main aspects of Voluum, its functionality and pricing. Then we’ll talk about choosing the best tool for you among the many affiliate platforms out there. Finally, we’ll take a look at Tapfiliate – a robust solution for an affiliate marketer looking to boost their campaign results while also freeing their time for other business goals.

Voluum Affiliate Marketing Software Features

Voluum is a product for digital advertising campaign management. On top of that, Voluum offers a marketplace with a number of verified partners that clients can browse and connect with, expanding their affiliate network. The company focuses on tracking, optimizing, and automating ad campaigns and aiding the affiliate program management, helping clients maximize their potential and free up more time and resources on other tasks.

Boasting 500+ million ad events tracked daily, Voluum caters to marketers in eCommerce, iGaming, finance, mobile apps, and several other industries.

Affiliate management

Despite offering some tools for affiliate campaigns tracking, it does not offer affiliate management functionality. There are no onboarding, bonus and commission systems, White Label branding, or coupon code tracking included in the solution.

Voluum Tracking

Despite having virtually no affiliate partner management functionality, Voluum has an affiliate marketing dashboard where clients can monitor ad campaign metrics (visits, clicks, costs, and profits), and manage them along with impression and organic traffic tracking.

Voluum Customization

Voluum has 3 different interfaces to cater to their separate client categories: Affiliate (as they specify it – for the solo marketer), Agency, and eCommerce (in-house marketer).

There is also a number of customizations available to clients, ranging from custom conversions and custom domains to reporting where users can choose what data to monitor, as well as the order in which these columns are listed.

Voluum Automation

Voluum offers the Automizer tool across all its paid-for editions, except it’s free only for Zeropark traffic, whereas other traffic sources come at an extra cost.

Automizer is positioned as an auto-pilot for advertising, as the tool allows you to set if/then scenarios for rapid and sudden performance changes.

Voluum Reporting and Analytics

Voluum provides real-time monitoring and two types of reports to cater to different client needs:

• Global report (a report with all elements in a given category, such as a campaign report where all active campaigns will be reflected)
• Specific report (gives a more in-depth overview of a specific element within a campaign, such as offers or traffic sources).

Users can also generate one of the ‘advanced’ reports, i.e., big data and scheduled reports.

Voluum Integrations

Voluum offers 2 types of integrations:

Voluum Fraud Prevention

Voluum offers an Anti-Fraud Kit that consists of anti-fraud metrics to flag suspicious traffic, and time-to-convert metrics that spot abnormally fast conversions that could indicate non-human meddling. It’s also possible to block unwanted traffic with IP/UA filtering.

Lastly, an interesting feature called Honeypot generates invisible links for the landing pages that only bots can activate. Once they do, they are flagged as suspicious.

Voluum Customer Service

Technical support options are quite limited with Voluum, especially if you are going for lower tiers of the solution.

For instance, Startup clients get a 1-hour call or chat session for onboarding, in-panel chat support for tech issues with a 4-hour SLA, and, at an extra cost, an account manager assigned who will be helping them via email, Skype, or Zoom.

Every other tier gets account management included in the price of the license. Agency tier has a 2-hour SLA, and everyone else is entitled to 1-hour SLAs. Essentially, whether you’re paying $1749/month as an Enterprise client or $9999/month for Executive package, the tech help will be the same.

Voluum Reviews

Voluum is rather popular on third-party review websites with over 100 reviews written on both Capterra and G2, where the affiliate marketing software is rated with 4.6 and 4.5 stars respectively.

While many users praise Voluum for robust tracking capabilities and access to partner networks, the common concern is the lack of affiliate management feature set. Moreover, many complain about steep pricing model where you are often charged extra once you start scaling or require advanced analytics. Platform’s user-friendly interface is questioned a lot too.

Voluum Pricing

Voluum offers an interesting pricing model where the company segments clients into individuals and business. Individuals can choose between 2 tiers, Profit ($149) and Scale ($279).

Business tiers present a steep jump in pricing and 5 tiers to choose from: Startup ($479), Agency (879$), Enterprise ($1749), Corporate ($4999), and Executive ($9999).

Annual subscriptions are available with a discount compared to monthly payments.

Each pricing tier has its own limitations on the number of active campaigns (only 100 for the Startup tier), auto rules and API integrations, active orders, users, and months of data retention. As you progress from more affordable to more exclusive options, the SLAs go up, and advanced features are unlocked.

Your Guide to Choosing the Best Affiliate Tracking Software

Say you want to find the affiliate management software of your dreams. Where do you start with the abundance of options out there?

Below is a step-by-step guide for browsing through endless affiliate marketing solutions and making the best, data-driven decision for your business.

Step 1: Identify goals for the affiliate program and the software. Knowing what you’re trying to achieve will help you select the key features that will support your goals.

Step 2: Create a list of must-have and good-to-have features. Once you know your plans and objectives, go through all the main tasks that you usually work on and think of what you’d like to offload to the technology. Use this article to give you an idea of what functionality is even out there in affiliate tracking software programs. Create a list of tools you absolutely have to have and a second list with features that are nice-to-haves that you wouldn’t break the bank for, though.

Step 3: Research software options on the market and narrow down the list of candidates. Before you move on to step 4, testing, you need to choose what solutions to evaluate. Do your best to go through the vendors and be as ruthless with your selection as possible. You can’t have 10 products on your final list, that is simply too much and will delay your decision-making.

Step 4: Run tests and evaluate the products, even if you really don’t have time to do it. The last thing you need is to blindly purchase something that will turn out to be useless, a nightmare to configure or has the least user-friendly interface you’ve ever seen. Don’t rely solely on promotional videos and marketing materials.

Step 5: Check out integrations. You need to be able to easily integrate with key tools that you use or plan to integrate to your workflow. If there are no ready integrations available, make sure there is a straightforward path to connecting them to the affiliate program solution, such as REST API provided by Tapfiliate.

Step 6: Understand how safe the solution is. Look at the company overall and check that it’s an established business that won’t fail tomorrow. Check their built-in security, such as permission system, single sign on (SSO), or GDPR compliance, all available with Tapfiliate. Lastly, check out the anti-fraud functionality. No matter how selective you are with affiliates, fraudulent activity tracker is a must.

Step 7: Learn more about technical support. You need to be able to contact support and get a response within a reasonable time. Voluum, for example, makes customers wait for a minimum of 4 hours before they can get a reply in the chat from the tech team, and limits onboarding assistance with 1 hour for clients on their lowest paid-for tier for businesses. While it can certainly work for some clients, others will need a much swifter response and extended assistance. Make sure the support options match your expectations.

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Tapfiliate: a Powerful Alternative for Effective Affiliate Marketing Tracking

Tapfiliate is a comprehensive affiliate software with all the advanced features that a business needs, yet straightforward enough for a beginner to navigate it easily.

Clients can launch their affiliate programs in literal minutes. With all customizations, automation capabilities, and flexible commissions available, working with business partners and scaling is a breeze.

Intuitive interface

Tapfiliate’s user-friendly interface helps clients focus their affiliate marketing efforts on campaign performance, and not on trying to figure out how the solution works.

Real-time monitoring and reporting

Tapfiliate provides all clients with detailed reporting in real time. Users can create custom reports to get particular actionable insights that matter to their business model at the moment.

The detailed reports with real-time metrics guarantee that affiliate managers are on top of all trends and developments, and can make ad-hoc changes to the strategy to secure and boost their monthly revenue from affiliate program.

Affiliate recruitment

Affiliate recruitment can’t (and shouldn’t) be fully automated if you’re looking to build a long-term partnership. Yet, Tapfiliate takes care of as many elements of it as possible to help marketers optimize their time.

Additionally, Tapfiliate can send auto-invites to the referral program to all clients who’ve just made a purchase but are not part of your network yet, helping you expand the partner base with little effort on your end.

Effective tracking

To make sure affiliate campaigns are a success, you need to have accurate tracking available to you 24/7. Tapfiliate provides advanced tracking of affiliate links, clicks, and coupon codes.

Automation

Tapfiliate facilitates automation of all key affiliate management tools to make sure our clients don’t spend time on tasks that technology can do better and faster. Instead, we want them to focus on creative planning, strategizing, and communicating with affiliate partners.

Some of the automated features include:

• Custom triggers for commissions
• Commission allocation
• Affiliate approval
• Affiliate payout
• Integrations
• Dispute handling
• Refunds

Integrations

Tapfiliate offers 30+ seamless integrations with key online tools that affiliate manager may require. Anything else can be easily added with REST API.

Communication with affiliates

In-platform messenger is available in 2 editions:

• Basic (outgoing notifications to partners)
• Advanced (two-way chat)

Being able to reach out to affiliates and vice versa straight in the affiliate marketing software saves time, and helps speed up resolution of any possible issues or misunderstanding.

Multiple commission types

Smart and flexible affiliate commissions are essential to taking your affiliate revenue to the next level.

With Tapfiliate, clients can choose between 5 different types to find a perfect match for any given situation:

• Lifetime
• Recurring
• Flat-fee
• Percentage-based
• Product (SKU-specific)

It’s also possible to add bonuses to active affiliates who reach a specified number of sales or a different type or threshold.

Fraud prevention

The best way to deal with suspicious traffic is to prevent it. One of the tools for that is affiliate approval. Tapfiliate doesn’t allow just anyone to sign up and start promoting your brand. Instead, you get to review and approve or decline any potential partner.

However, even with initial vetting, fraudulent activity can still happen. And while no software solution can prevent fraud 100%, you can significantly reduce it.

Tapfiliate checks both your affiliates and their conversions. You can blacklist IP, domain, and a number of other key attributes. The software also compares the attributes between click and conversion to ensure the conversion is genuine.

All conversions where a partner used their own referral link will be flagged. Then it’s up to the user to approve or disapprove this conversion.

Customer support

Technical customer support is one of the priorities at Tapfiiate.

All clients have access to extensive guides on functionality that they can browse 24/7. All tiers have email and live chat support options. Starting with the Pro edition, clients have a priority queue and phone support. Enterprise clients have a dedicated manager assigned to them.

Pricing details

The affiliate tracking tool provides a free 14-day trial, and clients can choose which edition they want to evaluate during that period.

Once the trial is over, it’s possible to choose one of the 3 pricing tiers, as well as select whether you’d like to subscribe to an annual or a monthly subscription.

Voluum Affiliate Management vs Tapfiliate Affiliate Management

Now that we’ve looked at both Voluum and Tapfiliate, let’s summarize and compare the two options for affiliate marketing campaigns management.

Affiliate Management

If you are looking for a solution that will not just track affiliate activity through clicks but actually facilitate relationships with affiliate partners, help you stimulate them with bonuses, send notifications and chat with them, and provide them with a dashboard to view their performance, then Voluum won’t meet your needs.

Tapfiliate, in turn, is specifically designed to grow your affiliate marketing business through stronger ties with affiliates, who support your brand and the relationship, and get properly rewarded for your efforts.

As a bonus, Tapfiliate also supports referral programs, helping you manage both through a single console.

Commissions and bonuses

Voluum offers no commission or bonus management, while Tapfiliate has a flexible commission structure with 5 different commission types that can be mixed and matched for best results.

Tapfiliate also has an extra bonus system that can be set up for affiliates who reach a pre-defined threshold. This motivates efficient partners to continue promoting your products and services, contributing to a higher conversion rate.

Technical support

Quality of customer support is a somewhat subjective parameter, as different clients will have different experiences, depending on their own approach and the specific tech reps’ performance on a given day.

However, both Tapfiliate and Voluum offer technical assistance to clients, aiming to provide them with the best experience.

Technical support with Tapfiliate, though, comes at a much lower price. Also, the SLAs that Voluum provides for their top tiers are not dramatically different from the lower tiers, which have much more affordable price points.

Pricing

Both have flexible pricing structures and provide multiple tiers, as well as monthly and annual subscription options, with latter being a better deal in the longer run.

The cost of the license, however, differs dramatically.

While Tapfiliate starts at $74/month with annual payment, Voluum’s lowest tier is $389/month for the same payment structure. As the Startup tier by Voluum is rather limited in terms of usage parameters, you’d realistically be looking at a much higher number once you start showing first results and expanding your partner network.

In fact, one of the common concerns on software review websites is that the cost associated with operating Voluum seems to be ever-growing.

Voluum Affiliate Tracking Software FAQ

What is Voluum?

Voluum is an ad-tracking software that offers all the essential features for tracking and understanding marketing campaigns.

Does Voluum have limitations?

There is no such thing as a perfect software. Just like any affiliate tracking platform, Voluum has it’s own limitations. The main issue for affiliate marketing teams is the absence of the affiliate management functionality that can elevate the relationship and motivate affiliates to promote your brand.

Who are Voluum competitors?

Voluum is not a classic affiliate marketing platform because it doesn’t offer any tools for affiliate relationship management or the features to help affiliates track their own performance. That’s why it doesn’t fully compete with popular platforms, such as Tapfiliate or Post Affiliate Pro. Although it does provide tracking functionality, so you can technically use it for affiliate management.

The more direct competition for Voluum are digital marketing campaign managers, such as RedTrack or Everflow, but also tracking tools, such as Google Analytics.

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