Best Affiliate Software for WordPress in 2024

Did you know that nearly half of the internet’s websites are on the same content management system (CMS)? That CMS is WordPress — maybe you use it for your ecommerce, SaaS, or course website. 

But what does WordPress have to do with your affiliate marketing strategy? The two go hand-in-hand when considering the right affiliate software for your business. 

We’ll walk you through the ins and outs of affiliate software, must-have features for brands on WordPress, and how to integrate it into your site for maximal conversions and revenue. 

What is affiliate software?

Affiliate software is a technology that allows you to launch, manage, and optimize your affiliate marketing strategy. Common features include conversion and click tracking, affiliate communication, performance reporting, and integrations with other tech tools. These tools help brands realize the most benefits of affiliate marketing, including sustainable affiliate sales growth and a direct line of engagement with your affiliates. 

Bottom line? The value of affiliate software comes in two forms: optimization and engagement. 

The more engaged your affiliates are, the more likely they are to bring you more customers and sales. The more data insights you have on your affiliate program, the more likely you are to improve your strategy. 

Most affiliate software tools charge users monthly subscriptions for basic tracking, reporting, and engagement features. Higher-priced subscriptions are more common for more robust features, higher tracking capacities, and niche affiliate expertise, such as e-commerce or SaaS brands. 

5 must-have features of affiliate software for brands on WordPress

Here’s our roundup of vital features to look for in affiliate software as a business with a WordPress website: 

• Integration with WordPress
• Customizable commissions and bonuses
• Real-time reporting
• Branded assets and sharing
• Partner recruitment

Integration with WordPress

Imagine having to consolidate web and purchase analytics from your CMS separately from your affiliate software. We couldn’t — that’s why Tapfiliate, as well as a few other affiliate marketing tools, offer integrations with WordPress. 

Integrations link pieces of software together so that they can share critical data and streamline your operational tasks. 

Ideally, your affiliate software will offer a direct integration with WordPress. This means you can link the two in a few minutes without any complicated coding. But if you don’t see a direct integration, the software should at least offer custom integrations that you can create with a little help from a developer’s code. 

And if the affiliate tool doesn’t offer either direct or custom integrations? Next!

Customizable commission and bonuses

Average affiliate conversion rates range between 0.5% and 1%. But what if you have affiliates who perform above average? Say most of your partners brought you between $50 and $100 in sales last month, but one brought you a whopping $500. 

Wouldn’t you want to ensure that a particularly lucrative affiliate is happy enough to continue promoting your brand long-term?

That’s where flexible commissions come in, by type and performance. For example, Tapfiliate offers flexible commissions where you can automate performance-based increases to keep your highest-performing affiliates engaged. In addition, you want to pick an affiliate tool that offers multiple commission types to match your business model. This might look like flat-fee, percentage-based, recurring, or lifetime commissions (more on those later).

Some affiliate marketing tools also offer performance bonuses, where you can reward a lump-sum amount instead of a consistent commission increase. 

Real-time reporting

The most successful affiliate program is consistently backed and optimized by data. And the most powerful tool for data is real-time tracking and reporting in your affiliate software. 

You can’t improve your program if you don’t know what’s going on. Advanced features in reporting help you see specs on: 

• Overall affiliate sales
• Order value
• Individual affiliate performance
• Comparisons of multiple affiliates’ performance 
• Channel-specific conversions
• Location-specific conversions

Performance, based on products or specific affiliate campaigns

Ideally, performance marketing software should also have filters and segmentation within its reports to help you narrow down specific insights about campaigns, affiliates, or products that matter most to your business objectives:

On top of that? Look for software with an easily digestible affiliate dashboard to get a bird’s eye view of your performance. 

So, which tools channel all the above features and more? We’ll cover some examples of affiliate software for you to consider. 

Branded assets and sharing

Remember, your affiliates don’t receive an employee salary or wage, yet they still link you to thousands of potential leads and customers. The best affiliate software makes their lives and work process easier — branded asset sharing is one method to do that. 

You might have an influencer affiliate who promotes your brand on Instagram or Facebook. Look for affiliate software that helps you create branded social media posts right on the platform to share with your affiliates. This way, you save them precious time that they’d otherwise spend crafting new posts on Canva. 

Partner recruitment

One of the most appealing attributes of affiliate marketing is its exponential potential to drive sales and revenue. Affiliate software with partner recruitment features expedites the scaling process with auto-approved affiliate processes, triggered customer referral invitations, and partnership marketplaces for brands to find more aligned affiliates for their programs. 

For example, Tapfiliate’s partner recruitment features include an automated customer referral program to invite existing customers to start promoting your brand. Additionally, our MLM features harness your existing affiliate network to find more affiliates via sub-affiliates and lifetime commissions. 

3 affiliate software options for businesses on WordPress

AffiliateWP

AffiliateWP is a popular WordPress plugin for affiliate management. Since this platform is solely available to businesses on WordPress, you can expect a relatively smooth integration with its features. 

All subscriptions offer unlimited affiliates and creative asset sharing and are reasonably priced, ranging between $24 and $50 monthly. AffiliateWP offers diverse commission types and one-click payouts for affiliate engagement. 

Our advice? Don’t pick AffiliateWP if you have ambitious scaling goals. While you can enroll unlimited affiliates and share creative assets on this software, you can’t access any onboarding or recruitment features to scale your affiliate and referral programs. In other words, you’ll have to source your affiliates yourselves. 

Psssst. If you want to grow your affiliate program, check out Tapfiliate’s automated customer referral program. You can use it to automate email requests to your customers after a purchase with a special offer to join your referral program. 

Post Affiliate Pro

Post Affiliate Pro is an affiliate marketing tool with an impressive 200+ integrations to various software, including WordPress. It also has a number of custom reporting functionalities, including an audit log that displays your team and affiliates’ activity on the software. Brands can also leverage various tracking features (S2S, pixel, cookie, coupon codes) to monitor performance. 

While the platform can handle a high conversion tracking capacity (millions, depending on your tier), it’s important to note that the most advanced features aren’t available unless you pay for the more expensive tiers (the third reaching as high as $599 per month). 

Tapfiliate

Tapfiliate is one of the most accessible affiliate tools, with affordable yet scalable tiers that can support brands at launch and scaling of their affiliate programs. We offer unlimited affiliates and affiliate programs at every tier, as well as: 

• Detailed reports: Filter and segment for customizable views that highlight the most important aspects of your program. For example, generate a report covering product-specific commissions and cross-reference it with your highest-performing affiliates. 
• Real-time tracking: Your affiliate dashboard will display affiliate links and conversions as they occur, as well as important metrics like referral rate, conversion rate, and overall affiliate sales. 
• Flexible commission structures: Optimize revenue with customizable commissions that work best for your bottom line and affiliate engagement. 
• In-platform affiliate messenger: You can write custom messages to your partners right on the platform, so you never miss a beat. 

We also offer direct integration with WordPress and Zapier to help you automate marketing workflows and set up triggers to make your program more efficient. Other features in our WordPress integration include: 

• One-click social media asset sharing
• White-labeled affiliate pages, including the affiliate portal
• Branded assets and dashboard
• 24/7 customer support via live chat, email, or premium phone support for certain tiers

Pricing plans range from $89 to $149 per month, which covers tiered commissions, custom domains, unlimited, bonus rewards, and standard multi-level marketing (MLM) features to expand your affiliate network. 

We mentioned the importance of WordPress integrations for your affiliate software, but how does that integration work? Keep reading as we break down the process for integration with Tapfiliate. 

How to integrate Tapfiliate with WordPress

Tapfiliate offers a direct integration with WordPress, and we’re featured in their app directory. Follow these steps to integrate within minutes: 

Sign up for Tapfiliate

You’ll need to pick a subscription option and sign up before integrating into WordPress. We offer three pricing tiers depending on the number of conversions and clicks you’d like tracked and a selection of other premium features. Our plans range from $89 to $149, or individual pricing for more enterprise or custom plans. 

Once you sign up, you’ll receive your unique account ID. This is essentially your key to affiliate tracking, connecting all your affiliate conversions and clicks to your reporting dashboard. 

Install Tapfiliate’s affiliate plugin

Go to WordPress’s Plugin Directory. You’ll see a large library of plugins, but you can search for “Tapfiliate in the search bar. 

From there, you’ll see the installation page for Tapfiliate: 

Click “Download” and wait a few minutes to get linked to our software. 

Input your account ID

Go to the Settings page on your WordPress dashboard. Then, click on Tapfiliate. You’ll see an Account ID plugged in, but you’ll need to replace it with the account ID that you generated when you first signed up. 

4. Add Tapfiliate’s shortcode to your “Thank You” page to track performance

Go to the web page that appears every time a customer completes a conversion. This might look like a “Thank You For Your Purchase” page, but make sure that page is located on WordPress. 

Then, go to the web page’s coding, and add a touch of shortcode. 

PS: Shortcode is a short piece of code that completes a specific action on your site. You could use a shortcode to perform the following actions: 

• Create a conversion
• Choose your currency
• Set commission type
• Create a new customer

Here’s what your shortcode will look like: 

[tapfiliate…]

You’ll need to replace the three dots with relevant arguments and values, like: 

• Amount_query_param: To determine the value of the purchase from redirected users
• Customer_id_query_param: To determine the identification of the customer
• Coupons: To apply discount codes and track their usage
• Commission_type: Indicate the commission type, for example, lifetime, recurring, percentage-based, or flat fee. 

Learn more about conversion tracking with WordPress and Tapfiliate with this helpful guide and video. 

Reward your affiliates appropriately 

Your potential affiliates won’t work for free. Remember, while you don’t need to pay them an employee wage, you will have to pay them a commission for every sale. The only question is, which commission type will retain the most revenue while still engaging your affiliates? 

The answer is different for every business, but here are your options: 

• Recurring commissions: A must for SaaS brands or other subscription-based businesses. This commission type ensures your affiliate gets a commission every time you charge your customer their monthly bill. 

• Lifetime commissions: A great thank-you to your affiliates for loyal customers. Lifetime commissions reward commissions to the same affiliate every time a customer makes a repeat purchase. 

• Percentage-based commissions: Talk about incentives! This commission type motivates your affiliates to market your most expensive products. After all, would you rather earn a 10% commission on a $50 product or a $500 product? 

• Flat-fee commissions: Fair is fair, and that’s what the flat-fee commission promises for every conversion. This is a great way to be clear with your affiliate partners on what they can expect. 

And if you notice any superbly performing affiliates over time? Keep them happy with an automated performance-based commission increase!

Pump Up Sales on Your WordPress Site With Tapfiliate

WordPress businesses need reliable affiliate marketing tools that integrate seamlessly with their web hosts. 

With flexible commission structures, customer and conversion reports, direct integrations, branded assets, and partner recruitment functions to expand your program, Tapfiliate is one of the most formidable and affordable options for affiliate software if you use WordPress. 

Ready to launch an affiliate program for your WordPress-powered business? Tapfiliate can help. Start our free 14-day trial today!