The flexibility of e-commerce in WordPress is attracting more and more users into affiliate marketing. But choosing the right affiliate plugin for your website can sometimes be a difficult task. In this comparison, we’ll take a look at the top two affiliate management plugins for WordPress – Affiliates Manager and WP Affiliate Platform.
Both Affiliates Manager and Affiliate Platform have some powerful features that make them stand out from other affiliate plugins. They are easy to setup, user-friendly and the most important of all – they have integration with major e-commerce and membership plugins.
Before we get into the comparison chart lets take a look at some of the terms that are used in an affiliate management plugin.
Affiliate Dashboard
Affiliate dashboard is a special page that appears when an affiliate logs into your website. It allows an affiliate to check their earnings, outstanding commission, referral clicks etc.
Moderated Registration
When an affiliate application is submitted you will be able to manually approve/reject it. This way you can control who can sign up for your affiliate program.
Affiliate Link
An affiliate link is a special link that an affiliate embeds into their website to promote external products. When a user clicks on that link and purchases something from the merchant’s website, the referrer (the affiliate who sent that user via link) gets a percentage as commission.
Affiliates Manager vs Affiliates Platform
| Affiliates Manager | Affiliate Platform | |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free | $49 |
| Real Time Reporting | Yes | Yes |
| Affiliate Dashboard | Yes | Yes |
| Unlimited Affiliates | Yes | Yes |
| Moderated Registration | Yes | Yes |
| Fully Internationalized | Yes | Yes |
| WooCommerce Integration | Included | Integrated via free addon |
| Simple Shopping Cart Plugin Integration | Included | Included |
| Paid Memberships Pro Integration | Integrated via free addon | Integrated via free addon |
| Sell Digital Downloads Plugin Integration | Integrated via free addon | No |
| S2Member Plugin Integration | Integrated via free addon | Included |
| iThemes Exchange Integration | Included | No |
| Easy Digital Downloads Integration | Integrated via free addon | Integrated via free addon |
| Google reCAPTCHA Integration | Integrated via free addon | Included |
| WooCommerce Subscription Integration | Integrated via free addon | Integrated via free addon |
| WP eStore Integration | Integrated via free addon | Included |
| Gravity Forms PayPal Integration | Integrated via premium addon | Integrated via free addon |
| Gravity Forms Pay Per Lead Integration | No | Included |
| Gravity Forms Lead Capture Integration | No | Included |
| Gravity Forms Pricing Fields Integration | No | Included |
| Simple Membership Plugin Integration | Integrated via free addon | No |
| MailChimp Integration | Integrated via free addon | Included |
| MailPoet Newsletter Integration | Integrated via free addon | Integrated via free addon |
| Mad Mimi Integration | Integrated via free addon | Integrated via free addon |
| Infusionsoft Integration | Integrated via premium addon | Integrated via premium addon |
| GetResponse Integration | Integrated via premium addon | Included |
| Aweber Integration | Integrated via premium addon | Included |
| WooCommerce Coupon Tracking | Integrated via premium addon | Integrated via free addon |
| Bonus Commission For Affiliate Referral | Integrated via premium addon | Yes |
| WooCommerce Product Specific Commission | Integrated via premium addon | Integrated via free addon |
| Revenue Sharing | Integrated via premium addon | Included |
| Commission Notification For Affiliates | No | Yes |
| Two Tier Affiliate Structure | No | Yes |
| Clickbank Integration | No | Yes |
| WP-Ecommerce Plugin Integration | Included | Included |
| Shopp Plugin Integration | No | Yes |
| eShop Plugin Integration | No | Yes |
| Cart66 Plugin Integration | No | Yes |
| Jigoshop Plugin Integration | Included | Integrated via free addon |
| WishList Members Plugin Integration | No | Yes |
| Optimizepress Plugin Integration | No | Yes |
| Optimizemember Plugin Integration | Integrated via free addon | Yes |
| MemberMouse Plugin Integration | No | Yes |
| Group Buying Sites Integration | No | Yes |
| WPGroupBuy Plugin Integration | No | Yes |
| E-Junkie Integration | No | Yes |
| ECWID Plugin Integration | No | Yes |
| DPD Integration | No | Yes |
| FoxyCart Integration | No | Yes |
| Gumroad Integration | No | Yes |
| Pro Sites/Supporter Plugin Integration | No | Yes |
| cForms Plugin Integration | No | Yes |
| Contact Form 7 Pay Per Lead Integration | No | Yes |
| Contact Form 7 Lead Capture Integration | No | Yes |
| PayPal Mass Pay | Yes | Yes |
Affiliate Payout
PayPal Mass Pay is the primary payout method in both plugins. However, Affiliates Manager also supports manual payout.
Customer Support
Both plugins are supported by the development team. As Affiliate Platform requires a purchase for plugin usage, support (lifetime) is included in that purchase via a customer support forum. If you need more help setting up this plugin you can get step by step instructions on the documentation page.
Both Affiliates Manager and Affiliate Platform are growing on the WordPress niche. However, they have a completely different pricing structure. The core Affiliates Manager plugin is available for download on the WordPress.org plugin repository. It has some premium extensions but most of them are free.
Affiliate Platform has a one-time small purchase fee but almost all of its extensions are free. This plugin has already established great credibility since it’s one of the first Affiliate plugins for WordPress. It has more features than any other affiliate plugins (compared to the price) and they are all included with the plugin purchase. So Affiliate Platform might still be a good choice even though it’s a premium plugin.
If you want to add anything to this Affiliates Manager vs Affiliate Platform comparison, feel free to share it in the comments.