Affiliate marketing is a popular and widely used marketing technique. Promoting your product through affiliates exposes your product to thousands of new customers. In addition, it’s cost effective too because you only pay a small commission to the affiliate marketer. It also creates an effective system – to gain more commission the affiliates try to make more sales, while your business also earns more revenue in the process. So, are you searching for the best WooCommerce Affiliate plugins?
Simply put, a successful affiliate program can benefit both you and the affiliates involved, so it’s a win-win for everyone. So whether you are just getting started with affiliate marketing or are already experienced with it, you will definitely need an affiliate plugin for your WooCommerce store. And that is why we have reviewed 6 of the best WooCommerce Affiliate plugins available online for you in this article. But first let us see the benefits of using WooCommerce affiliate plugins.
What are the benefits of WooCommerce Affiliate Plugins?
Before we start our review of the best WooCommerce Affiliate plugins, we want our readers to have a clear idea of what these plugins can offer and why they are essential. The primary purpose of such a plugin is to make it easy and simple to manage your affiliate program.
Let’s say that you start a small scale affiliate program for your product and link up with 3 or 4 affiliate marketers. Without a plugin, you would have to track the traffic that your landing page gets from affiliate links yourself. Then you would further track how much of those traffic converted into sales.
After that, you still need to check which affiliate channels those sales come from, and then assign everyone their respective commissions.
Just by reading these details, you can probably imagine how hectic it is to manage an affiliate program manually. And as your business and the affiliate program grows bigger, it becomes even difficult to manage from your end. And that is why you need to rely on WooCommerce Affiliate plugins.
There are many plugins available online with different features and pricing. But the common aspect of each plugin is that they allow you to manage affiliate programs with simple settings, in-built options, and drag actions. The plugins do most of the job for you behind the scenes and you need to put only little efforts.
Also, these plugins are fairly simple to set up and use so you can do it even with basic experience in WordPress and WooCommerce. So now that you know how and why affiliate plugins benefit your business, let’s get started with the best WooCommerce Affiliate plugins in 2020.
6 Best WooCommerce Affiliate Plugins in 2020
1. YITH WooCommerce Affiliates
For most people who are on a low budget or are just starting out with an affiliate program, YITH WooCommerce Affiliates is the most suitable plugin. The main reason is that it’s a free plugin so there’s no risk in trying it out. But apart from the fact that this plugin is free, it also offers all the standard features for an affiliate program, such as:
- An automated tracking system so that every time a visitor lands on your site from an affiliate link, it records the link and credits to the respective affiliate ID.
- When a visitor who lands from an affiliate link makes a purchase, the commission for the affiliate is credited automatically.
- It assigns a refer ID and saves it in the cookies of every visitor who lands from affiliate links. You can set the time period for the refer ID to remain stored, so that even when users make a purchase at a much later date, the refer ID will record which affiliate link they came from.
- Automatic deduction of assigned commission when a buyer returns the purchased item/service.
- A separate dashboard for all your affiliates where they can also view the sales and commissions.
- Shortcodes for quick registration of affiliates and for generating landing page links.
And apart from these, there are many other features which further simplify your affiliate program. Getting all these features for free can be a huge boost for your affiliate marketing campaign, and that is why we have included it in our pick for the best WooCommerce Affiliate plugins.
2. Affiliate Royale
Affiliate Royale is a great plugin for launching an affiliate program. It covers all the basic aspects of affiliate marketing and integrates that into a simple interface. The main highlight of this plugin is their admin dashboard that compiles and displays loads of data and info under one roof.
You can view total clicks, total visits from each affiliate link, total sales by each affiliate, and plenty of other metrics and statistics directly on the dashboard. Other than that, it has some more interesting features which makes it one of the top WooCommerce Affiliate plugins, such as:
- Configurations to set up commissions for each affiliate
- Track total transactions, commissions to be paid to affiliates, and even integrate your preferred mode of payment into the plugin.
- Create custom banners and links for your website and share them with the affiliates
- A separate dashboard for affiliates where they can track their progress in terms of clicks and sales. They can also track and verify their commissions.
- You can integrate your shopping cart and checkout pages to the plugin so that it can track affiliate commission effectively as soon as a sale is closed.
The pricing for this WooCommerce Affiliate plugin varies based on the plan.
Merchant edition: $85
It allows you to use the plugin on a single website with one year of free updates and support.
Developer Edition: $165
You can use the plugin on unlimited sites with this plan, and it also includes a year of free updates and support.
Both prices are a one-time cost, meaning you can use the plugin for lifetime after paying the amount once. However, you will need a yearly subscription for getting updates and support after one year.
3. Affiliates by itthinx
Affiliates by itthinx is an excellent plugin that offers both free and premium versions to users. It gives you the freedom to go through the features and decide if you wish to pay or you’re happy with the free version.
Free version features:
- An extensive affiliate dashboard where affiliates can register, login, view latest statistics, and manage the affiliate links and their personal profiles with multiple options.
- The dashboard and overall interface of the plugin is highly customizable, as you can change the design of different dashboard sections using certain template styles.
- Manage the approval of new affiliates, which you can set to manual or automatic. The plugin will also send auto notifications when an affiliate is approved.
- It integrates with different e-commerce platforms and tracks all the sales and affiliate commissions from each platform.
- The plugin comes with many free extensions, such as ninja forms, contact forms, captcha and recaptcha extensions.
This plugin has two premium versions:
- Affiliates Pro: $49 for single site, $79 for up to 5 sites and $159 for up to 25 sites.
- Affiliates Enterprise: $89 for single site, $159 for 5 sites, and $249 for 25 sites.
Both these versions have all features of the free plugin along with additional dashboard sections and some advanced features and customization options.
Along with that, those who use the paid versions get higher priority than free version users in terms of technical support. With the option to choose between free and paid version, and an interactive and customizable dashboard, Affiliates by itthinx is definitely one of the best WooCommerce Affiliate plugins available in 2020.
4. Affiliates Manager
Affiliates manager is another amazing plugin for managing affiliate programs that is free to download and use. There are many reasons why we have picked it as one of the choices for the best WooCommerce Affiliate plugins. First of all, it integrates with multiple other WooCommerce membership plugins and even payment providers such as Stripe Payout. As such, it can function as more than just an affiliate plugin. Some other key features of this plugin are:
- All transactions, traffic, and other metrics are updates constantly. The dashboard shows real-time updates.
- You can manage and track as many affiliates you want with this plugin. Whether your affiliate program has a single channel or multiple affiliates, this plugin is highly scalable.
- Multiple options to set commission rates and payouts. You can set individual commission rates for every affiliate and it can be up-front, flat rates or based on percentage of the sales amount.
- You can integrate PayPal with this plugin to pay the commission to your affiliates.
- Many customization options for setting up the affiliate registration process.
- Automatic tracking of all traffic, conversions, and sales based on the affiliate link that they generate from.
- Multiple language translations supported.
With all these features that you can access for free, it’s not hard to see why Affiliates Manager is one of our top recommendations for WooCommerce Affiliate plugins.
5. Ultimate Affiliate Pro
Ultimate Affiliate Pro has a lot of unique features. At first, getting used to this plugin can be a bit overwhelming. But once you get the hang of it, you’ll surely be impressed by what it can offer. Along with all standard features, this plugin has extra options that can help to create an interactive program for your affiliates. Its best features include:
A tiered ranking for affiliates. Affiliates must start out with the basic rank and climb to higher tiers by completing certain achievements. The higher the rank, the more commission affiliates can earn.
- You can set up extra offers and rewards for affiliates for specific actions such as selling a specific product within a fixed time.
- Multi-level referrals where an affiliate can refer other affiliates to join the program, and then earn certain commission from their referrals as well.
- Manage special rewards for affiliates for completing certain achievements such as making a fixed amount of sales and bringing in a fixed number of views.
- You can integrate the plugin with PayPal and Stripe Payouts to set up an easy payment system through the plugin.
- Email marketing integration.
- Highly accurate reports on different analytical factors such as total traffic and sales, as well as sales per affiliate.
- An inbuilt wallet for the affiliates where they can store credits and spend these credits to make purchases from your website itself.
And these features are still just scratching the surface, as there are a lot more features on Ultimate Affiliate Pro. It’s price is very reasonable with a $59 license with 6 months of support. The support can be extend to 12 months by paying an additional $20.25.
If you want to create a highly interactive and professional affiliate program with multiple channels, then Ultimate Affiliate Pro should be your top choice for WooCommerce Affiliate plugins.
6. AffiliateWP
AffiliateWP is our last pick for the best WooCommerce Affiliate plugins that you can find in 2020. This plugin has been designed to cover every aspect and check every box when it comes to managing a full fledge affiliate program. Once you have installed this plugin, here are the features you can access:
- Integration with many other WooCommerce membership plugins.
- An inbuilt payout system which allows you to transfer the commissions directly to the affiliate’s account.
- Tracks all affiliates, the traffic and sales generating from them, their referrals, and even the coupon codes assigned to each individual affiliate.
- Can include unlimited affiliates and also offer them with unlimited creative resources such as banners, images and designs, custom links, etc.
- Separate dashboard for affiliates to track their metrics and progress and also analyse the overall sales.
- Allow affiliates to generate their own custom link with the in-built referral link generator.
- Customize emails and notifications with a few clicks.
- Shortcodes for multiple aspects such as sign-up and login forms, different landing pages, etc.
There are many other features for you to explore with AffiliateWP. The above-mentioned features gives you an idea about why it’s one of the best WooCommerce Affiliate plugins.
The basic plan for this plugin costs $99/year for one site. Higher plans include annual charges of $149 (3 sites), $249 (unlimited sites and extra add-ons), and $499 (unlimited sites, lifetime updates and email support).
Final Verdict about WooCommerce Affiliate Plugins
All these WooCommerce Affiliate plugins have similar core features, but the execution, interface, extra features, and user experience varies for each. For small businesses, start-ups, solo business owners, and those who are new to affiliate marketing, we recommend to opt for any one of the free plugins.
But if you’re seriously planning to invest time, money, and effort to boost your sales and revenue through affiliate marketing, then it’s best to get a paid/premium plugin from the above list. By doing so, you can access more advanced features and also get better technical support.
We are certain that these plugins will help you create a profitable affiliate marketing program for your products for the long run.