WordPress

5 Must-Have WordPress Affiliate Plugins to Boost Your Marketing Efforts

Searching for a robust, time-saving, and customizable WordPress plugin to manage your affiliate programs with ease? Read this review for a start.

thumbnail

It is hard to ignore the potential of affiliate marketing as a lucrative revenue stream for your WordPress website. By promoting other people’s products and services and earning a commission for every sale, you can boost your income without creating and managing your own products.

Fortunately, there are plenty of WordPress affiliate plugins that can help you with that. They allow you to create affiliate links, track clicks and conversions, manage commissions, and more.

However, choosing the right plugin for your affiliate marketing strategy can be a daunting task. There are so many options available with various features, pricing models, and levels of complexity.

To help you navigate through this boundless sea, we have prepared a review of the top 5 WordPress affiliate plugins. We have included both popular and less known but quite effective tools, so you can choose the one that best fits your needs and goals. 

Let’s get started. 

Pretty Links

Developer

Pretty Links

Installations

Pretty Links has over 300,000 active installations, making it one of the most popular affiliate plugins available for WordPress.

Description

This WordPress affiliate plugin allows you to create shortened and customized links for your affiliate products and services. You can easily track clicks and conversions of your links to measure the effectiveness of your affiliate marketing campaigns.

The plugin comes in two versions: Free and Pro. With the free version, you can shorten and track links, while the Pro version includes additional features such as automatic link replacement, split testing, and nofollow attribute.

One of the primary benefits of Pretty Links is its ability to improve the appearance and trustworthiness of your affiliate links. By customizing them to include your domain name or branding elements, you can make your links more user-friendly and compliant with SEO guidelines.

Key Features

Free

  • Shorten and track your affiliate links
  • Add your domain name or branding elements to your links
  • Track clicks and conversions

Pro

  • Automatic keyword replacement
  • Split testing
  • Nofollow attribute
  • Advanced redirect types
  • Google Analytics tracking

Pricing

Pretty Links Pro is available in four pricing plans, which differ based on the number of sites you can install the plugin on and the features included: 

  • Blogger: $99/year – 1 site license
  • Marketer: $149/year – 3 site licenses
  • Agency: $199/year – 10 site licenses
  • Enterprise: $399/year – unlimited site licenses

To learn more about the features and pricing of Pretty Links, visit the official website.

Easy Affiliate Links

Developer

The Easy Affiliate Links plugin was developed by Bootstrapped Ventures, the same team behind popular WordPress plugins such as WP Coupons and WP Review.

Active Installations

The plugin currently has over 30,000 active installations and an average rating of 4.9 out of 5 stars from users.

Description

Easy Affiliate Links is a lightweight and user-friendly plugin that allows you to manage your affiliate links easily within your WordPress dashboard. The plugin provides an efficient way to create, categorize, and manage all your affiliate links. It also tracks the performance of each link so you can see which are bringing in the most revenue.

One of the best features of Easy Affiliate Links is that it provides a way to cloak your affiliate links. That can make them more visually appealing and less intimidating to click for visitors. Additionally, the plugin offers several built-in redirection types, including JavaScript and 301 and 302 redirects, to ensure that your links work correctly.

Easy Affiliate Links is available in both free and premium versions. The free version is quite robust and offers features such as link categorization, link cloaking, link performance tracking, and link management. The premium version offers additional features such as automatic link replacement, geo-targeting, and link scheduling.

Key Features

Free 

  • Easy affiliate link creation and management
  • Link categorization
  • Link cloaking
  • Performance tracking
  • Multiple redirect types

Premium

  • Automatic link replacement
  • Geo-targeting
  • Link scheduling
  • Priority email support

To learn more about the plugin’s features and capabilities, visit the official plugin page on WordPress.org.

Pricing

Easy Affiliate Links is available in both a free and a premium version. The premium version offers additional features and is available in three different pricing plans:

  • Personal: $49 per year for use on one site
  • Business: $99 per year for use on up to five sites
  • Agency: $199 per year for use on up to 20 sites

All premium plans come with priority email support and a 30-day money-back guarantee.

ThirstyAffiliates

Developer

ThirstyAffiliates.com, Josh Kohlbach

Active Installations

30,000+

Description

ThirstyAffiliates is a robust WordPress plugin that helps you manage and organize all of your affiliate links in a single place. It is suitable for bloggers, marketers, and website owners who want to monetize their content by adding affiliate links to their posts or pages.

With ThirstyAffiliates, you can easily cloak, categorize, and manage all your affiliate links. The plugin makes it simple to insert affiliate links into your content using shortcodes or with the provided quick-add tool.

Another impressive feature of ThirstyAffiliates is its in-built link management system that lets you keep track of clicks and conversions for each link, so you can see which ones are performing well.

ThirstyAffiliates offers a free version and a premium add-on that provides additional functionality, such as automatic keyword linking, geolocation targeting, and CSV importing.

Key Features

Free

  • Cloak affiliate links
  • Insert affiliate links using shortcodes or a quick-add tool
  • Link categorization and management
  • Detailed reports on link performance

Premium

  • Automatic keyword linking
  • Geolocation targeting
  • CSV importing of affiliate links
  • Automatic linking for specific keywords
  • Google Analytics event tracking

Pricing

ThirstyAffiliates offers a premium add-on that costs $49 for use on one website and $99 for use on up to five websites. The premium add-on comes with one year of support and updates, and a 30-day money-back guarantee.

To learn more about ThirstyAffiliates, visit the official plugin page on WordPress.org or the developer’s website.

Affiliates Manager

Developer

The Affiliates Manager plugin was developed by wp.insider. 

Active Installations 

10,000+

Description

Affiliates Manager allows you to create and manage an unlimited number of affiliates and track their sales and referrals.

The plugin offers various commission types, including percentage and fixed amounts, as well as customizable commission rates for individual affiliates. You can also set different commission rates for different products and even offer tiered commissions for your top-performing affiliates.

Affiliates Manager integrates with popular e-commerce plugins like WooCommerce and Easy Digital Downloads. It also supports various payment gateways such as PayPal, Stripe, and Authorize.net.

The plugin provides a user-friendly dashboard for your affiliates to track their earnings, commissions, and referrals. You can also generate reports and export them as CSV or Excel files.

Key Features

Free

  • Unlimited affiliates and referrals. The plugin allows you to create an unlimited number of affiliates and track their referrals and sales.
  • Various commission types. You can choose between percentage or fixed commission rates for your affiliates.
  • Customizable commission rates. The plugin lets you set custom commission rates for individual affiliates or specific products.

Premium

  • Tiered commissions. Offer tiered commissions to incentivize top-performing affiliates.
  • Customizable affiliate registration form. Customize the affiliate registration form fields to gather more information from your affiliates.
  • Recurring commissions. Set up recurring commissions for your subscription-based products.

Pricing

The premium version of Affiliates Manager is available for $39.99 for a single site license and includes one year of support and updates. For $59.99, you can purchase the developer license, which includes support and updates for up to five sites.

SliceWP Affiliates

Developer

SliceWP, LLC

Active Installations

10+

Description

SliceWP is a powerful affiliate marketing plugin designed for WordPress websites. It enables users to create and manage their own affiliate program without the need for third-party tools. The plugin is lightweight, easy to use, and offers a wide range of features that make it perfect for businesses of all sizes.

With SliceWP, you can create your own affiliate program and set up custom commission rates for your affiliates. The plugin allows you to track affiliate performance and manage payments to your affiliates all from within your WordPress dashboard.

One of the standout features of SliceWP is its support for multiple affiliate programs. This means that you can create different programs for different products or services, each with its own unique commission structure.

SliceWP also offers a variety of integrations with popular e-commerce platforms like WooCommerce, Easy Digital Downloads, and MemberPress, making it easy to set up and manage your affiliate program.

Key Features

Free

  • Create unlimited affiliate programs
  • Set custom commission rates for each affiliate
  • Track affiliate performance and referrals
  • Generate affiliate links and banners
  • Pay your affiliates via PayPal
  • Integrate with popular e-commerce platforms

Premium

  • Create tiered commission structures
  • Assign coupon codes to affiliates
  • Integrate with Zapier for advanced automation
  • Pay affiliates via Stripe, PayPal Mass Payments, or manual payouts

To get familiar with the rest of the plugin’s features, visit the official website.

Pricing

SliceWP offers three premium plans that vary in price and features:

  • Basic: $49 per year – includes all core features and one site license
  • Pro: $99 per year – includes all Basic features plus Zapier integration, tiered commissions, and unlimited site licenses
  • Elite: $249 per year – includes all Pro features plus Stripe and PayPal Mass Payments integration, manual payouts, and priority support.

Superb WordPress Development Expertise from GetDevDone 

Finding a reliable and convenient plugin is extremely important if you want to keep your affiliate marketing running smoothly. Moreover, learning how to use a particular plugin can be time-consuming. In this case, you can try in-person WordPress training, master the skills of managing your WordPress affiliate plugins faster, become more confident, and get work done more efficiently.

However, even top WordPress affiliate plugins may prove to be insufficient to meet your exact business needs. For instance, you might want to track affiliate links’ clicks and commissions more accurately than your plugin allows. In addition, plugins may sometimes cause security and performance issues. 

For example, when a vendor stops maintaining a plugin, it becomes vulnerable to hackers who can exploit its weaknesses and gain access to your valuable data.

Besides, different plugins can cause conflicts with each other, resulting in longer load times and “No page found” errors. Premium features of affiliate plugins also usually require subscription fees to be paid every month or year.

If you know precisely what you need, professional WordPress development services can be a viable alternative to plugins. You won’t have to pay subscription fees, and you can have a website that meets all your business requirements, modifying its look and functionality as you see fit. 

Our experienced WordPress developers provide a full range of WordPress development services, including help with website migration, Core Web Vitals Optimization, custom theme development, theme customization, builder-based theme development, maintenance and support, and WooCommerce development. 

Need something else? Just knock on our door and we will offer you an ideal solution.

Dmytro Mashchenko

Dmytro is the CEO of GetDevDone, an experienced web developer, and a prolific author of in-depth technology and business-related posts. He is always eager to share his years-long expertise with everyone who wants to succeed in the web development field.