Looking for the best referral program software for your business?
Referral programs can be a nice way to get more people to promote your products and reach a bigger audience. Using referral program software lets you create and manage a referral program easily.
In this article, we’ve choosen some of the best referral program software that you can use along with your WordPress site.
Why Use Referral Program Software?
Referral programs are an excellent way to get more traffic and increase your sales. Companies like Dropbox and Coinbase became popular by using successful referral programs.
Referral programs are successful because they use word of mouth marketing to help grow your business. People tend to trust recommendations from friends, family, and influencers they follow.
By growing with referrals, you can also save a lot of money on advertising and build customer loyalty.
However, managing your own referral program can be difficult and time-consuming. Referral program software makes it much easier to create and manage referral marketing campaigns for your business or online store.
Referral programs have many moving parts, but using the right software may help to simplify the entire process.
What’s the Difference Between Referral and Affiliate Programs?
Referral marketing programs and affiliate marketing programs are pretty similar, although technically, they refer to different things.
A referral program provides incentives like gift cards, discounts, and commissions to existing customers when they refer a friend or family to make a purchase.
An affiliate program enables your customers or affiliate marketers to sign up for your program, so they can receive an agreed upon commission when someone purchases through their unique tracking link.
Affiliates are like your own sales team with no the salary, and they only get paid when they actually deliver results.
That being said, let’s look at the best referral marketing software that you can use with your small business website.
1. Easy Affiliate
Easy Affiliate is a powerful and user friendly referral program plugin for WordPress and WooCommerce. It comes with every feature you need to build, track, and manage your affiliate program.
Just in a few minutes, you can have your own referral program up and running. The simple dashboard stats widget helps you quickly see how your affiliates are performing, and who’s on top of the leaderboard.
You can also find built in fraud detection, one-click affiliate payouts, custom commissions, and no transaction fees.
If you are running an online store, then you can use the WooCommerce, MemberPress, PayPal, and Easy Digital Downloads integrations.
Besides, you can keep your affiliates informed by integrating with some of the best email marketing services like ActiveCampaign, ConvertKit, etc.
If you do run into any issues with the software, then there’s always a knowledgeable customer support team ready to help.
Pricing: EasyAffiliate currently starts at $99.95/month. Users who want more integrations will need to opt for a higher-priced plan.
Unlike most other affiliate program software, Easy Affiliate does not charge a per transaction fee which is a huge bonus for small businesses. This is a self-hosted referral tracking software that you can install as a plugin on your WordPress site.
2. ShareASale
ShareASale is one of the longest running affiliate networks in the market. Beyond offering access to thousands of affiliate products to promote, they also offer a very useful referral marketing solution for business owners.
ShareASale is used by major publishers like Business Insider, Forbes, Buzzfeed, etc.
You can easily create a referral program for your own products and instantly access a network of more than 200,000 affiliates who are ready to promote them.
There’s an in-depth affiliate dashboard and tracking tools to monitor performance, plus built in email marketing automation to stay in contact with your affiliates and inform them of sales and promotions.
You’ll find a lot of customization options to help you design your unique referral and recruitment program.
Pricing: ShareASale charges a one time setup fee of $500, plus a transaction fee that’s equal to 20% of the commission amount you are paying affiliates.
The biggest reason why some of our larger brands use ShareASale is that they handle all affiliate payments, local taxes, and such. The major drawback is that the costs can get expensive since they charge a premium per transaction.
3. Tapfiliate
Tapfiliate is an easy to use referral tracking software that takes the hassle out of creating your own referral marketing program.
It helps you simply onboard new affiliates and create a custom branded dashboard to match the design of your WordPress website and products.
You can control payouts, including one-time or monthly recurring commissions, percentage based commissions, performance bonuses, etc.
Tapfiliate provides tools to create short and elegant links for your referrers and affiliates, unique coupon codes, and sharable social media posts.
There are also integrations with popular tools like WooCommerce, WordPress, Zapier, Shopify, and more. Advanced users can make use of the REST API integration to create custom automated workflows.
Additionally, there’s support for multiple currencies and languages so that you can run a global referral and affiliate campaign.
Pricing: Tapfiliate starts $69/month and has zero transaction fees. This plan comes with real-time reporting, third party integrations and automations, and support for up to 1000 affiliates.
4. AffiliateWP
AffiliateWP is an all-in-one affiliate program plugin for WordPress now. It’s built for beginners and lets you set up a working referral program in a couple of minutes.
You can find features like affiliate coupon tracking, automatic referral link generator, and real-time reporting data on all of your affiliates.
There’s a dashboard that lets you review your affiliate applications, manage affiliate accounts, and view referral and affiliate performance metrics.
You may even create and customize unique landing pages that your affiliates can send traffic to without using a tracking link.
Besides, you can process affiliate payments directly within your dashboard.
It also integrates with popular plugins and tools like WooCommerce, Easy Digital Downloads, WPForms, MemberPress, etc.
Pricing: AffiliateWP starts at $149/year. If you need even more features like Zapier integration, custom affiliate links, recurring commission payments, and more, then the Pro plan is $299/ year.
5. PartnerStack
PartnerStack is a useful referral marketing platform for helping you create and manage your entire referral process.
Companies like Drip, Asana, Quickbooks, and Evernote all use PartnerStack to run their affiliate programs.
It’s built to help SaaS companies and new online startups grow. One of the most powerful features is the ability to bring in new partners and affiliates from within the software.
The software is very flexible and allows you to create different goals for your referral campaigns. For example, you can focus on traffic generation, new leads, or total sales.
It also enables you to build customer loyalty programs directly into your products. For instance when someone becomes a customer, it can trigger an automated sequence to bring them on as a referral partner.
The dashboard is easy to use and gives you a detailed breakdown of how your partners are performing, similar to a CRM. You create groups of partners and offer rewards based on different tiers.
Besides, various payment methods are supported, including credit card, ACH, Stripe, and PayPal.
Pricing: PartnerStack creates custom plans for every customer, including how much you will pay.
6. Impact
Impact is an amazing partnership management and affiliate software. The platform is more geared towards established companies. It’s used by brands like HostGator, Constant Contact, McAfee, Canva, etc.
This tool helps you find new partners to grow your business and speed up the customer acquisition process.
Instead of simply relying on existing customers and website visitors, you can find out new partnerships with other businesses, influencers, media partners, and more, all from within the platform.
The dashboard can help you recruit, manage, and pay your new referrers. Plus, it offers detailed metrics, so you can see which affiliates and partnerships are bringing in the most revenue.
Pricing: Impact pricing is completely custom. To get a quote, you need to reach out to their team.
7. ReferralCandy
ReferralCandy is a user friendly customer referral program software that’s great for beginner eCommerce store owners. It helps make word of mouth marketing easy for your online store.
You’ll find useful features like automatic affiliate payments, premade email templates, custom reward options, and detailed reports to see who your standout affiliates are.
There are also tools to help you do A/B testing on your referral offers, so you can see what customer incentives convert the best.
You may even automate the referral onboarding process and create email and popup sequences to invite new customers to join your referral program.
It also integrates with WooCommerce, Google Analytics, Shopify, Magento, popular email marketing tools, etc.
Pricing: ReferralCandy starts at $49/month plus a tiered commission rate that starts at 5% and decreases as you make more referral sales.
What is the Best Referral Program Software (Expert Pick)?
After trying the most popular referral program software, we believe that EasyAffiliate, ShareASale, and Tapfiliate are by far the best tools in the market.
EasyAffiliate is the best affiliate and referral program plugin for WordPress. You can create and manage your own campaigns only in a few minutes. It also includes advanced features while being easy to use.
ShareASale allows you get your products in front of a massive network of new affiliates, and it provides detailed analytics and reporting data.
Tapfiliate is another great choice that gives you complete control over your commissions, offers unique social media posts, and can easily integrate with WordPress and WooCommerce.
We have also tried other referral program software like InviteReferrals, Friendbuy, Mention Me, Post Affiliate Pro, Referral Factory, and Referral Rock, but we decided to keep this list short to make your decisions easier.
We hope this article has helped you find the best referral program software for your small business.