Affiliate recruitment tools are key to achieving the twin goals of:
a) effectively managing existing affiliate partners, and
b) strategically expanding your own personal affiliate network. But identifying the right tool for your needs is easier said than done.
In this guide, we’re doing the work for you, so you don’t have to! We’ll review the top affiliate marketing tools available in the market, complete with key features, reviews, and pricing.
Easy?
Let’s get started!
What are affiliate recruitment tools?
Before we get into into the nitty-gritty of finding the right-fit tool, here is a quick overview of what affiliate management tools are and why you need them for your business:
Affiliate marketing software is a sophisticated affiliate management tool that helps you:
- Drive the discovery of new affiliates who resonate both with your brand as well as your target audience (publisher discovery).
- Set up custom affiliate application forms and enable outreach initiatives to potential partner affiliates.
- Sign up the right affiliates who are generally vested in your affiliate marketing program. In other words, affiliate software helps you manage the complete affiliate recruitment process.
- Establish and disburse commissions to enrolled partners.
- Set up management and engagement to build a long-standing and mutually beneficial business relationship.
But for the best returns, results, and the most flexibility, we recommend you use a techstack that combines affiliate software and brand mention tools, along with link builder tools.
Brand mention tools and link builder tools help you find affiliates that synergize brand-wise and audience-wise.
The 7 best affiliate management software tools
In this section, we’ll be reviewing the top affiliate program software tools, complete with their best features. We’ve also collated consumer reviews from third-party review sites such as Capterra and G2. By the end of the article, you’ll walk away with a clearer picture of specific tools that may be ideal for your business.
1. Referral Rock
Referral Rock is your one-stop destination for a results-driven affiliate software that does it all.
Referral Rock helps you set up your program in days (not months), develop effective relationships with your affiliates, and customize rewards based on your unique needs.
With Referral Rock, you can fully maximize the potential available with affiliate and referral marketing. Our software is flexible enough to run all types of advocacy programs, such as customer referral programs, ambassador programs, and channel partner programs, giving you a much bigger bang for your buck.
The software is fully customizable, has in-depth reporting and analytics, and comes with stellar customer service and a dedicated onboarding specialist.
Top features:
- Flexible rewards: Design and customize rewards based on affiliate preferences, trigger rewards through your CRM or ecommerce platform and automate fulfillment with a variety of different payout options. Set up tiered commissions, and commissions on both leads and sales, if you wish.
- Focus on relationship-building: Go beyond the transaction with our relationship-focused software, which helps you build strong connections with affiliates through a dedicated member portal.
- Track and manage leads and affiliates: Track and capture every purchase made from each affiliate link or referral link, and quickly compensate each affiliate. Monitor campaigns and all key performance indicators, right on the platform’s admin dashboard.
- Wealth of integrations: Referral Rock affiliate software seamlessly integrates with HubSpot, Salesforce, and plenty of other marketing and sales tools you’re already using. Referral Rock also offers a mobile app and API integration, and lets you automate workflows with Zapier. Plus, ensure you’re always top of mind by integrating with your email platform and sending status and event updates.
- Exceptional support: Expert services to help onboard and tailor the program to your unique business needs.
Pricing:
- Professional: $175+/month (for businesses with sales reps and servicepeople)
- Engage: $200+/month (for businesses with self-checkouts)
- Enterprise plan also available
Demo or free trial? Free trial and demo
Customer support: Dedicated onboarding specialist, personalized launch plans, integration assistance, priority support, support portal, knowledge base
Review score: 4.5 out of 5 (55 reviews)
Bottom line: Referral Rock has a robust suite of affiliate management and tracking features, with expert services to guide you through every step of launching and managing your affiliate program. Referral Rock makes it easy for affiliates to track the status of their referrals, and you can set up automated email updates for ongoing program promotion. But don’t just take our word for it – our affiliate software has received stellar reviews across industries.
2. TUNE
With the TUNE partner marketing platform, expect all the innovative and business-focused trappings that come with a technology-led platform. Think extensive, comprehensive, and well-thought-out enterprise-grade features for advertisers. Particularly worth noting are its proactive fraud prevention capabilities, and solid system and security features.
Top features:
- Robust targeting, tracking, and performance management to get the best results from your campaigns.
- Fully integrated accounts payable workflows and international payment processing, so you can expand your affiliate base globally.
- Predictable SaaS-based pricing with no hidden costs or commissions to eat away into your revenue. TUNE promises clear contracts and consistent billing.
Pricing: $599-$1500+/month
Demo or free trial? Demo
Customer support: 24/7 email support, support portal, knowledge base, training. Chat, phone, and development support are available on the high-tiered plans.
Review score: 4.34 stars (178 reviews)
Bottom line: TUNE is one of the most popular affiliate software choices, with a wealth of affiliate tracking and customization features to take advantage of. However, some reviewers say the learning curve is steep when you’re first starting out with TUNE, so things may be rough for beginners. Plus, plans are pricey, relative to the features offered.
3. Post Affiliate Pro
Post Affiliate Pro is a popular affiliate management software that helps you build your affiliate program from the ground up and track all your affiliates from one place. The platform’s tracking capabilities let you monitor referrals, conversion rates, partner performance, cookies, and payouts in detail. Post Affiliate Pro also integrates with over 170 CMS (Content Management Systems) and payment gateways.
Top features:
- A large library of promotional material to choose from, including banner rotators, discount coupons, Smartlinks, site replication tools, PDF banners, image banners, and a lot more.
- In-depth reporting, metrics, and analytics tools such as top affiliates, top URLs, trends, and campaign reports.
- Varied commission structures: multilevel commissions, performance rewards, event defining for commission disbursement, recurring and split commissions.
Pricing: $129-$599/month
Demo or free trial? Free trial
Customer support: Phone, support portal, knowledge base (Academy)
Review score: 4.58 stars (729 reviews)
Bottom line: Post Affiliate Pro has lots of integrations, so there’s a good chance it will fit well with your existing marketing mix. It also offers lots of flexibility in design, promotional options, and affiliate compensation. But some reviewers have said it can be confusing and shaky, and support also gets mixed reviews.
4. Partnerize
Partnerize is an all-in-one solution for partnership management. You can use the platform to discover and activate successful affiliates that align with your brand vision, track and measure performance, pay your affiliates, and secure your data. The company has a presence in over 214 countries and territories, which gives you the benefit of global yet local expertise.
Top features:
- Discover and activate affiliate partners from a diverse pool of qualified candidates, including Ambassadors, content commerce, traditional media, voucher and cash-back sites, as well as complimentary brands powered by AI.
- Service options include short-term support in the form of technology and in-house expertise to quickly ramp operations, as well as long-term support in the form of an in-house practice.
- Dedicated onboarding team to help you get set up in as little as two weeks, from kick off to technical integration and finally, “ready-to-go.”
Pricing: Unknown
Demo or free trial? Demo
Customer support: Support platform, knowledge base
Review score: 4.27 stars (102 reviews)
Bottom line: The AI-enhanced partner management is a plus, along with the ability to manage several partner types. Unfortunately, though, Partnerize operates like an affiliate network, meaning all potential partners can compare your affiliate program side-by-side with competing programs.
5. PartnerStack
PartnerStack operates as an entire ecosystem as opposed to a typical affiliate program management platform. The company caters to both vendors and partners/publishers, and already has over 500 B2B SaaS brands signed up for its services. The PartnerStack Marketplace features over 80,000 B2B partners and 300 SaaS partners. Keep in mind, though, that the marketplace operates like an affiliate network, so you’ll have to be willing to sacrifice some control over your affiliates.
Top features:
- Easily promote your program by creating a landing page, linking to your partner application form, and promoting on PartnerStack’s Marketplace.
- Branded email marketing, including automation of multi-step workflows and embedding referral links directly into emails.
- Optimize revenue through many different methods, such as performance management, tracking lifetime revenue, viewing and sorting partner-sourced leads and deals.
Pricing: Unknown
Demo or free trial? Demo
Customer support: Help center, knowledge base
Review score: 4.71 stars (658 reviews)
Bottom line: PartnerStack mainly focuses on serving B2B and SaaS customers; if you’re B2C, it may not work well for you. Also, the platform is run as an affiliate network, meaning that PartnerStack owns your affiliates. This also means affiliates can compare your program with competing programs at a glance, making it more difficult to recruit and build strong relationships with affiliates.
6. LeadDyno
LeadDyno enables you to launch, manage, and grow ecommerce affiliate, ambassador, and influencer marketing programs in one place. Aside from the features, one of LeadDyno’s key selling points is the fast turnover times on customer support enquiries.
Top 3 key features:
- All-in-one affiliate management platform to hire, manage, track, and pay your affiliate partners.
- Extensive customization options, so you can set up the plans that work best for your business, including mass vs. individual payments.
- Automated lead management to convert leads to new customers.
Pricing: $49-$749/month
Demo or free trial? Free trial and demo
Customer support: Email, video, and chat support; knowledge base.
Review score: 4.29 stars (136 reviews)
Bottom line: LeadDyno is a simple affiliate software solution. It’s a good choice if you’re an ecommerce business that wants a simpler software. But it won’t work as well for SaaS or B2B businesses with multi-step sales processes.
7. Refersion
Refersion is a user-friendly affiliate marketing solution for ecommerce brands. Use Refersion to discover and recruit affiliates, manage campaigns and affiliates, take charge of payments and commissions, and manage attribution and first-party tracking. The platform is also privacy-secure, being compliant with both GDPR and CCPA.
Top 3 key features:
- Onboard unlimited affiliates, brand ambassadors, and affiliates manage performance using built-in campaign reporting and monitoring tools.
- Advanced customization for commissions, such as commissions by product vs SKU, automated conversion approvals, and multiple payment options such as PayPal, Trolley, store credit, gift cards, and more.
- Flexible integration options – 30+ turnkey integrations, 2000+ app integrations, commerce tool integration, and more.
Pricing: $99-$249+/month
Demo or free trial? Free trial
Customer support: Email, knowledge base.
Review score: 4.0 stars (76 reviews)
Bottom line: Like LeadDyno, Refersion is only designed for ecommerce businesses that want a simpler software. It isn’t meant for SaaS or B2B businesses with multi-step sales processes.
The best other affiliate recruitment tools
Thanks to affiliate software, you have a lot more flexibility to choose to find and recruit high-quality affiliates. Even though you’ll have to search out affiliates, you don’t have to do this completely manually. Investing in brand mention and link-building tools will complement your affiliate marketing program and software.
Using brand mention tools, you can easily find other creators who have already posted or blogged about you. Meanwhile, with link-building tools, you can find other niche creators whom you can give affiliate links to.
8. Brand24
Brand24 is an AI-powered social listening tool that you can use to find mentions about your brand across social media, news updates, blogs, videos, forums, reviews, and more and proactively manage your reputation based on sentiment. The software solution is available on mobile (both iOS and Android), and you can also integrate it with your Slack channel.
Top 3 key features:
- Identify sudden spikes in discussion/mention volumes so you can quickly intervene to protect or promote your brand reputation.
- Sentiment analysis features to identify positive, negative, or neutral attitudes, so you can correct problem areas which need to be addressed fast.
- Turn your data into automated PDF reports, .xls files, and infographics for easy sharing and brainstorming.
Type of tool: AI social listening tool
Pricing: $79-$499/month
Demo or free trial? Free trial, demo
Customer support: Email, phone, help center, knowledge base
Review score: Review score: 4.64 stars (388 reviews)
Bottom line: Brand24 consistently earns high ratings for customer service across review sites, and it’s even been named an AI leader by Influencer Marketing Hub. Many of its features are similar to Mention’s (we cover Mention below), but Brand24 stands out with more detailed AI features. If AI doesn’t matter as much to you, compare these platform’s features and scope of tracking side by side.
9. Mention
The aptly titled Mention is a brand mention tool that enables brands and agencies to monitor the web, listen in to what their audience is saying, and publish/manage social media. With the insights gained from trend analysis, you can curate or create relevant content from within your company feed, making Mention an effective all-in-one social listening tool.
Top 3 key features:
- Social monitoring that can go as far back as two years previously to find mentions from over one billion sources (social media channels, forums, blogs, reviews, etc.)
- Basic, standard, and advanced alerts to customize your monitoring of brand and topic mentions, as well as “spike” alerts on sudden spikes in mention volumes.
- In-depth competitor analysis tools to help you identify what your competitors are currently doing and potentially outsmart them.
Type of tool: Social listening and management tool
Pricing: $41-$179+/month
Demo or free trial? Free trial and demo
Customer support: Email, phone, help center, knowledge base
Review score: Review score: 4.46 stars (720 reviews)
Bottom line: All Mention plans let you use sentiment analysis and detailed filtering functionality, and all plans give each mention a score based on its perceived impact to your brand, so you can identify top fans who would make strong affiliates.
10. Awario
Awario helps you stay up-to-date in real-time so you can react promptly to conversations and mentions about your brand. You can track the specific keywords in any language from anywhere in the world. You also have access to a large number of options for organization, storing, and reporting all the insights gained from the platform.
Top 3 key features:
- Robust analytics solution for sorting by positive, negative, and neutral sentiment, identifying the top influencers, comparing alerts, and tracking progress.
- Generate more social selling opportunities by using the tool to find posts about recommendations as well as posts complaining about competitors.
- Data-rich, sophisticated-looking, white-labeled reporting function that can be shared with confidence with your peers and clients.
Type of tool: Social listening and brand management tool.
Pricing: $29-$399/month
Demo or free trial? Free trial, demo
Customer support: Help center, chat form, knowledge base, account manager on the enterprise plan.
Review score: 4.21 stars (84 reviews)
Bottom line: Awario is one of the most cost-effective brand mention tools out there. There doesn’t appear to be any AI features, but not many other tools have instant-reply features to engage people who have mentioned you right away (and start the ball rolling towards affiliate recruitment).
11. Respona
Respona is a link-building outreach platform that is designed to help you generate more traffic from Google. Aside from link-building, you can use Respona to recruit affiliates, book podcasts, and even drum up positive press. Simply pick a template, find outreach opportunities, verify the email addresses, and send AI-personalized outreach emails.
Top 3 key features:
- Large library of plug-and-play templates for content syndication, partner recruitment, digital PR, and link-building.
- Set up an automated email sequence for outreach recipients and use AI to personalize the email content for each recipient.
- Integrations with SEO tools like Ahrefs, Semrush, and Moz and email connectivity tools like Gmail, Microsoft, and IMAP/SMTP.
Type of tool: Link-building outreach platform
Pricing: $197-$399/month
Demo or free trial? Free trial and demo
Customer support: Live chat, help center, custom onboarding, knowledge base, priority support on the Unlimited plan.
Review score: 4.8 stars (101 reviews)
Bottom line: Since Respona pulls metrics like Domain Rating and Ahrefs Rank directly from Ahrefs, you’ve got an instant gauge of a potential affiliate’s impact. The early, experimental version of Respona was used to help Visme scale their link building outreach efforts, helping the brand gain over 2 million organic website visitors per month. Imagine what the refined version can do for your affiliate recruitment efforts.
12. Pitchbox
Pitchbox is specialist all-in-one link-building and productivity software meant for SEO professionals. It essentially offers you “full-stack prospecting” from one place. Aside from link-building outreach, with Pitchbox, you also get productivity software to manage your emails, tasks, notes, and prospects.
Top 3 key features:
- “SMART” templates to help you scale outreach campaigns, whether it’s basic blogger outreach or advanced link reclamation. Pitchbox states the templates provide superior deliverability and response rates.
- The “Chasebox” module is designed to help you prioritize and follow up on leads.
- Customizable email sending designed for different time zones plus the ability to set up automated email sequences – saving you hours of time and labor.
Type of tool: Link-building and productivity tool for SEO professionals
Pricing: $495-$1350/month
Demo or free trial? Demo
Customer support: Live chat support, account manager, training, knowledge base, phone support on the Enterprise plan.
Review score: 4.7 stars (132 reviews)
Bottom line: Pitchbox combines outreach features with added management tools, so if you need a place to keep notes on the potential affiliates you reach out to, it’s a great choice.
13. BuzzStream
BuzzStream is an end-to-end outreach CRM platform that helps you stay organized and grow your digital PR and link building results from one place. The software can be used by solopreneurs as well as teams. It follows a three-pronged approach – generate PR, build links, and promote content.
Top 3 key features:
- Build smart lists of journalists and bloggers based on your existing history with them, conversations, posts, emails, social reach, and influencer metrics. You can use these lists for outreach as well as for nurturing.
- Faster prospecting, adding contact data, and gathering website/social metrics information.
- Research and build smart influencer profiles that you can leverage to amplify the results of your marketing campaigns.
Type of tool: Link-building and digital PR tool.
Pricing: $24-$999+/month
Demo or free trial? Free trial
Customer support: Email, phone.
Review score: 4.15 stars (182 reviews)
Bottom line: BuzzStream’s connection-based outreach is stellar for recruiting affiliates you’ve already built relationships with (making it very powerful, as these prospective affiliates already know your product and believe in what you do).
Other tools to recruit affiliates
Aside from affiliate software, social listening, and link-building tools, here are additional resources and tips you can use to recruit affiliate partners:
Your customer base: You can start the search from within your existing resources, like your current customer base. Identify customers who are already creating content and have a sizable audience. You can sign them up to become your affiliate partners at very little to zero cost to you.
Instagram/X/TikTok: Instagram, X, and TikTok are hugely popular social media platforms that have the capacity to viralize content and amplify followership on good content. Run hashtag searches on these platforms to see who’s talking about you, what they’re saying, and how well they’re racking up viewership.
Facebook: Reports of Facebook’s irrelevancy have been greatly exaggerated! Facebook is still a great marketing tool that you can leverage to build robust affiliate partnerships. Search for relevant keywords and groups to find your next big affiliate partner.
LinkedIn: Content-building and promotion are still in its nascent days on LinkedIn. Use LinkedIn for professional affiliate searching and outreach. But don’t forget to build your own following on LinkedIn as well by consistently generating useful content. You might find affiliates within your follower pool!
YouTube: YouTube has a daily viewership of approximately 122 million users. Use the robust search option on YouTube to find best-fit creators who are discussing allied products and services and could potentially become your affiliate partners.
Micro-influencers: Don’t neglect the power of micro-influencers. They have highly engaged communities, which means their viewers tend to be loyal and identify strongly with or against their views and opinions.
Influencer pools: Influencer pooling is when several different influencers come together for the purpose of collaboration or cross-promotion. Identifying them doesn’t work very differently from identifying singular influencers. Typically, influencers congregate based on similar interests and audience profiles. The benefit to you, of course, is the combined reach and opportunity.
Affiliate forums, social media groups, and communities: Look for niche-specific forums, social media groups, and communities online. Use hashtag searches or Boolean structures to narrow down on the specific keywords that are related to your business and brand. Identify affiliate candidates that are a brand and audience match and reach out to them to take things forward.
SEMRush or Ahrefs: SEMRush and Ahrefs are popular SEO tools that you can use for backlink searches. Simply input your competitor domain or website addresses and analyze competitor backlink profiles. Both tools will give you comprehensive insights. You can use these backlinks to identify affiliates that your competitors are working with and then perform an outreach campaign with a better or more competitive offer.
For more ideas, refer to our comprehensive resource: Affiliate Recruitment Strategies:Supercharge your Business Growth.
Regardless of the method you use, personally reach out to affiliates you find and invite them to your program (or invite them to complete an affiliate application). Personal outreach goes a long way!
Why avoid affiliate networks for affiliate recruitment?
Even though affiliate networks find affiliates for you, that’s the only real benefit they provide. Networks have far more drawbacks than benefits:
- You can’t recruit any affiliates you want – you’re limited to affiliates already registered with the network
- Networks are costly due to added fees – sometimes networks charge you as much as 30% of the commissions you pay affiliates (and that’s on top of the commissions you’re already paying)
- On networks, you’re directly competing with other brands for affiliates – and it often means that bigger brands who can pay more commissions have the upper hand
- It’s hard to build relationships with affiliates and keep them engaged – affiliate networks want affiliates to be involved in multiple programs, because that makes more money for the network
- Networks don’t give you the flexibility to customize your program however you want
- Affiliate networks own affiliate data, so you won’t have access to all the data you need to make informed program improvement decisions
In contrast, affiliate software will give you the flexibility to recruit the affiliates you want, contact affiliates to keep them engaged, customize your program in any way you choose, and let you access the robust data you need to improve your program.
Recruit the best affiliates with the right tools
The best affiliate recruitment tools seamlessly bridge the gap between businesses and potential affiliate partners, offering robust features like automated outreach, comprehensive analytics, and intuitive dashboards. By leveraging these tools, businesses can streamline their affiliate recruitment processes, optimize performance, and forge lucrative win-win partnerships.
As the industry continues to evolve, the wise integration of tools like these is required to ensure sustainable growth and lasting success.
