Making the work
Growing an audience
Running the business
Both cover affiliate & referral. Here is what separates them on price, billing, what you can take with you, and coverage.
Run your affiliate program inside WordPress
Affiliate programs for startups, priced by payout
AffiliateWP | Tolt | |
|---|---|---|
| Starting price (they differ) | From $299 | From $69 |
| Pricing model (they differ) | Paid subscription | Free trial, then paid |
| Free tier | No | No |
| Billing | Not stated | Not stated |
| Free trial | Not stated | 14 days |
| API | Not stated | Yes |
| Data export | Not stated | Not stated |
| Their cut | None | Not stated |
| Runs on | Web | Web |
Shaded rows are where the two answers disagree and both listings have answered. A row where one side has not stated a fact is left plain, because silence is not a difference.
Run your affiliate program inside WordPress
AffiliateWP puts the affiliate program on the same WordPress install as the shop, so there is no third party taking a slice of every sale and no separate system to reconcile. Lifetime and recurring commissions, multi-tier payouts and personalised affiliate URLs are all in the paid plugin. Because it is a licence rather than a platform, the cost does not rise with what affiliates earn. Someone without a WordPress site cannot use it at all, which is the whole shape of the trade.
Our note
Budget the standing price rather than the first-year one, because the footnote is explicit that renewals are full price and this is the number you will pay every year after the first. Against Tolt or Rewardful the arithmetic is simple: a licence wins once your affiliates are earning enough that a percentage would exceed a few hundred dollars a year.
Only on this side
Affiliate programs for startups, priced by payout
Tolt runs an affiliate program for a subscription business: a branded portal for partners, tracking that survives a Stripe checkout, and payouts that go out automatically rather than as a monthly chore. Tiers are drawn around how much affiliates earn each month rather than how many of them there are, so recruiting widely costs nothing until the recruiting works. Affiliates and referrals are uncapped on every plan. Automatic payouts carry a processing fee on top of the subscription.
Ratings are the average of reviews readers left. The facts are stated by each tool’s own listing and are not verified by CloutStack. How we make money.
| Covers |
|---|
| Affiliate & Referral, Website Builders |
| Affiliate & Referral |
| Works with | Nothing in particular | Nothing in particular |
|---|
| Founded | Not listed | Not listed |
|---|
| Reader rating | No reviews yet | No reviews yet |
|---|
| Live deals | None right now | None right now |
|---|
Our note
Work out which payout band you will land in before comparing this with a per-affiliate tool, because the tier boundary is the whole price and it moves with success rather than with effort. Pick Rewardful or FirstPromoter instead if you want Stripe-native tracking above all else; pick this if the branded partner portal is what you are buying.