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What is Post Affiliate Pro?
Post Affiliate Pro was launched in 2004, following an order from a customer ordered from Quality Unit, LLC - a software development company founded by the trio Maros Fric, Andrej Harsani, and Viktor Zeman.
They created a script to track affiliate marketing links for a potential customer, but the deal fell apart around the time they should have been paid. In fact, that's why the deal failed: they were never paid.
Instead of archiving or deleting their work, they realized that they had something very useful in their hands and started looking for new buyers. They started selling licenses, and their timing couldn't have been better.
With the growing popularity of bloggers, some of whom had an audience of several million people, marketers around the world identified a new channel to generate recommendations.
17 years after the creation of Post Affiliate Pro, the software was migrated to the cloud, has nearly 30,000 customers in 123 countries around the world. Sites such as G2 or CapTERRA offered them several rewards thus consolidating its reputation as a very popular affiliate marketing solution.
Features
When it comes to features, all the basic elements are there.
Again, there is no longevity for a product that doesn't handle the basics properly.
Customizing affiliate links
If you picked any affiliate marketing platform at random and tested it, you know that follow up links aren't always very customizable.
With Post Affiliate Pro, however, you have a choice:
- setting up custom redirects
- adding parameters embedded in the URL (utm)
- Anchor links adapted to SEO
- Or direct links that are simpler and more user-friendly
You can even allow affiliates to customize their own links according to their needs (by having the functionality to review, approve, or reject what they offer).
Affiliate program management
Many platforms offer multi-level marketing options, but Post Affiliate Pro adds advanced functions.
Thanks to this one, the affiliate program managers have precise control over the size and “shape” of affiliate levels.
Fraud protection is another thing we've seen in other platforms, but not to the degree that Post Affiliate Pro implements it. Once again, the aim is flexibility and control, and so it's not surprising that the software allows its users to approach fraud from several different perspectives.
You can protect yourself from fraudulent clicks, sales, affiliate signups, and so on based on a variety of factors.
The same can be said for the commissions themselves: there are so many ways to reward your affiliates.
They can be based on actions other than sales, such as newsletter signups, user signups, etc. Recurring commissions exist, and you can also split commissions between affiliates.
With commission groups, you can ensure that everyone gets what they deserve, and with performance rewards, Post Affiliate Pro can automatically move affiliates to higher-paying groups when they reach certain performance milestones.
Providing your affiliates with marketing materials is a crucial part of campaigns, and Once again, Post Affiliate Pro goes further than its competitors.
Every type of banner ad you can imagine is available: interactive banners, static image banners, lightbox banners.
As announced, reporting functions are advanced.
Post Affiliate Pro provides a wealth of information, which is not surprising considering how much you can do with it.
In addition to the standard tracking data you'd expect, it's presented in a variety of ways to get a real insight into what's working and what's not. The banner ad report shows you which ads get the most results.
The location report shows you the geography of any metric you want to see (sales, commissions, etc.).
This map is one of the other weaknesses of Post Affiliate Pro: it allows you to go down to the level of a country, which is a nice feature in Europe, but largely useless in the United States.
Integrations
There are a total of 229 integrations supported by Post Affiliate Pro.
More than 100 of these are e-commerce platforms. The same goes for the payment platform of your choice, almost 70 of them are supported.
The remaining 54 integrations are all for niche applications, with a few bigger and better known names. Mailchimp and Infusionsoft are the most useful of the lot. That's the big surprise of Post Affiliate Pro: despite all the flexibility it's looking for, there are no integrations for some of the most popular e-commerce tools — Salesforce and HubSpot being the most notably absent. The software doesn't play very well with social media either. There is no function that allows affiliates to share content with their followers beyond copying and pasting their links into a post.
Pricing
Post Affiliate Pro has no shortage of features, offering a ton of practical benefits even with the lowest subscription.
Most other affiliate marketing platforms set limits on the number of referrals your affiliates can send, and these limits increase as you go up in subscription levels.
Pro, $97/month
Follow an unlimited number of affiliates and up to 1,000,000 follow-up requests per month.
If you exceed this limit, additional requests are charged $1 per 10,000. All tracking tools are available, along with a multitude of other features: automatic affiliate registration, multiple currencies and languages, a customizable interface, mass payments, over a half-dozen commission types, marketing tools for creating banners, coupons and campaigns, marketing tools for creating banners, coupons and campaigns, advanced reports, and hundreds of integrations.
Ultimate, $197/month
Unlimited number of affiliates, 5,000,000 follow-up requests, 40 cents per 10,000 additional requests, all of the above, plus custom affiliate tracking codes, campaign planner, multiple administrators, automatic affiliate removal, lifetime referral manager, lifetime referral manager, lifetime referral manager. Recurring commissions, recurring commissions, split commissions, performance rewards, commissions based on time and rules.
Network, $477/month
Unlimited number of affiliates, 20,000,000 follow-up requests, 20 cents for every 10,000 additional requests, all of the above, plus features to create and manage your own affiliate network (which you and other merchants can access).
All plans receive technical support 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, and 365 days a year via live chat, as well as email support and access to the knowledge base. And everyone benefits from a comprehensive installation and integration service adapted to their needs. Additionally, at the Pro or Ultimate level, users can access some of the features included in the Network plan:
- Lifetime Recommendation Manager, $9/month - This feature is included in Ultimate and Network versions, but Pro users can take advantage of it at an additional cost per month.
- Subscription manager, $9/month - If you want to get your affiliates to pay for joining your program, this is the way to do it. Affiliates who do not pay their membership fees are not rewarded for referrals and cannot log into the affiliate portal.
- Audit log, $17/month - Every action performed on the system by affiliates and administrators is recorded in chronological order.
- Smartlinks, $19/month - Dynamic tracking links and banners that can be adapted to where and what device they are displayed on.
- Removing Post's affiliate brand, $27/month - Not available for Pro at all. Users who have subscribed to the Ultimate plan benefit from this network level feature to white label their portal/program.
Final Verdict
Post Affiliate Pro is, in many ways, years ahead of its competitors.
It offers a unparalleled flexibility for the deployment of affiliate campaigns, an exhaustive list of functionalities and, for each of these functionalities, several ways to configure their use, adapted to the needs of users.
It lacks some integrations, especially with social networks.
Still, the platform offers so much, and at such a competitive price, that it's hard not to recommend it to businesses of all sizes.
A small business could afford it, but might never use half of its features. But for anyone who wants to have a lot of control over how they implement affiliate marketing, Post Affiliate Pro is an obvious choice.
