9 Best WordPress Affiliate Plugins to Boost Your Earnings

As an online business, you always find the best marketing and sales tactics to grow your business. Well, to save your time wondering, affiliate marketing is one such effective tactic. And for that, you would need to use a WordPress affiliate plugin.

For an online store, membership platform, a digital products hub, or niche blog, affiliate marketing helps you with scalable growth. It is a smart way to leverage your network, boost traffic, and drive sales, wherein you only pay for the results you achieve. 

However, to implement affiliate marketing, you need to manage affiliate links, affiliate codes, and track their referrals for commissions. Doing it manually can be tiring and time-consuming. That’s where a WordPress affiliate marketing plugin helps. They simplify the affiliate marketing process by helping you manage a full-blown affiliate program. That too, right from your Dashboard. 

This guide would help you with the top suggestions of the best WordPress affiliate plugins for businesses. That too categorized extensively to suit your needs.

What Is a WordPress Affiliate Plugin?

To explain it simply, a WordPress affiliate plugin helps you manage, track, and grow your affiliate marketing efforts right from your website. However, based on your business model, it can work differently for you. How? Let’s look at that! 

Types of Affiliate Plugins and Their Difference

There are two major categories of affiliate plugins to consider based on different businesses. 

1. Affiliate Link Management Plugins

If you are running a website where your site earns money by promoting third-party products and services, this tool is for you. This type of affiliate plugin helps you organize and optimize your outbound affiliate links. These tools support techniques like link cloaking, tracking links, improving SEO, and categorizing them efficiently. It is perfect for bloggers, niche review sites, content creators, etc. 

2. Affiliate Program Management Plugins

If you want to create an affiliate network of your own, these tools are for you. They let you create your own affiliate marketing program. Using this, you can turn your customers, influencers, and partners into your brand ambassadors. With the same tool, you can manage all your affiliates, provide them unique referral links, codes, track referrals, and handle payouts. Such tools are perfect for WooCommerce, SaaS products, online courses, membership sites, etc. 

How We Review the Best WordPress Affiliate Plugins 

There are multiple affiliate plugins in the market, and we at BookingPress are here to save your time. Thus, our evaluation process includes the review of top features that make an affiliate plugin actually usable. 

Business-Centric Features: Better tracking, smooth affiliate onboarding, and robust integration with third-party tools are our top priority. 

Ease of Use: Our top picks always include tools that are easy to use with the cleanest interface. Easy setup process with a support of strong documentation is always a perfect choice.

Flexibility & Scalability: Our shortlisted plugins offer high flexibility and scalability for your business. We have ensured lightweight and beginner-friendly solutions here for your ease. 

Value for Money: We have considered free as well as budget-friendly options that offer serious ROI to your business with their features, automation, and management. 

Compatibility: We have checked the plugins for their compatibility with tools and integrations. This supports your other business functions as well. 

Thus, you don’t have to worry a bit. We have been very thorough with our selection process and have come up with the best tools in the following guide. Want a quick comparison table? Here it is. 

Comparative Analysis of WordPress Plugins for Affiliate Marketing

Plugin	Best For	Pricing (Start)	WC  Support	Active Installs	Rating
ThirstyAffiliates	Bloggers, content marketers	$99.60/year	❌	30,000+	⭐ 4.6
Pretty Links	Branded link management, email & social campaigns	$99.60/year	❌	300,000+	⭐ 4.8
AffiliateWP	eCommerce, membership sites	$149.60/year	✅	30,000+	⭐ 3.9
SliceWP	Digital products, memberships	$169/year	✅	10,000+	⭐ 4.9
WP Affiliate Manager	Startups & budget-conscious businesses	Free	✅	10,000+	⭐ 4.1
Ultimate Affiliate Pro	Multi-tier, gamified affiliate campaigns	$69 (one-time)	✅	17,000+ (sales)	⭐ 4.6
YITH WooCommerce Affiliates	Small WooCommerce stores	Free / $179.99/year	✅	8,000+	⭐ 4.2
Affiliates Pro (itthinx)	Custom setups & developers	$69 (1 site)	✅	3,000+	⭐ 4.5
Solid Affiliate	WooCommerce-focused stores with a need for ownership	$149.60/year	✅	10,000+	⭐ 3.5

*WC = WooCommerce

Top WordPress Affiliate Link Management Plugins

1. ThirstyAffiliates

Best for: Businesses with a solid focus on content and bloggers involved with affiliate marketing on a regular basis. 

ThirstyAffiliates is a lightweight and popular affiliate software for WordPress. It provides special tools for bloggers, like an automated broken link checker, a link fixer, smart uncloaking, 3rd party link import, and more.

It is a perfect tool to manage your affiliate links from one place. Be it tracking, cloaking, or autokeyword linking. 

Key Business Benefits:

• Boosts affiliate revenue by making links more clickable and trustworthy
• Saves time with automatic keyword-to-link conversion
• Provides performance insights to refine your strategy
• Easily add images to affiliate links. 
• Use geolocation to target users and direct them to a geo-specific link. 

Pricing: Its basic plan starts at $99.60/year, while the Plus and Advanced plans are available for $149.60/year and $199.60/year, respectively. To experiment with the tool, you can use its free version as well. 

Active Installations: 30,000+

Ratings: 4.6/5 stars based on 240+ reviews (Source: wordpress.org)

2. Pretty Links

Best for: Dedicated plugin for businesses who want fully branded as well as clean, trackable, and professional-looking links. 

This is a famous affiliate link management tool for WordPress users. Herein, you can easily create short, branded links with your domain name. Thus, your affiliate links are trustworthy and can be easily embedded on various platforms like blogs, emails, social media, etc.

Furthermore, it also supports categorizing links, various redirection types, auto-linking of keywords, link tracking, and more. 

Key Business Benefits:

• Boosts user trust and click-throughs with branded, clean URLs
• Tracks link performance with detailed reports and UTM integration
• Automatically replaces keywords with affiliate links across your site
• Group and tag links to streamline affiliate campaigns
• Ideal for content creators who value brand consistency and simplicity

Pricing: Beyond the free version, the Beginner plan starts at $99.60/year. To get more advanced features, you can opt for the Marketer or the Super Affiliate Plan at $149.60/year and $199.60/year, respectively.

Active Installations: 300,000+

Ratings: 4.8/5 stars based on 1,200+ reviews (Source: wordpress.org)

Best WordPress Affiliate Program Plugins

3. AffiliateWP

Best for: For businesses that want to cut out middlemen and want a full-featured affiliate program management feature. Perfect for ecommerce sites and membership businesses. 

AffiliateWP is a trusted name when it comes to affiliate management on WordPress. It provides features like advanced fraud detection, real-time reports, robust affiliate management, along with their links, referrals, and commissions. 

This plugin provides integrations with the most famous tools like WooCommerce, MemberPress, Restrict Content Pro, and more.

Key Business Benefits:

• Launch a fully self-hosted affiliate program within minutes
• Automate affiliate tracking, reporting, and payouts
• Integrates with WooCommerce, MemberPress, Easy Digital Downloads, and more
• Supports recurring commissions and advanced rules with Pro add-ons
• Gives affiliates branded dashboards to track their performance

Pricing: You can start with the personal plan priced at $149.60/year. To go higher, you will have to pay $199.60/year for a Plus Plan and $299.60/year for a Pro plan of AffiliateWP. 

Active Installations: 30,000+

Ratings: 3.9/5 stars based on 40+ reviews (Source: trustpilot.com)

4. SliceWP

Best For: If you want a modern affiliate program with a pretty intuitive and simple setup, SliceWP is your WordPress affiliate plugin.

SliceWP is a super-optimized and popular plugin wherein you can onboard unlimited affiliates with a powerful affiliate manager dashboard. You can deeply integrate this affiliate marketing tool with an ecommerce plugin. Set affiliate email notifications on autopilot to keep all your affiliates in the loop.

With its robust integrations, this tool is perfect for physical product sellers as well as membership or digital product sellers. 

Key Business Benefits:

• Quick to set up and easy to manage, even for non-tech teams
• Offers detailed affiliate dashboards for transparency and trust
• Automatically tracks referrals, commissions, and payouts
• Affordable pricing with powerful core features included
• Clean, lightweight design won’t slow down your site

Pricing: With SliceWP, there are options to buy a yearly or a lifetime plan. The yearly Pro and Pro Plus plans are available at $169/year and $259/year, respectively. When opting for the lifetime plan, these plans are available at $429 and $649, respectively. 

Active Installations: 10,000+

Ratings: 4.9/5 stars based on 100+ reviews (Source: wordpress.org)

5. WP Affiliate Manager

Best For: Businesses that desire to drive more traffic and sales using a free WordPress affiliate plugin. 

If you are looking for a free yet powerful WP affiliate plugin, Affiliate Manager is your knight in shining armor. Using this tool, you can recruit affiliates with the registration process and further provide them with a login. It integrates with major popular ecommerce stores like WooCommerce, WooCommerce subscriptions, Easy Digital Downloads, MemberMouse, LifterLMS, etc.

This tool is a perfect beginning point for those who want to learn and understand about affiliate marketing before making major investments. 

Key Business Benefits:

• Zero-cost entry for launching your own affiliate program.
• Tracks affiliate referrals and commissions in real-time.
• Integrates with WooCommerce, PayPal, Stripe, and more.
• Allows you to set flat-rate or percentage-based commissions.
• Ideal for experimenting with affiliate sales without financial risk.

Pricing: Free (with optional paid add-ons for advanced features)

Active Installations: 10,000+

Ratings: 4.1/5 stars based on 60+ reviews (Source: wordpress.org)

6. Ultimate Affiliate Pro

Best For: Use this tool for a highly customizable and multi-tier affiliate program management. For additional features like gamification and bonuses, this WordPress affiliate plugin is perfect. 

This premium WordPress affiliate marketing plugin comes with advanced features. It is perfect if you want to run a gamification-based affiliate program. Its other features include exclusive multi-level commissions, performance-based bonuses, custom affiliate landing pages, coupon-based tracking, etc.

It also integrates with tools like WooCommerce, Easy Digital Downloads, PayPal, Stripe, etc. 

Key Business Benefits:

• Offers multi-tier and rank-based commission structures
• Built-in affiliate wallets, bonuses, and referral contests
• Fully customizable affiliate dashboards and landing pages
• Integrates with Mailchimp, BuddyPress, and more
• Excellent for digital businesses looking to scale fast with affiliate teams

Pricing: Available on CodeCanyon at $79 with 6-month support. Additional $27.75 if you want a 12-month support. You can also buy the extended license at $149 with an additional $46.50 for 12-month support. 

Active Installations: 17000+ CodeCanyon sales

Ratings: 4.6/5 stars based on 350+ reviews (Source: codecanyon.net)

Best WooCommerce Affiliate Plugins

7. YITH WooCommerce Affiliates

Best For: A dedicated solution for WooCommerce store owners, which is lightweight, affordable, and simple. 

If you’ve built a shop on WordPress via WooCommerce, the YITH WordPress affiliate plugin is for you. This tool makes it easy to track referrals and reward affiliates based on that.

You can assign coupons to affiliates, set default commission, or even product-wise commission rates. It also provides you with advanced reports to keep track of everything happening on the affiliates’ side of your business. 

Key Business Benefits:

• Native WooCommerce integration with minimal setup.
• Automatically assigns commissions after confirmed orders.
• Let affiliates track their earnings from their dedicated account area.
• Offers coupon-based affiliate linking.

Pricing: Beyond the free version, the Pro plan starts at $179.99/year. 

Active Installations: 8000+

Ratings: 4.2/5 stars based on 16+ reviews (Source: wordpress.org)

8. Affiliates Pro by itthinx

Best For: If you want a flexible and fully customizable solution for your affiliate marketing efforts, you would love this WordPress affiliate plugin. 

Affiliates Pro by itthinx is an affiliate program management tool with a fresh, new approach. It helps in marketing your products by sharing links to any of the web pages. All this with the simple inbuilt tools right on the dashboard.

Allow affiliates to review their performance by tracking links, visits, referrals, and earnings. 

Key Business Benefits:

• Detailed control over referral logic and commission structures
• Full integration with WooCommerce and other WordPress plugins
• Supports multi-tier affiliate tracking and roles
• Advanced shortcodes and APIs for custom setups

Pricing: The single-site license is available at $69. While a license for 5 sites is available at $119, and for 25 sites is available at $229.

Active Installations: 3,000+

Ratings: 4.5/5 stars based on 130+ reviews (Source: wordpress.org)

9. Solid Affiliate (formerly SolidWP Affiliate)

Best For: A dedicated affiliate marketing plugin for business people operating on WooCommerce.

Solid Affiliate, formerly known as SolidWP, is a fully tailored affiliate tool for WooCommerce. You get a complete set of features using this tool, starting from registration forms to automatic payouts.

You can use this tool for smart affiliate tracking, coupon referrals, and real-time reports. You get full ownership of your affiliate program using this tool. 

Key Business Benefits:

• Runs a full-featured affiliate program without needing extra add-ons
• Deep WooCommerce integration with support for subscription products
• Offers PayPal Payouts and automatic commission approvals
• Helps you reduce CAC (Customer Acquisition Cost) by converting customers into affiliates

Pricing: Its starter plan is available at $149.60/year. 

Active Installations: 10,000+ (based on solidaffiliate.com details)

Ratings: 3.5/5 stars based on 30+ reviews (Source: trustpilot.com)

Conclusion: How to Choose the Best WordPress Affiliate Plugin? 

Affiliate Marketing can support your business to grow exponentially, but with the right tools. So here is the perfect plugin for all, such as Bloggers, WooCommerce shops, membership websites, Amazon affiliates, digital creators, sales teams, and so many more. But, how to choose the best one for you?

For Clean Links: ThirstyAffiliates and Pretty Links are the way to go.

Want a full-fledged Affiliate Program: Extensive affiliate program management plugins like AffiliateWP, SliceWP, and Solid Affiliate will help you.

WooCommerce Buddies: For using an affiliate plugin on your ecommerce store, you can choose YITH and WP Affiliate Manager.

For Gamification: Ultimate Affiliates Pro is perfect for adding a gamification element to your affiliate program.

The best way to pick the right tool is by knowing your business goals, audience, and growth strategy. Based on that, you can choose your WordPress affiliate plugin. So first, know your target audience and their requirements before concluding.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

1. What are the benefits of affiliate marketing?

Affiliate Marketing is one of the most budget-friendly ways to increase your sales. It provides benefits like:

• Paying only for the actual results received. 
• Widen your reach by leveraging current customers, influencers, or bloggers. 
• Increase in traffic via referral clicks. 
• Strong backlink building as affiliates refer to your site in some way or the other way. 
• Limited upfront investment.

2. Do I need an affiliate plugin for WordPress?

If you want to market your products and services via affiliate marketing, it is advisable to use an affiliate plugin instead of creating an affiliate program manually. It helps automate tracking, create and manage affiliate accounts, customize affiliate links, coupons, manage payouts, etc. 

3. How does an affiliate program help increase sales?

When you create a customer referral program to sell your product or service, you leverage third-party affiliates to sell your product on a commission basis. You pay them only when they sell your product/service.

Your affiliates promote products to their audiences, get targeted traffic and trusted referrals, which improves conversions, expands reach, and increases brand exposure. It is a scalable strategy that enhances sales without increasing direct advertising costs.

4. What’s the difference between link management and affiliate program plugins?

Link management Plugins are for bloggers and creators who themselves are affiliates and promote third-party products and services via their content to earn commission. 

Whereas, Affiliate Program Plugins are for businesses that want to deploy affiliates to promote their products and services and pay them commission. 

5. Which is the best free WordPress affiliate plugin?

WP Affiliate Manager is a top-notch tool when it comes to a free WordPress affiliate plugin. It provides all the basic features for free and is perfect for getting an idea about how affiliate marketing works. Thereafter, you can upgrade to its premium as per your requirements. 

6. Can I use affiliate plugins with WooCommerce?

Many WordPress affiliate plugins come with a built-in integration to WooCommerce. Tools like AffiliateWP, Solid Affiliates, and YITH WooCommerce Affiliates are suitable for use to promote your WooCommerce store products. 

7. How can affiliate links be tracked on social media or offline?

You can use coupon codes or QRs that are tied to each affiliate to track affiliate links offline or via social media.