Affonso alternatives by the limit you are hitting

The best Affonso alternative depends on which of its limits you have hit. Affonso charges $15, $29 or $79 monthly when billed yearly, sized by the revenue your partners bring in each month ($1,000, $10,000 or $30,000).

It pays the last affiliate to touch a customer with no way to change that, and it connects natively to five billing systems, from Stripe to Dodo Payments.

Tolt, Rewardful and FirstPromoter change the meter, the billing list or the attribution rule.

TrackRev is affordable affiliate software for indie hackers and small SaaS teams with link tracking and revenue attribution built in, so partner revenue sits next to every other channel and no plan meters it.

What Affonso costs and how its meter works

Affonso's pricing page lists four plans and a 14-day free trial.

Sources: affonso.io/pricing

The limit counts affiliate-attributed revenue, which is what referred customers pay you. Launch's $1,000 is $1,000 of customer payments, and the commission paid out is a fraction of that. Going over does not stop checkout.

Affonso offers an upgrade or an overage of $19 for each additional $1,000, billed at the end of the cycle, and warns that new signups, commissions and tracking can pause if you do neither.

At $12,000 of referred revenue, Growth bought yearly plus overage costs $29 + 2 × $19 = $67. At $13,000 it costs $86, so Elite at $79 is cheaper.

Paying by hand costs nothing extra on any plan: Affonso exports payouts for PayPal mass payments, Wise bulk payments or bank wires, and you mark them paid. Managed payouts, where Affonso sends the money, start on Growth.

They add a flat $25 service fee per invoice, a 3.25% surcharge if you pay the invoice through Stripe (2.8% through Revolut), and $0.50 for each affiliate payout after the first 25 in a cycle.

Paying 40 partners in a month adds $25 plus 15 × $0.50, or $32.50, before any surcharge. Partners receive the money within 15 business days of Affonso getting your payment.

Early-stage startups can apply to Affonso's startup program, which takes 50% off the first year, 25% off the second and 10% off the third.

Sources: affonso.io/help · affonso.io/help

What Affonso does well

Recruiting is Affonso's strongest pitch. All plans include a discovery agent, a marketplace listing and a search for affiliates already promoting your competitors, with the credit allowances in the table above.

Recurring and one-time commissions, partner-specific rates, currency conversion and non-monetary rewards come on every tier. Growth adds pay-per-lead, double-sided coupon incentives, a custom portal domain and multi-level commissions up to 3 levels deep, and Elite adds W-8 and W-9 collection.

Hold periods are set per incentive in days, and a refund during the hold voids or reduces the commission before payout.

Affonso also documents an embedded referral dashboard for your own app and recommends proxying the pixel through your own domain so blockers are less likely to catch it. Its API allows 300, 600 and 1,200 requests a minute by plan.

Sources: affonso.io/help

Why teams look for an Affonso alternative

Last touch is the only attribution rule

When a customer clicks two affiliate links, Affonso pays the most recent one, and its help center says attribution logic is not customizable today.

On a $49 plan at 20%, the $9.80 goes to the coupon site that appeared the day before checkout, and the creator whose link started the sale gets $0.

Rewardful's pricing page lists first- or last-touch attribution on every plan, and FirstPromoter offers first-click or last-click with a cookie life up to 9,999 days.

TrackRev has last-touch, first-touch and linear credit as a workspace setting, and the attribution model comparison covers when each one fits.

Sources: affonso.io/help · rewardful.com/pricing · firstpromoter.com/pricing

Billing systems outside the native list

Affonso's integrations page sends every other provider through its API, where your backend posts each sale and refund. Lemon Squeezy and Chargebee fall into that group. Rewardful's Paddle page says it integrates with Paddle Classic and not Paddle Billing.

TrackRev reads Paddle Billing and Lemon Squeezy, and this walkthrough shows the Lemon Squeezy side.

Sources: affonso.io/integrations · rewardful.com/paddle

Reporting that stops at the partner program

Affonso's analytics page describes revenue by affiliate, campaign, country, device and browser, plus new versus recurring revenue.

I found nothing on attributing newsletter, YouTube, SEO or paid-ad revenue that never touched a partner link, which costs nothing when partners are your only channel.

Alongside ad spend or a newsletter, affiliate revenue sits in one tool and everything else in Google Analytics 4 or a spreadsheet, and the totals disagree.

Sources: affonso.io/analytics-tracking

Affonso alternatives compared on price, billing systems and meter

Entry prices hide the meter, so take one program at two sizes. Partners refer $8,000 a month in the first column and $25,000 in the second, a month.

At $8,000 of referred revenue, TrackRev Indie at $29 a month is $10 below Affonso Growth's $39 monthly rate and level with its yearly rate, which works out to $348 a year on both (Affonso Growth billed monthly is $468).

TrackRev Growth at $299 a year, about $25 a month, is $49 below that $348. Affonso is clearly cheaper only under $1,000 of partner revenue, where Launch costs $15 to $19 a month, or $180 to $228 a year.

Past $10,000 the meters diverge: Affonso Elite meters $30,000 and bills $19 for each extra $1,000, while TrackRev puts no cap on referred revenue or commission at any price.

TrackRev, the Affonso alternative built for SaaS teams

I built TrackRev for teams whose partners are one channel of several: a partner's link is a tracked link like any other, so one channel report ranks affiliates against a newsletter, a YouTube channel and paid ads by the MRR each pays.

Every TrackRev paid plan includes the affiliate program, link tracking and revenue attribution, and the plans differ only in how many workspaces, tracked domains and team members they cover. No plan caps the revenue or commission tracked.

The free plan covers 50 links and 1,000 tracked events a month for link tracking only, so the affiliate program starts on Indie. Pricing lists every plan.

Commissions can be recurring, one-time or multi-tier through Partner Accelerator, paid as cash or credit, held for 0 to 180 days per program (the default is 0) and reversed on refunds and disputes.

Partners upload W-9 and W-8 forms during onboarding.

TrackRev's Stripe page says no SDK goes in your checkout, since a charge is joined to its click through the customer's email, which TrackRev's pixel binds to the visitor at signup or checkout.

The revenue attribution page shows the channel report. Switch when partners are one channel of several and two tools' totals no longer reconcile.

Payouts are a PayPal or Wise CSV that you pay and mark paid, the same routine Affonso uses on every plan.

Under $1,000 of partner revenue, Affonso Launch ($15 on yearly billing or $19 monthly) costs less than Indie's $29, and Affonso can pay partners for you from Growth.

How each alternative differs from Affonso

Tolt, for Chargebee or 1099 filing

Tolt starts at $69 for $10,000 and pays affiliates by hand on that plan.

Growth, at $99 for $20,000, adds automatic payouts with a 2% processing fee, W-9 and W-8 collection and 1099 filing, where Affonso lists tax-form collection only on Elite and no filing. Tolt also reads Chargebee.

It wins over Affonso for a Chargebee billing system or a team that wants the 1099s handled.

Sources: tolt.com/pricing

Rewardful, for a choice of attribution rule on Stripe

Rewardful's Starter plan costs $49 for $7,500 with 1 campaign and 2 team members.

The branded affiliate portal and custom domain wait until Growth at $99 for $15,000, while Affonso includes dashboard branding on Launch and a custom domain on Growth. Every Rewardful plan has first- or last-touch credit and a 0% transaction fee.

It suits a Stripe or Paddle Classic stack that wants first-touch credit. Rewardful vs TrackRev sets those two side by side.

FirstPromoter, for Recurly, Braintree or long cookie windows

FirstPromoter's Starter plan is $49 for $5,000 and 1,000 affiliates, Business is $99 for $15,000 with no caps on affiliates, and Enterprise is $149 above that.

It adds Recurly and Braintree to the billing list and allows cookie life up to 9,999 days with first-click or last-click credit.

That makes it the pick when billing runs through one of those two or the attribution window needs to run long. The FirstPromoter alternatives guide covers the rest of its field.

Moving a program off Affonso

Affonso's help center says to email its team for an export covering affiliates, referral records, payment history and commission structures. TrackRev imports an affiliate CSV through its option for any other platform.

• Ask Affonso for the export and keep each partner's referral code and any coupon codes.
• Upload the file to TrackRev on a paid plan and map the columns. Only an email is required per row. Referral codes can become link slugs, coupon codes and status come across, and each unpaid balance is written as one carried-over commission. Past clicks, leads, sales and revenue arrive as opening balances.
• Connect billing and install TrackRev's pixel beside Affonso's. Keep both running through your cookie window, which is 30 days by default in Affonso unless you set data-cookie_duration, and pay commissions from one system only so no sale is paid twice.
• Ask partners to swap in their new links. Then remove Affonso's script and the affonso_referral value your server code passes into Stripe Checkout metadata, and pay out what Affonso tracked before you cancel.

Sources: affonso.io/help · affonso.io/help

Checks to run before you cancel

Run one real purchase through your checkout with a partner link, refund it, and confirm the commission reverses.

Affonso's Stripe Checkout guide says Stripe test mode purchases do not appear in Affonso and suggests a 100% discount code for live testing.

Then check Safari. WebKit's tracking prevention page says Intelligent Tracking Prevention deletes cookies created in JavaScript, and other script-writeable storage, after 7 days without user interaction with the site.

Affonso's pixel is a script, and the help pages I read do not say whether its cookie is written by script or by a server response.

Click a partner link in Safari on day 1, buy on day 9, and see whether the sale is credited.

TrackRev logs the click server-side at the tracked redirect (the Safari ITP post covers it), and the affiliate program page lists what a paid plan adds.

Sources: affonso.io/help