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PartnerStack is a partner ecosystem management platform that helps companies build an manage their partnership programs (along with affiliate/referral tracking).
PartnerStack has long been considered one of the leaders in the partnership platform space, offering more than just basic affiliate link tracking and payouts. While they aim to aid with the full partnership go-to-market (GTM) strategies, the competition has caught up fast. And not by who you might think. When compared to newer players like Dub Partners who has building in stealth with some of the most impressive SaaS companies by their side, like Framer, Superhuman, and Granola (as design partners), PartnerStack gets harder and harder to justify.
Dub Partners offers more competitive pricing, a much more modern user-experience, and incredibly deep link-tracking capabilities (because Dub is a link tracking software at the core). And this ultimately leads to much better analytics for you, and your affiliate partners (e.g. what content is leading to the most revenue? Easily answered with Dub Partners, not PartnerStack).
We've tested nearly every major platform out there, from Rewardful, to FirstPromoter, to Impact, and more, and many of these are solid for simple affiliate link tracking, but don't actually give the best experience for the affiliate partner (us), which is also important. PartnerStack has set the gold standard for SaaS-focused partnership platforms (and still has one of the better UI/UX experiences), but Dub Partners has raised the standard when it comes to analytics, usability, and just overall value.
Manage your affiliate and customer referral programs seamlessly — and get started with the affiliate marketing software built for SaaS professionals, digital creators and marketers.
Modern affiliate platforms like Dub Partners and PartnerStack take the opposite approach of Rewardful: they centralize logins, automate payouts, provide deep analytics (well, Dub Partners more than PartnerStack), and treat affiliates as vital partners rather than an afterthought.
This not only makes your program easier to manage, it makes affiliates more motivated to actually promote your product because they know what is working, and don't get held up on all the admin complexities.
The truth of the matter is that Rewardful's flaws aren’t just "nice-to-have" fixes, they are the difference between what will make you feel that your affiliate program is a growth channel vs it being a headache (for you and your affiliate partners).
Basic affiliate and referral tracking for SaaS.
FirstPromoter suffers from the same exact core flaws we called out in the Rewardful review. Affiliates, especially your most impactful ones, will literally avoid logging into your program because they are juggling 20 separate FirstPromoter logins (one for each program they join).
Because of that, you will be stuck in a mess of admin work, from chasing invoices, manually sending payments out one by one, collecting W-9s, issuing 1099s (or W-8BENs), for every partner. And after all that, you still won't even have the tracking needed to understand what content is actually converting for your content partners. Thus, everyone is creating totally blind, not learning from prior content, and all it'll lead to is your affiliates not creating content for your software.
That mess, compared to modern affiliate platforms like Dub Partners, who are disrupting the space with unified logins (seriously, this should be table-stakes now-a-days), automated global payouts, and deep tracking. When looking at Dub Partners vs FirstPromoter, FirstPromoter feels incredibly dated and just inconvenient for both sides. When we see a company using FirstPromoter, it just tells us that they aren't actually taking their affiliate program seriously.
An affiliate tracking tool for large B2C eCommerce businesses like GAP and Honey (not for B2B SaaS companies)
If you're a B2B SaaS company, you shouldn't even be considering Impact, but let me guess? You just brought on a new head of partnerships who has experience with Impact, so you're seriously considering it, right?
Just don't. As a content creator, publisher, and influencer who has worked with over 200 software companies via their affiliate programs, Impact has continually been the single worst platform (not even considering its outrageous price), for software companies.
Impact was built as an eCommerce tool helping brands like GAP deal with their 200,000 SKU's, and then they saw the opportunity in the SaaS world. No, your platform was not built for that, just stop.
If you're a software company, you should use one of the best affiliate platforms that was built for B2B SaaS on day one. In-fact, they actively avoid working with eCommerce companies, because it makes sense, right?
Our recommendation? Dub Partners (it's our top pick), as it was built for recurring revenue models (you know, 3–4 "SKU's"), so they actually understand the concept of free trials, extended onboarding, and subscription tracking, with deep analytics, all without trying to retrofit an archaic platform (Impact).
An affiliate tracking tool for large B2C eCommerce businesses like GAP and Honey (not for B2B SaaS companies)
An affiliate tracking tool for large B2C eCommerce businesses like GAP and Honey (not for B2B SaaS companies)
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