If you're a B2B SaaS company and are curious as to which of the above you should choose and are looking to actually invest in your partnership strategy (actually working on increasing your referral MRR), look no further than PartnerStack. If you've taken a look at our Top Picks section, I'm here to tell you that the far majority of them (that have a affiliate/referral channel) are using PartnerStack—It's no coincidence. They will seamlessly integrate into your Stripe, making the whole payout and reconciling process a breeze.
If you're simply looking for a barebones affiliate tracking tool, think "link clicks, nothing more", then one of the affiliate tracking tools FirstPromoter will do the job. Just keep in mind that going this path, you're going to have a less automated reconciling process when it comes to payouts/refunds and the likes. We genuinely only recommend going this path if you aren't yet trying to roll out a proper partnership strategy.
There is only one thing for certain, and that's to stay away from Impact if you are a B2B SaaS company. I don't know how else to put it... They were built for large B2C eCommerce brands like GAP and coupon sites like Honey. They've somehow managed to change their branding around the SaaS space (largely due to getting a few big-name SaaS companies like HubSpot and ClickUp but don't let that fool you).
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The referral category deserves a bit of an explanation because we continually see confusion arise when it comes to the competitors in this space. You'll often hear terms like "affiliate", "referral", "link tracking", and "partner portals" all used interchangeably.
And with that, not all referral tracking tools are created equal, nor are they focused on the same needs. They can actually be broken up more into 5 main sub-categories:
Affiliate tracking tools are focused primarily on one-way link tracking (think Amazon Affiliate links), by which the end-user usually has no idea money is being made off of their purchase. This is also because the end user rarely gets an incentive for using the link, maybe an extended free trial, or it can even be just a way for them to support their favorite creator.
More of a 2-way relationship—the purchaser usually knows that a transaction is taking place, might even be a benefit to the end-user (e.g. get $50 credit for signing up).
This is where things get a bit more difficult, as you're not really going to get referral functionality out of the cheaper affiliate software options mentioned above.
So if you're planning on having a more serious partnership strategy around referral tracking (especially important if you're a higher ticket SaaS product or focused on larger seat counts like mid-market/enterprise).
3rd party license management. This is more common in the IT space where an IT services company may purchase software licenses in bulk, and then resell them to customers of theirs, billing them directly, and making margin. Think for example a Google Workspace reseller.
It's more uncommon, convolutes things quite a bit (for both the partner and software company), as it introduces difficulties such as sales tax onto the reseller partner.
We've seen this work well mainly for companies that solely sell their software as a white-labeled solution, and their sole software sales motion is to their resellers. This takes a lot to get right.
Strategic partner initiatives & distribution. If you're just starting out your partnership, affiliate, or referral strategy, this is where this category comes into place. The reason being is that they can actually help you build out your partnership ecosystem.
So yes, you should definitely work to build out your affiliate and referral partners, but a partner ecosystem platform software will actually make it their mission to find great partners that'll promote your software for you. Some of the best companies already have deep relationships with some of the top affiliate sites out there (e.g. Forbes Advisor). The leader in this category is PartnerStack. There's a reason why about 50–60% of the apps listed on this site that have partner programs use them. More on this below.
Displaying lists of partners & discovery for customers. The main company that we see leading this category is PartnerPage. They also have a deep relationship and integration with PartnerStack.
Example customers include: Zapier, Airtable, Notion, FullStory
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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 is one of the main leaders in this space. They try to be more than just an affiliate tracking (think link click and attribution tracking).
We've used just about every modern solution in the market, from First Promoter to Rewardful to Referral Rock to Impact, and more. The first few are just basic affiliate link tracking solutions, which often also have a higher churn, because just setting up affiliate link tracking is not the same as building out your partnership go-to-market (GTM) initiative (which PartnerStack is aiming to help with).
They are essentially the gold standard when it comes to a SaaS focused partnership platform (they also have the best UI/UX).
As mentioned, you need to be aware of what companies are just affiliate (link tracking), and which ones are that and more. PartnerStack will also track submitted referrals (via form), which is heavier weight than just an affiliate program, and also manage all of the payouts on-top of that.
Let's take Impact for example, an affiliate tracking tool that was created to manage B2C promotions, like that of GAP and Levi's (don't use them if you're a SaaS company, please... their UX is also atrocious—even just signing up to them as an affiliate is the most confusing thing ever).
There's a reason that about 50–60% of our Top Picks use PartnerStack (birds of a feather flock together).
Not only does PartnerStack have a robust API for vendors (you), conveniently enough via Zapier, but they also have an API for the partners/affiliates side (us). This is fantastic because talk about gamifying the process and encouraging the team.
For example, you want your partners to create content and posts around promoting your product, right? Well it's also exciting for us when we see a new referral goes though (e.g. we're seeing the impact that's coming from the work we put in). So being able to say set up a Slack alert for when we get a new referral is motivating. We can do that with PartnerStack. No other affiliate tracking tool seems to care about making some part of the API available to the partner/affiliate though, which is just again where PartnerStack actually cares about the partner experience, not just the vendor experience.
Because they are trying to be more than just affiliate tracking, the price-tag is quite a bit higher than most of the competitors (that are anywhere from $50–500/mo for just affiliate link tracking). PartnerStack starts at 5-figures per year, although, if you're a sizable SaaS though doing at-least $1m/ARR, it's definitely a company you should be seriously considering.
They did just recently launch a startup program though which brings it down to a 4-figure investment for the first year, but this is restricted based on company size and funding.
An affiliate tracking tool for large B2C eCommerce businesses like GAP and Honey (not for B2B SaaS companies)
If you are a B2B SaaS company, stay away from Impact. Let me explain: Impact was initially built specifically for large B2C eCommerce brands like GAP and coupon sites like Honey (does that sound like you?).
That said, they've saturated that market and saw the B2B SaaS space as another market to go after. Because of that, they updated their branding to include the SaaS space (largely due to getting a few big-name SaaS companies like HubSpot and ClickUp but don't let that fool you).
There's a reason why the leading B2B SaaS affiliate & referral tracking companies only work with B2B SaaS. Managing affiliates for physical product purchases from an eCommerce store and managing store coupons is a completely different beast than the recurring revenue model of SaaS.
An analogy would be someone that wants to build a web app using a tool like Shopify, all with absolutely no use for an eCommerce store. Shopify has mastered eCommerce. The software that even integrates with Shopify is eCommerce solution-focused. Using Impact for your B2B SaaS affiliate program is using the wrong tool for the wrong job.
The part that is most baffling to me is that on one hand, B2B SaaS companies care an extreme amount about their own UI/UX and customer experience, yet all of that goes out the window when it comes to the UI/UX that the referral/partner will be experiencing on their end.
What do I mean? Well from an actual affiliate perspective, Impact is the single-most platform that we hate working with most. It's so incredibly confusing to just get a straight answer on "how many people clicked links, how many are in trial, and how many subscribed? There's so many filters and toggles and junk that was obviously added for the crazy complex campaigns required for gigantic eCommerce sites:
We've also seen countless SaaS companies go through the grueling process of integrating with them (like into their payment/accounting software for payouts and everything), only to migrate off them and onto something like PartnerStack as soon as their contract is up, after realizing that this tool wasn't built for the SaaS market, but rather retrofitted to "make it work".
Link clicking and cookie tracking is good at best—it just wasn't built to understand the complexity of SaaS which includes free trials and extended trials. Something totally foreign to the eCommerce world.
This is also the crazy thing... Impact is one of the most expensive solutions on the market! Again, it's priced for the enterprise B2C eCommerce world. If your a small SaaS company, you're still going to pay somewhere around $10–30k/yr for Impact.
The baffling part here is that you can pay less on average and get a fully equipped Partner ecosystem platform like PartnerStack (they even offer discounts if you're early on and haven't raised much yet). Or a simple affiliate tracking solution like FirstPromoter for mid–high 4-figures per year. It just makes no sense on any front to go with Impact.
My guess as to why B2B SaaS companies are even considering Impact is because most partner managers (or operations/growth people that are thrown into and affiliate/referral marketing strategy) are just so overwhelmed by all the solutions out there, and don't quite know the distinction between each solution (P.S. we explained the differences in more detail here because it is super confusing until you understand all the terminology).
At the end of the day, if I love your software enough to want to promote it and you send me over to your affiliate program and it happens to be Impact, I'm sorry but you're just not going to get much from us or other larger affiliates/partners. It's just a pain in the ass to deal with, and we just don't trust the affiliate tracking capabilities of it at the end of they day. That's what happens when your foundation wasn't built for SaaS companies.
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