While we're fans of both Dub Partners and PartnerStack (we genuinely believe they're the 2 leading affiliate tracking platforms), Dub Partners is a newer product that understands links and attribution at the core, so it gives us far more data than PartnerStack on what content is actually leading to the largest accounts. It's also priced better as well, and if you were to pick only 1, we'd recommend Dub Partners.
We believe there are better options available in this category, read below to learn what this software does well, and what they could do better. ⤵
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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:
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Dub is the modern link attribution platform for you to create short links, track conversions, and run affiliate programs.
Whether you're looking for a full-fledged affiliate/partnership tracking platform (Dub Partners), or you're just looking for the most modern link shortener on the market, Dub is the answer for both.
Read this post around starting an affiliate program to see exactly where Dub Partners fits into the affiliate tracking space when compared to the best affiliate & referral platforms out there. I think you'll be quite surprised.
Let us save you the time and research: whether you're a creator, marketer, or a company looking for a link infrastructure there is no better solution than Dub—trust us, we've tried them all.
Dub is the most modern link shortening/analytics platform. If you've tried to use Bitly's analytic dashboards (or Short's), but they are horrendously kludgy 🙈 So much so, that they cause dread to even go into the back-end.
Dub on the other hand, provides a minimal UI, providing you with the analytics in crystal clear dashboard. With Dub you can easily spin up short links, QR codes, add tags for organization, and even enable things like password protection, expiring links, or geo-targeting.
All of this, AND they have the most generous free tier of all the tools out there to try it out. If you're looking for a new link shortener, Dub is hands down the best on the market.
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.
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