The 21 Best (Free & Paid) Affiliate Marketing Tools of 2023

Today we’ll look at 21 of the best affiliate marketing tools available in 2023.

Whether you’re an affiliate marketing newbie or a seasoned pro, each of these tools can help optimize your workflow, drive more leads, fatten-up your sales, and ultimately make running your business easier.

And the best part?

Some of them won’t cost you a dime.

So, if you’re ready to take your affiliate marketing efforts to the next level, let’s dive into our list of must-have tools.

Ready?

The 21 Best Affiliate Marketing Tools Today

1. Thirsty Affiliates

Thirsty Affiliates is a fantastic affiliate link management plugin for WordPress. Its features help most affiliate marketers be more compliant with Google’s policies. It also cloaks your affiliate links, allowing you to turn long links into shorter links that are easier to remember and look less spammy.

Key Features

• Link sorting, categorizing, favorites, and geolocation link redirects
• Auto-insert affiliate links and monitoring
• 14-day refund policy
• Automatic keyword linking
• Relevant statistics reports

Pricing Plans

• Basic: $49/month
• Plus: $99/per month
• Advanced: $149/per month

2. Semrush

Proper keyword research is essential for creating an effective affiliate marketing campaign. And to help you out with that, there’s Semrush, a fan-favorite keyword research tool. Semrush not only aids in keyword research, but the tool also helps you identify competitors so you can craft better-converting content. Try it for yourself with the free 7-day trial period. Some of its notable features include:

Key Features

• Press-mention monitoring
• Potential competitor and customer tracking
• SEO audits to look out for website issues that affect the ranking
• Keyword rank monitoring
• Link building tools
• Competitor PR monitoring

Pricing Plans

• Pro: $119.95/month
• Guru: $229.95/month
• Business: $449.95/month

3. Ahrefs

Ahrefs is another world-class keyword research and SEO tool. It’s also super-handy when it comes to link-building. With Ahrefs, it is easy to analyze backlinks and explore new link-building opportunities. You can also use the Content Explorer feature to discover other niche companies for future partnerships.

Key Features

• Comprehensive into backlink profiles
• Backlink growth analysis
• Site SEO optimization
• Keyword research
• Improve marketing insights

Pricing Plans

• Lite: $99 per month
• Standard: $179 per month
• Advanced: $399 per month
• Agency: $999 per month

4. Flippa

Flippa is like a peer-to-peer marketplace where you can buy and sell websites. And that includes revenue-generating websites. So, anyone looking to leapfrog the process of building a successful affiliate site from scratch will see the value in Flippa. After all, why take months (or even years) building a profitable affiliate marketing site when you can just buy one… If you have the money, that is!

 Key Features

• User-friendly interface
• Business evaluation tool
• Marketplace with different options
• Several advertising tools
• Optimization reports

Listing fees

• Established Websites and Online Businesses: $49
• Starter/Template Websites: $15
• Domains: $10
• IOS/Android apps: $15

5. CJ Affiliate

Formerly known as Commission Junction, CJ Affiliate is a top global affiliate network. As an affiliate, you can connect with a wide variety of companies across different niches. And as a vendor, you can connect with affiliates from around the world to help drive product sales. If you’re looking for a reliable way to build affiliate partnerships, CJ Affiliate is one of the best tools out there.

Key Features

• Transaction monitoring in real-time
• Lead generation
• Link generation
• Engagement improvement
• Placement market

Pricing Plans

• Pricing is on a quote-based basis from the vendor

6. OptinMonster

OptinMonster is a powerful lead generation and conversion optimization tool. With its robust set of opt-in options, campaign triggers, and integrations, you can create more engaging and effective marketing campaigns to help promote your affiliate products.

With OptinMonster, you can seamlessly convert visitors to subscribers and either market to them via email, or direct them toward a blog post with affiliate links. Other OptinMonster features that can help support your affiliate marketing efforts include:

Key Features

• Multiple campaign options
• Detailed analytic reports
• Personalized and precise targeting and trigger settings
• Easy-to-use campaign customization

Pricing Plans

• Basic: $14/month
• Plus: $30/month
• Prow: $47/month
• Growth: $80/month

7. Thrive Leads

Lead generation is one fundamental way to ensure that you stay in touch with your visitors after leaving your site. With Thrive Leads, you can grow your audience and create personalized opt-in forms that connect to your audience and increase your profits. It has a 30-day money-back guarantee. Some of its crucial best-selling affiliate marketing features include:

Key Features

• A/B testing tools for optimizing forms
• Wide variety of opt-in form templates
• Simple drag-and-drop form designer tool
• Advanced form trigger options

Pricing Plans

• Yearly: $19/month
• Quarterly: $30/month

8. Voluum

Voluum is a cloud-based ad tracker that makes tracking and measuring affiliate marketing campaigns super easy. It automates and optimizes your campaigns to boost your ad performance and maximize your ROI. With Voluum, you can also track the time and money you’ve allocated to each campaign – very handy metrics!

Key Features

• Ad campaign tracker
• Real-time campaign data analysis
• A/B testing for advanced targeting metrics
• Fraud detection
• Collaboration tools
• Campaign migration
• AI tools for auto distribution of high performing campaign elements

Pricing Plans

• Basic: $62/month
• Advanced: $138/month
• Premium: $417/month

9. Constant Contact

Email marketing is a fantastic strategy you should have in your affiliate marketing playbook. And with Constant Contact, you get a powerful but easy-to-use email marketing platform. Not only does Constant Contact integrate with a ton of other eCommerce tools, but it also comes loaded with ready-to-use email templates.

Key Features

• Email automation
• Contact segmentation
• Multi-format contact upload
• Performance analytics and metrics
• Various email template options

Pricing Plans

• Free trial for a month
• Email: Starting at $20 per month based on the number of contacts
• Email Plus: Starting at $45 per month based on the number of contacts.

10. SiteGround

You could have all the latest and greatest affiliate marketing tools available, but they won’t do squat until you’ve built your website. And this is where SiteGround (affiliate link) joins the chat.

SiteGround is Smart Blogger’s go-to choice for web hosting. With a variety of plans to choose from, as well as a free optimization plugin, tons of helpful resources, and a clear, uncluttered control dashboard, SiteGround is the friendliest way to launch and manage your website.

Key Features

• Automated WordPress website migration
• CMS support
• Colocation services
• Bandwidth allowance
• E-commerce integration

Pricing Plans

• Start-Up: $4.99 per month
• Grow Big: $7.99 per month
• Go Geek: $14.99 per month

11. RedTrack

RedTrack is a cookieless cloud-based ad-tracker that helps affiliates and advertisers track and optimize campaign performance.

Whether you’re a beginner, intermediate, or expert-level advertiser or affiliate marketer, RedTracker has something for everyone.

For example, advanced users will find its Drilldown Reports feature and AI-based smart links optimization helpful. And beginners will find the step-by-step guides in RedTrack’s Knowledge Base particularly useful.

Key Features

• Commission management
• Lead generation
• Campaign analytics
• Parallel Tracking
• Multi-level marketing

Pricing Plans for Individuals

• Basic: $49 per month
• Pro: $99 per month
• Advanced: $149 per month

Pricing Plans for Teams

• Team: $249 per month
• Agency: $449 per month
• Enterprise: $1, 119 per month

12. AAWP

Amazon Affiliate WordPress plugin (AAWP) is a need-to-have for Amazon Affiliates marketers. This tool helps pull all the relevant data that users need for product reviews by integrating with Amazon’s API, giving you access to accurate prices, titles, descriptions, import lists of best-selling products, etc.

Key Features

• Product boxes
• Widgets
• Automated lists
• Dynamic text links
• Pre-built template options

Pricing Plans

• Personal: €49 per year
• Plus: €129 per year
• Pro: €249 per year
• Ultimate: €399 per year

13. Google Analytics

Google Analytics is one of the most extensive analytics tools for affiliate marketers. Users can use the tool to track visitors who come to their site, collect relevant information about their target audience (e.g. geographic location), make data-driven decisions using analytics reports and countless other mega-useful features. What’s more, with Google Analytics, affiliate marketers can perform operational activities that range from split testing to monitoring conversations.

Key Features

• Track conversations
• Website optimization
• Data analysis and Insight reporting
• Referral tracking
• Audience and behavior report

Pricing Plans

• SME: A freemium service that provides enough insight for small and medium services
• Large-sized enterprises that need advanced reporting: $150,000 per year

14. Adplexity

Adplexity is an AI tool that allows affiliate marketers to spy on competitor ads. Think of it as your affiliate marketing “eye in the sky” tool. This way, you never go into affiliate marketing blindly. The platform keeps you updated on marketing trends and provides resources to monitor relevant metrics.

Key Features

• Comprehensive keyword and publisher check
• Ad spying services
• Easy and intuitive landing page
• Competitor’s ad campaign data tracking
• Fast and vast data search

Pricing Plans

• Adplexity Push: $149 per month
• Adplexity Ecommerce: $199 per month

15. ShareASale

ShareASale is all about affiliate partnerships. It connects publishers to advertisers looking to drive sales. While there may be avenues to get a higher commission, ShareASale’s publishers can get paid per call, by the number of website visitors, or even per lead.

Key Features

• Leapfrog transactions
• Payment reviews and saved reports
• Fraud Control
• 24/7 access to support
• Interactive tabbed banner

Pricing Plans

• Merchants’ setup fee: $550

16. OSI Affiliate

OSI Affiliate is affiliate marketing software that lets you create your own referral program, quickly and easily, without using a third-party affiliate network.

With a referral program, you can target influencers or loyal customers to promote your brand. They’ll earn a sweet commission, and you’ll generate leads and sales without spending a ton on an expensive ad campaign. Plus, since it’s your own referral program, you won’t pay transaction fees like you would with an affiliate network and you’ll have more control over your affiliates.

With OSI Affiliate, you can create your own custom signup forms and monitor affiliate performance and payouts from an easy-to-use dashboard. Other key features include:

Key Features

• Lead generation
• Lead tracking
• Referral marketing
• Reward distribution for affiliates
• Affiliate campaign management
• No transaction fees

Pricing Plans

• Basic: $47 per month
• Professional: $97 per month
• Premium: $247 per month

17. Post Affiliate Pro

Post Affiliate Pro is a comprehensive affiliate marketing tracking software that takes care of your end-to-end affiliate marketing processes. Its intuitive, fast, and scalable platform makes it an easy favorite for most affiliate marketers, allowing merchants and affiliates access to their panels.

Key Features

• Campaign management
• Contact management
• Lead engagement
• Employee Referral Management
• Referral tracking

Pricing Plans

• Pro: $97 per month
• Ultimate: $197 per month
• Network: $477 per month

18. MonsterInsights

Trying to run an effective affiliate marketing campaign without prioritizing data gather is a plan doomed to fail.

Thankfully, MonsterInsights is here to help you only gather data, but make sense of it too.

At its core, MonsterInsights is a Google Analytics plugin that converts data into more accessible, digestible, usable information. In addition to offering real-time statistics for ad tracking and compatibility with various eCommerce platforms, the plugin has a comprehensive dashboard.

Key features

• Google Analytics dashboard
• Affiliate Link and Ads tracking
• Page-level analytics
• Performance optimization
• Website behavior report

Pricing plans

• Plus: 99.50 per year
• Pro: $399 per year
• Agency: $799 per year

19. Tailwind

Tailwind is a social media scheduling tool for Pinterest and Instagram.

With it, affiliate marketers can schedule posts and pins days (or weeks) ahead of time. Tailwind also suggests the best time to publish posts by analyzing trends and your content’s past performance. And the net result? More engagement and more clicks.

Key Features

• Social engagement and analytics
• Auto publishing
• Multi-user collaboration
• Report exporting
• Post-performance optimization

Pricing Plans

• Free forever: $0 per month
• Pro: $9.99 per month
• Advanced: $19.99 per month
• Max: $39.99 per month

20. Pretty Links

Pretty Links is a popular affiliate marketing plugin that turns long affiliate links into readable, ‘pretty’ links. Basically, the plugin cloaks your affiliate links with shorter, easy-to-remember links, making them more secure.

Key Features

• Link cloaking
• Link activity monitoring
• Auto-linking feature to automatically add affiliate links for specific keywords
• Detailed link reporting
• Server-side redirect management

Pricing Plans

• Super Affiliate: $149 per year
• Marketer: $99 per year
• Beginner: $79 per year

21. WPForms

WPForms is an easy-to-use WordPress plugin for building forms. With it, you can create opt-in forms to drive subscribers, surveys to learn more about your target audience (and help you decide what products to promote), contact forms for inquiries or comments, or choose from over 300+ other templates to add functionality to your website and improve user experience.

Key Features

• Integrates with email marketing services
• Various Form template options
• Drag and drop form builder
• Entry management
• Spam protection

Pricing Plans

• Basic: $39.50 per year
• Plus: $99.50 per year
• Pro: $199.50 per year
• Elite: $299.50 per year

Optimize Your Efforts With The Right Affiliate Marketing Tools

Affiliate marketing will continue to grow.

So, finding ways to optimize your marketing efforts is critical. Affiliate marketing tools are the cornerstone of a successful affiliate marketing strategy.

If you’re about to kick off your journey, it’s okay if you prefer to find free options. But if you have the budget, any or a combination of these 21 affiliate marketing tools is a great place to start.