Affiliate tools are essential in our line of work, but you don't need to break the bank with Refersion to get a great tool with loads of functionality.
The name is absolutely horrible, but we wanted to share a couple reasons why we love and stick with our Shopify affiliate plug-in GoAffPro over Refersion (which most of our clients start with before they join with us).
GoAffPro vs. Refersion: Our Comparison
GoAffPro has all of the same features as Refersion, but it costs $24 per month and Refersion costs $89 per month up to 130 orders. I find it entirely ridiculous when an affiliate tool has a cap on the number of sales that can be referred in a month and makes you pay more to accept more sales (which Refersion does). This forces you to remember to downgrade again the following month and you have better things to take up your memory space. GoAffPro does not have a limit on the number of sales that can come into the system.
GoAffPro allows the new advocate to customize their URL at the sign-up process, whereas with Refersion you have to manually change it for them.
GoAffPro’s customization is awesome. The back-end is definitely a little wonky-feeling, but the customer-facing experience is more branded at the end of the day. The communication templates can all be customized to your own messaging and branding. The compensation plan(s) may be customized, everything in the advocate-facing dashboard, the application fields, the landing page, all of it is customizable.
GoAffPro's dashboard + reporting is more flexible and revealing than Refersion. Not only do your affiliates have access to more details for each order, you can enable a leaderboard to generate some friendly competition, and there is more in-depth analytics on link sharing. For the company, the dashboard gives you a quick glance at activity while the Analytics Leaderboard allows you to gather the information with a custom date range.
GoAffPro allows you to set up sales bonuses that automatically get added to their account in addition to commission (Refersion doesn't do this).
GoAffPro connect directly to PayPal for payout (Refersion also does this, to be fair).
GoAffPro gives you access to white-label which means you can create your own custom URL for the Advocate Dashboard and sign-up (you need Refersion's enterprise level for this, which you have to contact their sales team to find the price, which means you know it's expensive).
GoAffPro provides a custom pop-up in the corner when a customer is shopping with the advocate and you can even include their email and phone number.
GoAffPro has MLM functionality. This means that when an advocate brings on another advocate, GoAffPro tracks that relationship and can even pay commission on downline sales. Since our programs can often incorporate multi-level elements into them, this is important to have access to so you’re not manually paying out downline commission. Refersion does not do this.
I brought up the differences between features to Refersion and let them know that everything they were offering to my client, GoAffPro did for less than half the cost. I asked them what value they felt they were providing over GoAffPro and their response was they had top-notch customer service. While I place a high value on customer service, it is not worth $65+ a month. I wouldn't need your customer service so much if your tool did the things I needed it to.
On Refersion's pricing page, they list the things that Every Plan Includes - here they are and our translation:
Unlimited affiliates and visits (great except that you don't get unlimited sales, just affiliates + visits)
NYC based, on-site support (that's cool that you're in NYC, how does that help my client?)
Free listing in Refersion Marketplace (every affiliate tool does this, it is not a huge value)
Access to developer APIs (I would hope so - GoAffPro does this too)
Set unique commissions by product or SKU (this is standard for affiliate marketing tools, GoAffPro does this too)
Track sales with referral links, coupon codes, emails, and SKUs (this is literally what the program had better do)
Custom data reports by request (as in, you have to email them to get a CSV with the information you need rather than it being in your dashboard)
Developer support to integrate with custom systems
Migrate data and content from legacy systems
Software training and support for your team (these last three, I'm not sure what they mean, but I haven't had a client who has needed these things)
We get it, you are obsessed with GoAffPro - what are the downsides?
GoAffPro doesn’t look great on mobile. If you care about your landing page at all, we recommend creating the landing page in Shopify and linking to the form to join (created in GoAffPro).
GoAffPro support can be really speedy and efficient or they can ghost you. I've had both experiences, but we've always figured it out in the end.
Conclusion
Refersion might have a better name, but that is about it. Do yourself and your community a favor and migrate to GoAffPro.
We get it, migrations (and transition in general) suck. You can do it yourself or hire us to do it for you. Making the change will save you at least $780 a year. Email bri@emberconsulting.co to get on the list to have us do it for you.
About the Author
Bri Leever is Chief Community Architect at Ember, a splasher of water, and lover of books doing life in an ever-changing migration pattern ✈️
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