Simple Affiliate: Affiliate Marketing Software Reviews 2023: Details, Pricing, & Features
It is natural for people to feel the need to be recognized for the things they have created. A person can demonstrate that they were a part of the community by leaving some kind of legacy behind, even if it’s just something like software. On this website, we have reviewed many dozens of different software titles, including ones for influencer marketing, e-commerce, creator tools, and affiliate marketing. In every single one of these cases, conducting research on who exactly made the app was as simple as clicking on the “About Us” link on the company’s website. The absolute worst case scenario involved looking the company up on LinkedIn or Crunchbase in order to obtain the information in question. And in some extreme cases, when one co-founder leaves a company, the remaining co-founder wants all the glory, and they have gotten pretty upset with us if we have even mentioned the partner who has left the company.
Why bring up all of this information? in order to fill up space in this Overview of a company that doesn’t appear to want anyone to know about its business. This is the case with Simple Affiliate, an app for Shopify that specializes in affiliate marketing. This application represents the conceptualization of simplicity carried to its logical conclusion. Their website does not make any attempt to entice you to purchase anything by using pictures or statistics. The home page is nothing more than a list of features, along with descriptions and screenshots of those features. The overall layout of the website is not dissimilar to how it might have looked in 1997. There is no “About Us” page, and the only means of communication available are a contact form, live chat, and an email alias. They do not engage in self-promotion in any way, nor do they have a profile on LinkedIn. Crunchbase did not produce any results.
The only place a name appears is in the assistance manuals, and each of those documents was authored by either Sebastian or Milos, who were the only two people. After conducting further research, we discovered that there is a response from Sebastian himself to a review that was submitted by a user on the Shopify App store. In the response, Sebastian identifies himself as the founder of the company. We had attained some measure of success at last! A search on Google found that there are a significant number of individuals named Sebastian who have opinions or observations regarding affiliate marketing. It’s possible that any one of these guys is indeed him. Another possibility is that none of them are.
In the end, we decided to just get down to business and watch an overview video that they prepared in order to get a feel for the product. This was because we were resigned to the fact that we knew very little about the company as a whole. You are able to view the names of the payment recipients when they scroll through the list of affiliates on the section of the website devoted to distributing payments. A significant number of these names were “Sebastian Capatina.” Paydirt! We were able to write on the person of interest for the Overview. After looking into him on LinkedIn, we discovered that his profile did not include any references to Simple Affiliate. However, he does mention that he is the Chief Executive Officer of Menos, Inc., which is a web development business that specializes in Shopify. And if you make your way over to menos.ca, you will see that it is included at the very bottom of a list of the company’s achievements as “Simple Affiliate.” However, it is too late to change anything now because we have already produced this Overview. It would have been nice if they had made it easier to locate this information.
Pros:
• Affiliate onboarding may be automated through your Shopify business
• Shopify is simple to set up and utilize
Cons
• There is no way to pay affiliates through the app
• There are no connectors
Pricing
Affiliate marketing down to its barest essentials, Simple Affiliate was designed from the ground up to perform essentially only one function: to generate and keep track of referral links and coupon codes, thereby informing users of the amount of money owed to their affiliates. Because of this, we were taken aback by the fact that there were even two tiers of subscription available to choose from.
Track an unlimited number of referrals from an unlimited number of affiliates by using referral links with the “Basic” plan, which costs $14 per month. Additionally, you have the ability to create distinct groups of affiliates in order to pay out varied commissions.
• Professional, at $29 a month, includes everything that’s included in Basic, plus the ability to track discount coupons and generate referral links that are easy to see on your own website.
To tell you the truth, the pricing structure is not very well thought out. The cost of $29 a month is not a lot of money; nevertheless, when you frame that cost as “$15 more dollars for two things that are standard anywhere else,” it does not feel like it is worth it to pay for. The price of $29 is comparable to that of a couple of the other platforms that we have discussed on this page. It is $5 more expensive than the Premium subscription offered by Goaffpro, which provides many more functions in addition to various integrations that extend its use even further.
The Finer Points
In the words of Forrest Gump’s mother, “simple is as simple does,” and Simple Affiliate’s approach to business is pretty straightforward. That’s a whole lot of “simples,” that’s for sure. Installing this app is as simple as installing any other Shopify app; all you have to do is push a button, provide your credentials, and you’re good to go. You will be asked during the setup process whether you want affiliates to be automatically enabled when they sign up for your program or whether you want to manually authorize each one. In the event that you would like to test out the affiliate dashboard that has been put on your Shopify site, you will be provided with the link to access it (or share it later). You will begin by defining all of the commission parameters for a default affiliate group after first creating that group. After that, you will be asked whether or not you wish to enable promo codes, and you can choose either option. Since this is one of the two benefits you get when you upgrade to the Professional plan, it begs the question: why would anyone want to disable them, given that they are one of the two things you get when you upgrade?
Now that you have the link to your affiliate dashboard, you can begin the process of recruiting other individuals to become affiliates. You have the option of manually adding them from within the admin panel of Simple Affiliate, or they can sign up themselves using the dashboard link. The app grants access to the affiliate dashboard by utilizing your Shopify customer accounts as the authentication method. If they have shopped with you before and have an existing account, all they need to do is log in with that information and complete the registration process. If they do not already have an account, they will have to go through the registration procedure, which is straightforward as you could have imagined.
If you are using the basic plan, you have pretty much taken care of everything that needs to be taken care of in order to have the affiliate program up and operating. You can customize the text that your affiliates see on various pages, such as the registration page and automated emails that they receive, by navigating to the Settings section. This section allows you to change a few things here and there, such as what information to ask for on the affiliate signup form, or to customize the text.
If you have the Pro plan, you also have the option of beginning the process of developing special links for your affiliates as soon as they sign up. To customize the link, you will need to effectively add whatever string of text that you like to the end of your store’s URL, as shown here:
If you’ve also given an affiliate a promotional code to use, you can configure the link such that it enables the discount only when the code is entered. When a customer arrives at your online store after clicking a link provided by one of your affiliates who possesses a coupon code for a 10% discount, they will be greeted by a pop-up window that informs them that they were referred to your website by the individual who provided the coupon code and that they are eligible for the 10% discount. Although there is nothing that alerts the customer to the fact that the discount will be applied automatically during checkout, the discount will be applied.
The data that you get out of Simple Affiliate is the very minimum information that you’d need. This includes total sales, which are displayed as both a figure and a graph based on time, as well as total commissions and an average commission. There is no method to export the data so that it may be used with any other program; this is purely for record-keeping purposes and nothing more.
Paying affiliates is the one aspect of this that is not straightforward, which is strange considering that you cannot pay associates directly from within the software itself. However, they have found a way to include a step that isn’t necessary in the process; you can’t just sit around and do nothing and expect to get nowhere. The following is how that would appear: When you navigate to the Payouts option in the Simple Affiliate navigation menu, the program provides you with a list of all of your affiliates along with the amount of money that is owed to them. If you want to make a payment to them, you can do so by clicking the “Create Payment” button on the software, and it will then double check the amount with you. After this has been verified, the transaction will be moved to a different list referred to as “unconfirmed payments.” You then proceed to make the payment through the platform that you are utilizing to make payments; for example, if you are using Venmo, you proceed to make the payment through Venmo. If it is an ACH transfer, you will need to enter into the bill paying function of your bank and make the payment from inside that section. You are required to return to Simple Affiliate in order to verify that the money was successfully processed after utilizing any of the available payment methods.
If you still need to confirm a payment once you create it on the system, what is the point of doing so? You will find that the information conveyed by the listings of Outstanding Balances and Unconfirmed Payments is identical. They are listings of persons whom you have not yet compensated for their services. Why not just walk down the initial list, make the payments depending on that, and then affirm that you’ve paid it once that happens? It seems like it would be much simpler.
Integrations
If you count Shopify as a separate piece of software, Simple Affiliate does not integrate with any other software.
Conclusion
The user interface of Simple Affiliate could stand to be a little more complex. It is unfortunate because it unquestionably satisfies a need for limited online retail outlets operating on the Shopify platform. In addition, the Shopify platform hosts a significant number of less substantial online shops. Something like this, which is purpose created to make one activity considerably easier by a modicum of automation, could have been the answer for someone who is running a business as a side hustle, and who wants a minimal means to manage affiliates and payments. Unfortunately, it lacks just a few of the capabilities that are necessary to fulfill that niche, and it costs a few dollars more per month than what is required. What is present is actually effectively implemented, and if they built upon this basis, Simple Affiliate may easily be able to satisfy the demand in the area it seeks to serve. However, as things stand right now, even the smallest of enterprises have access to superior solutions at prices that are comparable.