Affiliates review
A capable free option for WordPress sites managing partner referrals in-house.
Reviewed by iTechGuides Editors · Editorial team · Updated Oct 2026
Affiliates is an open-source WordPress plugin for sellers, shops, membership sites, blogs, and other organizations that manage their own partner-referral programs. The free plan includes an affiliate dashboard, registration, referral and visit tracking, API access, and unlimited affiliates. It also supports link generation, profiles, earnings information, commission recording, notifications, and customizable dashboard blocks, shortcodes, and templates. That makes it suited to teams that want to operate referral activity within a self-hosted WordPress site rather than adopt a separate hosted platform.
Its strongest fit is the breadth of partner-management features available in the free product. Real-time referral reporting and traffic statistics can include source, landing page, and user-agent data. Recruitment and approval can be manual or automatic, with notifications for approval activity. The API is designed for e-commerce and membership integrations, while listed connections include WooCommerce, Events Manager, Ninja Forms, Formidable Forms, Contact Form 7, BuddyPress, and reCAPTCHA. These options give WordPress site owners room to connect referrals with sales, memberships, forms, and lead-generation workflows.
The main trade-off is deployment scope: the product is limited to self-hosted installations, so it is not a general-purpose hosted platform. Payout workflows are also not documented as part of the free product's stated capabilities, making it a weaker fit for organizations that require clearly defined automatic or manual payouts. The free Affiliates release is separate from Affiliates Pro and Affiliates Enterprise. Choose it when WordPress ownership, open-source access, unlimited affiliates, and configurable referral management matter most; consider an alternative when hosted deployment or defined payout tooling is essential.
Affiliates pros and cons
- Where it wins
- Free plan supports unlimited affiliates
- Includes dashboards, tracking, reporting, recruitment, and approvals
- API and integrations support commerce, membership, forms, and leads
- Where it doesn't
- Runs only on self-hosted deployments
- Automatic or manual payouts are not verified
- Paid Pro and Enterprise releases are separate products
Affiliates fact sheet, pricing and score →
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