YITH WooCommerce Affiliates vs Affiliate for WooCommerce

Affiliate marketing continues to grow in popularity, and for good reason – it’s a low-risk, high-reward marketing strategy for store owners.

Influencers, bloggers, loyal customers and even niche micro-creators are teaming up as affiliates to promote products, drive traffic and boost sales.

The best part is that as a WooCommerce store owner, you only pay when you get results.

But before you launch your own high-converting affiliate program, there’s one important decision to make: choosing the right affiliate marketing plugin. You need an affiliate marketing tool that’s not only easy to set up and manage but also built for long-term ROI.

In this blog, we’ll honestly compare two major players in the WooCommerce ecosystem: YITH WooCommerce Affiliates and Affiliate for WooCommerce by StoreApps. Let’s declassify the best affiliate plugin for you.

YITH WooCommerce Affiliates review vs Affiliate for WooCommerce’s: Extended

To begin, both affiliate plugins are meant to help you launch and administer an affiliate program right from your WooCommerce store. However, they cater to slightly distinct requirements.

YITH WooCommerce affiliates have been in the market for about a decade. It was first published in 2015 and has since evolved into a freemium affiliate solution for influencer campaigns.

It provides basic and premium affiliate tools and focuses on a varied group of customers. It’s a useful affiliate tool, but can it outperform Affiliate for WooCommerce?

Developed by StoreApps, the same trusted team behind Smart Manager and Smart Coupons, Affiliate for WooCommerce gets an early edge with its native WooCommerce compatibility.

One of the standout features of Affiliate for WooCommerce is one-place management, which allows you to manage your affiliate program with a single, simpler UI.

Additionally, it is bolstered by over 5,500 paid users and store owners. Many rely on it for consistent updates, fast support and future-proof scalability. But there’s more.

YITH WooCommerce Affiliates vs Affiliate for WooCommerce – Who’s the winner?

In this section, we are deep-diving and reviewing a few more factors like ease of use, commission plans, campaigns, reporting, value for money and others.

Ease of use

One of the most important factors in judging a plugin’s value is its ease of use. It takes into account speed and intuitiveness.

Installation phase
Installing YITH WooCommerce Affiliates may not be as easy as Affiliate for WooCommerce which is a native plugin. You have to download the free or premium version, upload it to WordPress and activate it.

It’s not overly complex but users have to go through extra steps or settings for installation. Many users have found it overwhelming because there are multiple configuration possibilities.

On the other hand, Affiliate for WooCommerce is plug-and-play with no extra integration steps.

After purchasing from the WooCommerce marketplace, upload the zip file, and you’re guided through a simple setup wizard.

In short, it’s jargon-free and beginner-friendly, with a clean interface that feels like an extension of WooCommerce itself.

Onboarding phase
The onboarding phase is quite similar for both plugins. There’s both a manual and an automatic activation system built in for the plugins.

Additionally, users can encourage or persuade people (bloggers, Vloggers, customers, etc.) to share their referral links and become affiliates.

With Affiliate for WooCommerce, there’s no hassle with the onboarding process. It’s pretty easy and fast.

Affiliates for WooCommerce has a little advantage over YITH WooCommerce Affiliates because the former enables the automatic conversion of existing users or customers into affiliates.

Platform’s dashboard
The platform’s dashboard is neat and clean for both plugins.

YITH WooCommerce Affiliates follows a near-centralized approach in the design philosophy but users may still have to juggle screens in some cases.

Affiliate for WooCommerce triumphs with a distinct centralized UI.

Users find it very easy to navigate to different sections or settings of the plugin.

Commission plans

The free version of YITH WooCommerce Affiliates lets you set a global commission rate (e.g., 10% on all sales).

With the premium version, you can create custom rates for specific products, categories, users or user roles.

However, it lacks flat rates, multi-tier commissions, lifetime commissions and advanced rules like subscription-based or first-order commissions.

Affiliate for WooCommerce is a significant game-changer in terms of smart affiliate commissions.

Store owners have a variety of custom commission plans at their disposal. You can set:

• Storewide, product or category-based commissions.
• Affiliate-specific or tag-based rates (e.g., 20% for “VIP” affiliates).
• First-order or subscription-based commissions (e.g., 30% for the first month, 15% for renewals).
• Lifetime commissions for all future purchases by referred customers.
• Unlimited multi-tier commissions (e.g., $15 for Tier 1, $10 for Tier 2). You can even exclude upsells or combine rules for ultimate flexibility, like offering 35% on “Outdoor Gear” for top influencers.
• Commissions based on the affiliate’s user role (e.g., affiliate admin, shop manager, subscriber).

Campaigns

YITH definitely falls short here. It doesn’t offer built-in campaign creation or marketing assets like banners or videos.

You’ll need to create and share promotional materials manually (e.g., via a custom page), which can be time-consuming.

This lack of campaign support limits its ability to scale larger affiliate programs.

With Affiliate for WooCommerce, store owners can create unlimited campaigns using the WordPress editor, including assets like images, banners, videos, email templates, HTML codes, PPTs and PDFs.

They can directly manage and distribute the assets within the plugin for centralized access. In addition, they can also make these assets hidden for specific affiliates if needed.

Store admins can assign campaigns to specific affiliates or groups (e.g., “Fitness Influencers”) and create personalized landing pages with merge tags for custom headlines or CTAs. It’s useful for notifying affiliates of promotional marketing events.

Affiliates access everything from their dashboard.

Reporting

There’s not much fancy reporting built into YITH WooCommerce Affiliates. Store owners can access key stats like visits, commissions, earnings, popular affiliates and top-performing products.

They can also apply a filter to search and examine all affiliates at a more minute level. Stores also get a detailed report of visits generated from referrers in a summary table.

Affiliates get reports in their own dashboard. They can easily track clicks, sales and commissions earned.

Affiliate for WooCommerce has a dedicated and comprehensive reports section.

Users can access real-time reporting and get more value and clarity. For example, the store administrator can monitor:

• Net affiliate sales
• Unpaid commissions
• Refunds
• Traffic
• Customer count
• Conversion rate

Affiliates can monitor:

• Visitors
• Customers
• Gross and net commissions
• Total sales
• Conversion rates
• Commissions earned from each customer
• Payout history
• Product-specific commissions

Miscellaneous features

YITH WooCommerce Affiliates also has some distinct advantages. Users can

• Ban and unban affiliates.
• Allow affiliates to share their page on social media like Facebook, Pinterest, Twitter, etc.
• Associate old commissions to new users with the same token.

Check out the following features for Affiliate for WooCommerce. These are not available to YITH WooCommerce Affiliates.

• Visualize multi-tier networks: Admins and affiliates can clearly see/sub-affiliate relationships via interactive referral trees. It’s again more intuitive.
• Tag-based affiliate groups for influencers: Organize affiliates into custom tags (e.g., “Influencers,” “Power Bloggers”) and assign group-specific commissions effortlessly.
• Enable recurring earnings for all influencers or selectively exclude specific influencers or groups using affiliate tags.
• Let affiliates request personalized and self-trackable coupon codes from store owners, making a greater impact on marketing and promotion.
• Future-proof and affordable affiliate system with no complicated interfaces and jargon.

Try Affiliate for WooCommerce demo

Value for money

Both plugins have practically the same price, but there’s a catch.

YITH WooCommerce Affiliates comes with a free and a premium version.

The free version adds little value but is good for testing. In it, you get only basic affiliate management, commission tracking and link generation.

The premium version costs $179.99/year, which is reasonable but requires additional plugins (e.g., YITH PayPal Payouts at $90) for full functionality. It’s a reliable choice for small stores on a budget, but the lack of multi-tier commissions and campaign tools limits its long-term value.

Priced at $179/year, Affiliate for WooCommerce includes all features in a single plan, no add-ons ever needed.

You get unlimited affiliates, multi-tier commissions, lifetime commissions and campaign tools and a fully-functional demo.

You also get excellent customer service and regular product updates without any fuss.

Affiliate for WooCommerce easily beats its competitors with its all-inclusive plan. The advance affiliate features offer superior value, especially for stores aiming to scale.

With this WooCommerce affiliate plugin, you get complete peace of mind. The reviews already point to great trust factor and reliability.

Conclusion – The clear winner is…

Both plugins are strong contenders, but Affiliate for WooCommerce is the clear winner as of today.

Its seamless WooCommerce integration, single-screen dashboard and robust features make it ideal for stores of all sizes. Plus, you also get access to extra commission plans.

At $179/year, it delivers more power for your buck without requiring extra add-ons.

Stick with Affiliate for WooCommerce if you want an affiliate program with a high return on investment (ROI), smart features and no hidden fees.

Get Affiliate for WooCommerce