AffiliateFactoryWP
Get the plugin
Cost calculator

What is your affiliate program really costing you?

Hosted affiliate platforms bill monthly, and often take a percentage of the revenue your partners generate. Self-hosted software charges a flat annual license and takes nothing. Which is cheaper depends entirely on your numbers — so put them in.

Your numbers

Take the platform figures straight off your latest invoice — leave a field at zero if it does not apply.

per month

Only the sales your affiliates generate, not your total store revenue.

per month

The flat monthly fee your current or prospective platform charges.

of affiliate sales

Some platforms also take a percentage. Enter 0 if yours does not.

Every plan has every feature. Pick by how many sites you run.

Total cost over 3 years

Hosted platform

$3,564

$99/month × 36 months

Affiliate Factory WP

$507

$169/year × 3 years — unlimited affiliates and referrals

$3,057

stays in your business over 3 years — the license pays for itself in about 2 months.

Honest caveats: self-hosting is not free of cost — you supply the hosting (your existing WordPress server handles affiliate tracking without noticing) and you apply plugin updates yourself. This compares software fees only, not your time. Platform figures are whatever you typed above; always check the vendor's current pricing page.

Get Professional — $169/yrTry the demo first

14-day money-back guarantee · instant license key by email

Why the two curves bend apart

This is not really a pricing difference. It is two different theories about what affiliate software is worth, and they produce opposite incentives.

Success raises one bill

When fees scale with tracked orders or a share of revenue, every improvement you make to your program — better partners, higher conversion, a good Black Friday — also raises the invoice. The software gets more expensive exactly when it starts working.

The other stays flat

A flat license costs the same whether your affiliates drive ten orders a month or ten thousand. As a percentage of your revenue, the cost of the software falls toward zero as the program succeeds.

Small programs are the exception

Below a certain size, a low monthly tier really can be cheaper than an annual license, and the calculator will say so. The break-even point is usually early — but it is your number, not ours, so check it.

Cost is the easy part to measure

It is also rarely the thing people regret. The differences that show up later are harder to put in a calculator:

  • Where your customer data lives

    Self-hosted keeps partner details and customer purchase behaviour in your own database — no subprocessor to document, no data-processing agreement to negotiate, no cross-border transfer question.

    Read: GDPR-compliant affiliate tracking →

  • Whether your tracking survives

    First-party cookies set by your own domain are not subject to the third-party blocking that increasingly affects hosted trackers. That gap widens with every browser release.

    Read: tracking after third-party cookies →

  • How hard it is to leave

    Migration off a hosted platform is defined by what they let you export. Migration between self-hosted plugins is an import from your own database — a decision you can reverse.

    Read: migrating without losing data →

Weighing specific products? See the honest comparisons.

About this calculator

Why compare over three years instead of one?
Because the two pricing models diverge over time, and a single year hides that. A monthly subscription with a revenue share grows as your program grows — which is the whole point of running one — while a flat annual license stays flat. Three years is long enough for the shapes to separate and short enough to be a realistic planning horizon.
What counts as affiliate-driven revenue?
Only the sales your affiliates generate — the orders that get attributed to a partner link or coupon code. Not your total store revenue. If you are estimating for a program you have not launched yet, a common early target is 5–15% of total revenue coming through partners; our benchmarks post has realistic figures to start from.
Is this rigged to make you look cheap?
No, and you can prove it in about ten seconds: drop the platform fee to a low number and the calculator will tell you outright that the hosted platform costs less. It only ever compares the numbers you type in. For a small program a hosted platform genuinely can be the cheaper option — the flat license wins as the program grows.
What costs are not in this calculation?
Your time and your hosting. Self-hosted software runs on your own server, so you apply updates and own the uptime — in practice, affiliate tracking is one cookie and one database write per visit, which an existing WooCommerce server will not notice. Conversely, hosted platforms may add fees this calculator does not model, such as payout processing or per-affiliate charges. Read your invoice carefully in both directions.
Does the license really have no usage limits?
Correct. Unlimited affiliates, unlimited referrals, unlimited tracked orders, unlimited revenue. The plan you pick sets how many WordPress sites you may activate on and the support tier — nothing else. Every feature ships in every plan.
What happens to my costs if I stop paying?
The plugin keeps running and your program keeps working; only updates and support pause until you renew. That is a meaningful difference from a subscription, where cancelling typically means the software stops. It also means your renewal decision is a real choice each year rather than something you have to remember to cancel.

Numbers look right? See the software.

A real WordPress admin running the real plugin with a season of sample data. No signup, resets hourly.

Open the live demoSee pricing