Choosing a WooCommerce Affiliate Plugin — The 12-Point Evaluation Checklist

Every affiliate plugin's sales page promises the same things: easy setup, powerful tracking, happy partners. The differences that will actually matter to you live one layer down — in architecture, money math, and fine print. Here are the twelve questions to ask any candidate (ours included; we'll note where Affiliate Factory WP stands so you can hold us to the same standard).

Tracking & attribution

1. Is tracking first-party and server-set? Third-party tracking domains get ad-blocked; script-set cookies get lifetime-capped. Server-set, first-party, signed cookies are the durable architecture. (AFWP: yes — signed, server-set, own-domain.)

2. Does coupon attribution work with zero clicks? If a code typed at checkout doesn't credit its owner without any prior visit, influencer and podcast partnerships leak. Bonus points for auto-generated per-affiliate codes. (AFWP: yes, both.)

3. What exactly is stored about visitors? Ask to see the visit record. Raw IPs and no retention controls mean GDPR homework you'll be doing later. (AFWP: truncated+hashed IPs, configurable retention, consent gating.)

Money math

4. Integer or floating-point commission math? Floating-point currency drifts by pennies until an affiliate's spreadsheet disagrees with yours. Integer minor-unit math never does.

5. Is there a refund-safe maturity window? Commissions payable before your refund window closes is a structural bug that becomes a fraud vector. (AFWP: maturity windows with automatic reversal.)

6. Can every amount explain itself? When a partner asks "why $23.40?", the answer should be stored with the referral — rate, base, calculation — not reconstructed from memory.

Operations

7. What happens to suspicious referrals? The two failure modes are auto-pay (you fund fraud) and silent rejection (you burn partners). The correct answer is held, with human-readable reasons, for your decision. (AFWP: exactly this — see the demo's review queue.)

8. Do payouts run through your own accounts? Your PayPal/Stripe credentials, your ledger, no pooled balance, and manual payouts recordable in the same history. (A clean payout workflow depends on it.)

9. Is there an audit trail? Rate changes, approvals, payout state changes — append-only, timestamped. This is what makes rate changes and disputes boring instead of dangerous.

The business layer

10. Which of your other plugins does it actually integrate with? Not "compatible with" — creates referrals from. Membership signups, course purchases, form-submitted leads: each should flow through the same pipeline as orders. Check the integration list against your stack.

11. What does the license gate? Read carefully: does the plugin stop working when the license lapses, taking your program hostage? Or do only updates and support pause? Also count sites honestly — staging environments included. (AFWP: the plugin never disables itself; expiry pauses updates/support only. Plans differ only by site count — every feature in every tier.)

12. Can you leave? Data export, migration paths, and code you can read. A GPL, unobfuscated codebase means your program's data and logic are auditable and portable — the migration you might do someday shouldn't require the old vendor's permission.

How to actually run the evaluation

Reading feature pages answers none of these reliably. The efficient method: get into a working install — a vendor demo, a trial on staging — and spend twenty minutes trying to break the money. Create a referral, refund its order, watch what happens. Enter a wrong license, watch what happens. Ask "why this amount?" of a commission and see if the interface answers.

Any vendor confident in their twelve answers will make that easy. Ours is one click, no signup: the live demo has a seeded program with held referrals, payout history, and the audit log open for inspection — bring this checklist with you.