Best SAAS Affiliate Programs
SAAS affiliate programs might be right up your alley if you are in the right niche and if your blog or website audience is not reluctant when it comes to trying new products and services.
Most of the options that we will showcase in today’s article in terms of affiliate marketing for SAAS are things that you probably have heard before, especially if you’re in a niche like marketing, SEO, and everything else.
Some are a little different, so they can speak to various other types of affiliates.
Top SAAS Affiliate programs
Choosing the right SAAS affiliate marketing program largely depends on your own needs and preferences, what you tend to write about, how convincing you are, and also what the features of the products that you suggest to your readers are.
SEMRush
SEMRush is undoubtedly one of the best SAAS affiliate programs, and for two reasons — the commission rates are more than decent, and the cookie lasts for 120 days.
You get paid differently depending on what your referral opts for. New customers can get you as much as $200, those giving a shot to the free trial will make you $10, and every new lead is going to make you just one cent.
But because the tool is so well-known (and effective) and has so many features these days, we’d say that SEMRush is definitely worth recommending to your audience if you are in the right niche.
SocialPilot
This is a platform much like HootSuite or other tools, meaning that it can be used for social media management of brands, startups, and influencers, too.
The cost of the tool itself ranges from $25 to $127/month depending on the plan features that users pick. As an affiliate, you will be paid 30% of all plans, whether new or recurring. That means that if someone gets a subscription today and maintains it for two months, you’ll get twice the commissions.
The cookie lasts for 60 days, which might be less worth writing home about, especially when compared to the cookie durations of other affiliate programs listed here.
ConvertKit
This email marketing platform should be right up your alley if you have a site or blog about marketing, in general. The affiliate program can pay you 30% in recurring commissions, and the cookie lasts for three whole months.
We’d say that this one is slightly better compared to ActiveCampaign since the second pays its affiliates 20% to 30% in commissions. What’s also interesting about the ConvertKit affiliate program is that it is run through LinkMink, an affiliate network you might not have heard of before.
You might also like: Best email marketing affiliate programs
Podia
This one is in the education niche, and if you’ve dabbled in this field before, you probably know that there’s a lot of money to be made with it. Podia is basically a platform packed with online sources, and that can also help creators make their own courses. It’s similar to Teachable in many ways.
But while Teachable and others pay their affiliates commissions ranging from 30% to 70%, this one offers a 30% recurring commission. The downside is that the cookie lifetime is just 15 days, which is quite low compared to other options.
1Password
If you have a hard time managing all of your passwords (and you probably know that it’s never a good idea to have the same or variations of the same one for all of the sites you’ve created an account on), this app can make your life a lot easier.
It’s one of the most popular mobile apps we have come across and their affiliate program is managed through CJ Affiliate. While we couldn’t find any specific info on the cookie lifetime, we will add that being an affiliate of 1Password can make you 25% in first-time payments and $2 in recurring ones.
Canva
Canva is one of the most popular platforms for design these days, and that’s because it is extraordinarily easy to utilize. The pro plan doesn’t come for cheap, but that can be an advantage for affiliates.
The commission rate you can expect is $36 for every user that opts for the pro plan. The good thing is that the cookie lasts for 30 days, which we’d say is pretty good compared to some of the other programs we’ve showcased here.
Additionally, everything is managed through the Impact affiliate network.
Unbounce
This is a pretty popular landing page platform that’s used by thousands of people every day. The nice thing about the product is that it is particularly user-friendly, and that’s one of the reasons it has become so popular over the past years. If you have no coding knowledge, building a landing page can be a really hard time.
The affiliate program is managed through PartnerStack so that’s one less thing to worry about. You can expect commission rates of 20% on all purchases, and it’s great that they are recurring over a period of (cookie lifetime) 90 days.
Binance
If you have nothing against dabbling in the cryptocurrency field (especially since, these days, a lot of people get crypto as a way of diversifying their investments), then Binance should be a good choice for you.
The affiliate program can get you up to 50% in commissions, but the cookie duration remains a mystery.
FreshBooks
This one is managed through ShareASale, which is a pro in itself since you are not going to have to individually apply to a different program. Also, ShareASale gives you access to all of the information you need to take your performance to a whole new level — especially stats regarding your performance.
Every new paid subscriber of FreshBooks can make you $200, but there’s a caveat. You can also earn 10% of the basic plan even when folks opt for the free trial, which is not bad at all. The cookie lasts for almost half a year (120 days).
FreshBooks makes a good choice because it is heavily focused on accounting, which means that it can assist people in paying off their debt or their taxes with as little hassle as possible.
LastPass
Similarly to what 1Password can do for users, LastPass is a very convenient and effective tool for keeping and managing passwords. It also suggests new (and very complicated) passwords for every new account that you can create, and we’d say that the only thing that you need to ensure is that you never lose your LastPass password.
The extension is amazing, and the free version works on just one device as of one or two years ago. As for the affiliate program, you can make up to 25% on all paid plans, and you also benefit from a cookie duration of 45 days.
KWFinder
If you’re an SEO or have tried to improve your SEO in the past, you’ve probably heard of this tool at least once. There is a free version available, but it doesn’t show people the search volume and all the other metrics they might be interested in.
You can make 30% in lifetime commissions with the KWFinder affiliate program. Plus, the cookie lasts for 30 days.
Udemy
We wrote a separate review of this affiliate program, so you might want to search it on the site and read it in detail. But since you are here, we thought we’d specify that the affiliate program is quite straightforward and can make you up to 15% of the value of the courses that people purchase from Udemy.
Something less impressive is the cookie lifetime, though, since it lasts just 7 days. Still, it’s better than what the likes of Amazon Associates and other programs have to offer.
Coursera
As one of the largest platforms in the education sphere, Coursera also has an affiliate program that can earn you commissions ranging from 10% to 45%. The cookie does last for 30 days, which is somewhat similar to what some of its competitors can offer you, such as Skillshare, which we will describe below.
Skillshare
The reason this program has one of the lowest commission rates that we have come across in this domain is that the plans themselves don’t cost a fortune. You can earn $7 for every paid subscription, and the cookie lasts a month.
On the upside, Skillshare does have a very wide range of courses nowadays, some of them being made by well-known creators across a number of platforms such as YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter. Also, the niches are pretty low competition, and you even get a commission for free trials.
SERPStat
SERPStat is a very effective marketing tool that can help people manage their SEO, content marketing, or PPC. It is one of the main competitors for the likes of Ahrefs or SEMRush, for example.
As an affiliate, you can make 30% of all of the purchases that your readers make after clicking on your affiliate link. There is a minimum payout threshold, though, but it’s lower compared to that of other programs — just $50.
Surfer SEO
This is an excellent tool for optimizing content, but it has acquired a number of other features in the past few years. As an affiliate, you can earn commissions of up to 25% of qualifying sales, and the cookie lasts for 60 days.
Link Whisper
This one is a winner when it comes to link building, so you might want to give it a shot yourself if you’ve been having a hard time managing this part of your marketing efforts.
As for the Link Whisper affiliate program, we’d say that it is worth your attention since they pay their affiliates 20% in commission. Unfortunately, the cookie duration remains a mystery.
SurveySparrow
This platform can be used to create surveys or manage customer service experience. The plans depend a lot on the features they come with, but we would like to note that the enterprise one is priced at $449/month — this means higher commissions for you.
By the way, you get 25% of each sale on all plans, and once you have reached the $5,000 threshold, you will get several bonuses, too. The cookie lasts for 3 months, and during that time, you will be able to earn some recurring commissions, too.
Zendesk
This customer service platform comes with a myriad of helpful features, so it has become rather popular over the course of the past few years. The neat thing about it is that they also specialize in enterprise solutions, which can make you the big bucks as an affiliate.
The commission rate is less impressive compared to that of SAAS platforms with affiliate programs and that’s because you will make just 10% of each sale.
The only advantage would be the fact that the value of some of the products is higher, so you’ll be able to make more thanks to that. The cookie lasts for 45 days, which isn’t too bad.
Shopify
This one is perhaps the most popular platform for eCommerce in the world right now, and the truth is that the platform is extremely easy to use and comes with everything that folks that want to create an online shop might ever need.
The downside (for them) and the advantage (for you) is that it’s not cheap. This affiliate program for SAAS is a little different than what you might be used to in that it won’t pay you a percentage of subscriptions/plans that people choose through your affiliate links.
The commissions are fixed. On the lowest plans (meaning the normal merchant accounts), you can earn $58, but the pricier ones can make you as much as $2,000. The cookie lasts for just 30 days, and during that time you can make recurring commissions, too — but the cookie could have been a lot better, in our opinion.
Wix
While we might not necessarily be fans of this platform strictly because it is a pain to try and optimize a Wix site SEO-wise, we will note that it can be a pretty good option for beginners who have no knowledge of WordPress or any other CMS. Wix is very easy to use, so at least there’s that.
But when it comes to the affiliate program, you can make anything between $100 and $300 depending on how many premium users you refer to the site throughout a month. The payout threshold is $300, so that might be a drawback you will have to consider. Also, the cookie lasts for 30 days.
Kinsta
This is a WordPress hosting platform that can make you quite a bit of cash if you are recommending it to the right users.
The neat thing about the Kinsta affiliate program is that you can earn $500 for registered new users, but then you also earn a 10% commission rate for a period of two months (that’s how long the cookie lasts).
Weebly
Like Wix, this is another very easy to use website builder that can speak to the needs of various people who want to take up blogging or who want to build a website for their personal brand.
Recommending this service to your blog or website audience can make you 30% in commissions, but do keep in mind that the plans that Weebly have in place start at just $12 per month, so you’re not going to make a fortune.
However, the main advantage of the Weebly affiliate program is that the cookie lasts for 120 days, which is basically half a year. On top of that, the program is managed through ShareASale, which you might be familiar with if you’re a seasoned affiliate marketer.
BlueHost
This is a quite popular hosting company, so you aren’t going to have a hard time suggesting the service to your readers. The thing about the program is that it is quite unique in the way it pays. You get a fixed $90 commission rate for any purchase, even the lowest priced plans that people choose on BlueHost.
Also, the cookie lasts for 3 whole months, which we’d argue isn’t bad at all, especially when putting this affiliate program side by side with some of the others we have mentioned in this post.
SiteGround
We actually wrote a separate review of the SiteGround affiliate program, and we suggest you give it a read if you want to find out all the information that might be important.
In short, you can earn as much as $500 per every referral that gets a plan after clicking on your affiliate link. The cookie life is 60 days, which isn’t bad at all.
Picking the right SAAS affiliate program
It goes without saying that your final decision should be based on certain factors, such as the cookie duration and the commission rates, but there are other aspects to take into account.
For example, you should have a look at the company and see whether the service has received any reviews in the past and if they are mostly favorable.
Recurring payouts are always better compared to one-time ones, but you will also have to make a list of those that can pay you best one time and pick those just to have some variety.
For one-time payments, we’d say that some of the highest earning ones that we have mentioned in this article are SEMRush (pays $200 per sale) and Shopify, which can make you as much as $2,000 for enterprise clients.
You should also make sure that you read the fine print of the contract, because some companies might have clauses where they have lower your commission rates or change their essential terms without even having to let you know.
Naturally, this is a rather rare occurrence, but it always pays off to do your research beforehand.
Finally, the company values can also make a difference. Have they been involved in something unpleasant in the past, such as a scandal? Or is their reputation perfectly clean?
Remember – your audience is more likely to invest in a product or service if you do your best at recommending it, but if it’s also received stellar feedback and doesn’t have a bad history, either.
In the end, that’s how picking the best affiliate programs for SAAS should work for everyone.
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Craig Campbell
I am a Glasgow based SEO expert who has been doing SEO for 22 years.
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