Rakuten LinkShare vs Refport

Rakuten LinkShare is an affiliate marketing network for brands seeking customers and publisher partnerships. Advertisers can use partner recommendations, campaign planning, custom promotions, commission rules and performance reports. Partnership Discovery applies AI and machine learning to recommend publishers from product categories and plain-language searches. Advertisers can choose first-touch, last-touch and other attribution or commissioning models. Audience Engine uses existing brand data for partner-based audience segmentation, targeting and personalised offers. Rakuten Advertising says its network has more than 150,000 top-tier partners and launch takes less than one month. The service includes a partner portal and API access and is listed for Android, iOS, web and API. Pricing is on request. Publisher network access is listed at free, though inactivity fees may apply after 12 consecutive months without commissionable activity.

Refport is affiliate software for SaaS teams that tracks referrals through paying subscriptions and automates partner payouts. It links referrals, attribution, conversions, commissions and payouts in an auditable data trail. Its Stripe connection calculates commissions from Stripe revenue; Shopify sales ingestion, REST API access and webhooks support other billing setups. Payouts can go through Stripe Connect or PayPal. Configurable fraud rules include duplicate customer-email detection, suspicious-domain monitoring, blocked traffic sources and exclusions across programs. The 14-day trial requires no credit card and includes paid features except payouts, with limits of 500 links, 10,000 clicks per month, one custom domain, three Partner Groups, one Program and three seats. The free plan includes 100 links, 5,000 monthly clicks and one seat. Starter costs $49 a month and includes two Programs, three seats and a $10,000 monthly Partner Revenue limit. Refport provides web and API access and a partner portal. The maker says adding its SDK and connecting Stripe takes about five minutes. Refport is based in Dijon, France, and offers support by email and a free 30-minute demo with the founder.