Partner / Affiliate software for SaaS Subscription on Stripe
We are looking to start an affiliate program and looking for recommendations. Our primary billing and payments are on Stripe and so looking for something that works well with Stripe.
First stop was Rewardful but one issue that we see for our kind of usage is payments to affiliates are offline through the bank account. Rewardful does the tracking and calculation of course (per my understanding) but does not handle the payments that easily.
We are not looking at Paypal right now and so a pure Stripe native option is preferred. Ideal would be Stripe Connect where affiliates can see the money directly in their Stipe account in real-time rather than waiting for a month or longer through manual payout. Our model is very simple. A % of recurring subscription.
Further, trying to convince why it is a bad idea still to not build the referral tracking and payment splitting on top of billing that we anyways have done already. Why a 3rd option is better than building on top which isn't a lot over what Stripe provides with Connect. Has anyone done that? Would love to know.
If you need help with subscription management&billing, taxes and analytics, partner with PayPro Global .
PayPro Global is a full-service eCommerce partner that will help you to sell globally and boost your reach. If you're interested, schedule a free consultation here: https://payproglobal.com/
Founder of FirstPromoter.com here, we're one of the first tools that integrated with Stripe and worked exclusively with SaaS so I can share some insights about this based on my experience in the last few years.
Stripe at the moment doesn't allow a 3rd party to control the payout of a Stripe account to another Stripe account. They allow other stuff, but not payouts. It's a bit strange, but they won't provide more information about that, it's something about compliance etc.
They also are very reluctant allowing users share the Stripe API keys to other parties. That's one of the reasons you don't see tools that are not networks having this option.
Some of the new guys you see here are trying their luck being a network, which means you pay them and they pay the affiliates. Not sure if they realize at the moment, what responsibility this is and the fiscal and legal implications involved, I strongly recommend them to consult a lawyer, it's not the usual marketplace relationship. This way it possible to use Stripe as a platform while taking a fee.
You as a company need to know that since they pay the affiliates, you won't have full control over them. When you bring new affiliates into your program you're growing their network. But the biggest issue by far, which we found after migrating lots of companies from mature networks (PartnerStack for ex) is the quality of those affiliates that come from the network. So far I haven't found any network that was built recently to address the quality issue.
Anyway, you're the one deciding what route you go, a tracking tool running a private program owning the affiliates and not sharing them with competitors or using a network where you don't own the affiliates, they will get access to competitors but you might be able to use Stripe payments (with a network fee involved either to you or affiliates).
Btw, at FirstPromoter we collect and validate bank accounts to make it easy to pay by banks.
@virgil , this is very useful input. Not looking at networks. Pure play affiliate management where we do the simplest calculation i.e % of a sale.
Since you have been with Stripe long enough, could you comment on why one can't do it with Stripe Connect (Standard)? You are sharing a sale with your affiliate partner and both own the risk in % of share as well. Why is this legally complex or not preferred when Stripe seems to cover the risk.
Stripe support couldn't respond to us either, but you can use Stripe to pay other people, you just need to do that yourself and not managed by a 3rd party. Here's more info on how you can connect with other people without code https://stripe.com/docs/connect/add-and-pay-out-guide
Interesting case @Rayk, we just launched Reditus which is a partner management tool. with a marketplace.
The way you described is something we investigated but brings a lot of angles with it (legally, financially) I'm happy to chat more about this to see if we could make this happen.
You mentioned you want to pay the commission right away? Does this mean you will take the risk of any refunds / fraud etc?
Regarding your question; building one yourself vs using a third party tool. If you choose a tool which just tracks it for you, this decision is based on long term costs I would say. When they offer a marketplace which could generate new partners for you it is based on potential which is another game 🚀
Long story short. If you want to do the payments directly and don't care about getting new partners in besides your own network; build your own platform. When you are looking for new partners, you might want to check out the tools out there which offer such a solution.
Reditus looks very interesting and your point about a marketplace is a great example of why not to build your own. Very interested in exploring this option.
Refunds are an issue, but then early days you are working with partners with whom you want to share the risk and the reward. The approach is same as what Stripe Connect program says. I am assuming they have validated the legal part and in fact in the standard plan states clearly that Stripe owns the risk. If Stripe is ok, then should I bother and complicate things? We are talking about strategic partners and not long tail.
I think the difference is commission on sale v/s share of sale. Interested in what you think?
Refunds indeed won't be that risky as you work closely with the partners probably.
If you have your own strategic partners and not actively looking for new ones I would keep it internally (if you have the chance).
Interesting conversation going on here.
I am curious, why are you focusing only on SaaS? why not both SaaS and e-commerce? I see PartnerStack focusing only on SaaS too.
Why do you choose SaaS alone?
A bit obvious maybe but I love the Recurring aspect of the business.
With E-commerce you have to keep closing new deals to keep earning money, with referring SaaS you know what is coming up (as long they don't churn).
And 20%-40% from SaaS contracts for 1-3 years often has a higher value than referring anything from the e-commerce side.
We went for tapfiliate.com. Their API is amazing and you can pick different pay out methods.
Hey Ray, do all your affiliates have a Stripe account?
We've obviously considered using Stripe for payouts (and it'd be the easiest to build – by far), but it comes with several huge disadvantages and limitations that made it a dealbreaker for us.
However, you can automate your payouts in alternative ways using our Commissions API or simply mark them as 'paid' in Rewardful.
Of course, as I mentioned we did start with Rewardful thinking it plays nice with Stripe. No Paypal for us right now. We are too small + an issue routing payments through bank. We prefer it direct. The advantage we want to give our affiliates over others is instant payout rather than wait etc and share the risk of refunds etc in a transparent way. Stripe Connect fits perfectly and was looking if any solution exists that does that rather than we building it. It's hard to conclude that no provider supports it unless I am missing something and hence the post. Would love to know why not?
Ray, I am working on a project (https://www.affiliatehunt.com), we are about 3 month out for a beta release. We tightly integrate with Stripe to track commission as well as for paying commission.
My dilemma was, I didn't want my customers to use Paypal to collect payments and once I have tapped into my existing customers for affiliates, how can I find more people to promote my product.
That been said, you can build your own referral tracking, if you can justify the time. Checkout this article if you want to give it a try https://friendly.is/en/affiliates-kit . You will have to consider refunds, disputes, cancellations and plan upgrade or downgrade.
Would love to see what you do with affiliatehunt. We are early too and so volume, reach, diversity are not the concerns. Keeping it simple since our payments and billing are on Stripe anyways, I can easily see a way to use Connect and share a % with Affiliate.
The big difference I am looking at is
Collect Payments > Pay Affiliates > Pay Stripe > Rest hits the bank.
and not
Collect Payments > Pay Stripe > Rest hits the bank > Pay Affiliates from Bank.
What am I missing?
Thanks for sharing the link on friendly.is . Was thinking something on those lines or may be a bit more built into the platform that should just be couple of days of work. Was trying to argue why DIY is a bad idea ;-) You are right about refunds, disputes, upgrades etc, but our model is simple % of revenue whatever happens.