WordPress affiliate plugin

ViralPayouts vs Easy Affiliate

ViralPayouts has no monthly fee, pays your affiliates for you and pays recruiters on every program. You pay 10% of what you pay partners, falling to 3%, and nothing in a month when nobody sells. With Easy Affiliate, you pay your affiliates yourself and has two-tier recruiting on some plans only. It costs $8.3 to $16.63 a month.

Every figure for Easy Affiliate comes from its own pages or named review sites, checked 12 October 2026. Sources are listed at the bottom.

Why brands pick ViralPayouts over Easy Affiliate

Best fit: A brand off WordPress, or one that does not want to handle affiliate payouts, that wants a recruiter override and access to partners through a public directory.

$0 a month
No plan and no setup fee. 10% of what you pay partners, falling to 3% at $10,000 a month.
Payouts done for you
One invoice per program. ViralPayouts sends every partner and recruiter their money and collects tax forms.
Recruiters built in
Customer links and recruit links on every program, with the override set your way and reversed on refunds.

Start a program free

Side by side

	Easy Affiliate	ViralPayouts
Price	$8.3 to $16.63 a monthTerm: Annual licence; "all annual renewals are at full price"; 14-day unconditional refund policy	$0 a month. 10% of what you pay partners, falling to 3% at $10,000 a month.
Setup fee	Not stated	None
Fee for paying affiliates	None from Easy Affiliate ("no middleman fees when you pay your affiliates"); PayPal fees not addressed	Included in the fee above: no charge to the brand for sending payoutsPartners pay Whop's own fee when they withdraw to their bank
Pays your affiliates for you	Novia Merchant's own PayPal account	Yes You fund by bank transfer; we pay every partner
Two-tier recruiting	Higher plansUnlimited (recommends no more than three; warns of performance issues past 5-10) levelsPlus or Pro ("This add-on is available with the purchase of the Plus or Pro license")	Yes Two levels on every program: share of commission, share of sale or fixed. Paid on approved sales, never sign-ups
Public program directory	No	Yes Partners browse and join with one account
Tracking	Affiliate link cookie (esaf_click); Pretty Links short links; Automatic UTM parameters on affiliate links; WooCommerce coupon association	First-party links with click IDs, signed server-to-server events, Stripe Checkout webhook
Coupon tracking	Yes	Yes A code per partner, per program
Mobile app tracking	No	App installs, sign-ups and purchases reported from your server through the signed event API, with bounties on them. No SDK to ship in your app.
API, webhooks, MCP	webhooks	REST API for brands and partners with an OpenAPI spec, an MCP server for AI agents, a signed event API and partner postbacks
Integrations	MemberPress, WooCommerce, Easy Digital Downloads, PayPal, Pretty Links	Stripe Checkout, Shopify orders, any backend via the event API

Easy Affiliate plans in full

Basic: $8.3 a month billed yearly. $99.60 first year (normally $249/yr); 1 site; no multi-level commissions, no fraud detection
Plus: $12.47 a month billed yearly. $149.60 first year (normally $374/yr); 3 sites; multi-level commissions, fraud detection
Pro: $16.63 a month billed yearly. $199.60 first year (normally $499/yr); 5 sites; adds commission rules, Developer Tools (REST API, webhooks, Zapier), tax reports

Pricing source

Where ViralPayouts comes out ahead of Easy Affiliate

What Easy Affiliate offers

WordPress site owners, especially MemberPress, WooCommerce and Easy Digital Downloads stores and membership/course sites, who want a cheap self-hosted affiliate program.

WordPress affiliate plugin · Capterra 5 (1 reviews)

Why ViralPayouts is the better choice

ViralPayouts pays partners for the brand; Easy Affiliate leaves the merchant to pay via their own PayPal (500 affiliates per run) or offline
Works off WordPress: signed server-to-server API and Stripe Checkout webhook vs cookie tracking that caching can break
Public directory of programs and one partner account across programs; Easy Affiliate has none
No upfront licence; fee only on what partners are paid, reversed on refund
Separate recruit link built into every program rather than a Plus/Pro add-on

What Easy Affiliate users say

Paraphrased from public reviews. Follow each link to read the original.

Praise

Very easy to set up; good one-click PayPal payments and integrations with WooCommerce, EDD, MemberPress, WPForms and Formidable; support called top notch. capterra.com
Editorial reviewer called setup "one of the most intuitive setup experiences" they had tested, helped by a wizard. elegantthemes.com
Automatic fraud flag/reject of suspicious transactions. elegantthemes.com

Complaints

Application form cannot take custom fields and ignored applicants are not notified. elegantthemes.com
Per-affiliate commission overrides are easy to miss; Basic plan lacks fraud prevention and tiers. elegantthemes.com
Aggressive caching (Varnish/Memcached) stops tracking cookies being set, so commissions fail to track (vendor's own troubleshooting doc). easyaffiliate.com

About Easy Affiliate

In their words:: "The "All-in-One" Affiliate Program Plugin for WordPress" (homepage H1); tagline "Start an Affiliate Program from your WordPress Website"
Named customers:: WPBeginner (testimonial from founder Syed Balkhi), PixelJar (testimonial from co-founder Brandon Dove), Pilatesology (testimonial from co-founder Jack Coble)
Website:: easyaffiliate.com

Try ViralPayouts on test money

Set your commission and recruiter override, see what each sale costs you, and run it on the test network before a real partner joins. No monthly fee.

Start a program See pricing

More comparisons

All comparisons

Sources for Easy Affiliate (21), checked 12 October 2026

Easy Affiliate is a trademark of its owner. ViralPayouts is not affiliated with Easy Affiliate. Prices and features change: check easyaffiliate.com before you decide. Spot something out of date? Tell us and we will fix it.