Among the well-established affiliate marketing platforms, UpPromote has recently gained traction, with some billing it as the ultimate solution. It was created by the Vietnamese company Secomapp, which specializes in producing Shopify apps.
To see how well it holds up to these claims, I gave UpPromote a test drive and set out to write this review. Is it truly the best that the affiliate marketing software industry currently has to offer? Stick with me to find out.
Table of Contents
Why Do You Need Affiliate Marketing Software?
According to Kinsta, 54% of brand marketers report affiliate marketing as one of their top three customer acquisition channels, while 20% cite it as their prime customer acquisition channel. Certain industries, such as publishers, report an even greater importance of affiliate marketing in their revenue flow—31% of publishers claim it to be their main source of revenue.
Anyone looking to build an affiliate marketing program, especially if the idea is to work with a broader affiliate network, can save a lot of time and money with a software solution such as UpPromote. It provides a unified space to manage everything related to your affiliate program and automates basic tasks that require significant time and effort to handle manually.
What Is UpPromote?
UpPromote is a comprehensive affiliate marketing solution designed for seamless integration with Shopify, the world’s leading e-commerce platform. In fact, you can get UpPromote directly from the Shopify app store.
As an all-in-one affiliate marketing platform, it offers everything you need to create and manage your affiliate campaigns, including:
- Tools to quickly build your affiliate program from the ground up, with the help of customizable options;
- Recruitment and communication tools to help you identify, recruit, and communicate with affiliates for your brand;
- Motivational tools to help create incentives for your affiliate partners and motivate them to do their job;
- Tracking and management tools to track and analyze your affiliate marketers’ performance and manage payments and other essentials.
Which Features Set UpPromote Apart From the Competition?
UpPromote’s basic workflow is fairly straightforward. The process is neatly separated into three main steps: creating your program by fine-tuning its parameters, finding affiliates to work with, and tracking them. Where UpPromote shines isn’t in the main workflow but in the level of customization in managing affiliates.
For instance, you have several options to choose from when customizing your payment model, including:
- Basing commissions on milestones rather than individual orders;
- Setting up special commissions for particular products;
- Lifetime commissions;
- Paying commissions in store credit rather than money.
Multiple integrations are available, such as Appstle, Recharge, Bold, Seal, Recurpay, and Partial.ly integrations for subscription management, PayPal for payment, and Mailchimp, Klaviyo, or Omnisend to sync your affiliate contact lists.
The support team is professional, fast, and responsive. It works 24/7 to cover every time zone. Fraud protection features are also available, even on the free plan.
UpPromote Pricing
UpPromote has four different subscription options:
- Free plan
- Growth plan ($29.99/month or $299.90/year)
- Professional plan ($89.99/month or $899.90/year)
- Enterprise plan ($199.99/month or $1999.90/year)
Free Plan
The unlimited free version allows you to:
- Create and manage a single affiliate program
- Get 1 coupon per affiliate
- Run 200 referral reviews per month
- Get 50MB of media space
- Send 100 bulk emails per day
- Gain access to most features
Growth Plan
With the growth plan, you gain everything available in the free version, plus:
- Unlimited affiliate programs
- 300 referral reviews per month
- 300 bulk emails per day
Professional Plan
The professional plan adds the following features to the ones available with the growth plan:
- Unlimited coupons
- 600 referral reviews per month
- 400 bulk emails per day
- Unlimited media space
- Auto-generate coupons
- Custom affiliate links
- Automatic payout with PayPal
- Multi-level marketing
Enterprise Plan
Finally, the enterprise plan grants the following features on top of the ones above:
- Unlimited number of referral reviews
- 500 bulk emails per day
- Multiple stores
- Coupon code commissioning
- Custom development options
What Are the Pros and Cons of UpPromote?
Let’s count up the best aspects of UpPromote and the ones that may leave a bit to be desired.
Pros
- A free version is available to use, although limited to a single affiliate program;
- A simple, intuitive, user-friendly interface;
- Unique features such as being able to pay commission in store credit;
- A high degree of customization;
- Seamless integration with Shopify;
- Fraud protection, even on the free plan;
- A robust support team.
Cons
- You can only use UpPromote with a Shopify store, making it mostly irrelevant for other e-commerce platforms or B2B businesses;
- The cap on bulk emails, even for Enterprise users, may be limiting for customers running a larger business;
- There’s a lack of CRM integrations.
Bottom Line: Is UpPromote Worth Trying?
While UpPromote is a powerful platform with an abundance of features, including some that are free, there are a few important caveats to consider.
UpPromote works optimally for a Shopify-based online store that doesn’t see major traffic and requires a fairly compact affiliate marketing campaign. However, while an enterprise plan is available, some of the limitations make the platform largely unsuitable for bigger clients.
These problems go beyond UpPromote’s restrictions on Shopify, which is generally suboptimal for enterprise clients. The daily limit on bulk emails, even with the most expensive plan, may prove to be a major issue, along with a lack of CRM integrations.
Need Help With Your Affiliate Marketing Efforts? Contact Vivian Agency!
Regardless of whether you decide that UpPromote is the perfect choice for you or you’d rather give another platform a chance, building an affiliate program from scratch could prove to be a major challenge, especially if it’s your first time doing it.
Luckily, we at Vivian Agency are here to help you. With over 50 successful affiliate programs that we helped bring to reality, as well as over $12 million in revenue and 8,000 influencers and affiliates that we helped generate for our clients, you can be assured that we’ve got the chops to help you turbocharge your campaign to a level you may have never dreamed of.
Feel free to write to us if you have any questions or book a call with us directly so we can set a time to discuss your campaign plans.
