Rewardful vs ShareASale: Which is Best for Partnerships and Affiliates?

Partnership and affiliate marketing platforms empower brands to acquire new customers and revenue through joint promotions, influencers, publishers, and expert networks. But choosing the right software can be challenging with so many options.

This guide examines Rewardful and ShareASale head-to-head – two leading solutions for partnership management and affiliate marketing. We’ll compare features, tracking, customization, support, ideal use cases, pricing, and user reviews.

By understanding the pros and cons of Rewardful vs ShareASale, you can determine the best platform for your partnership and affiliate initiatives. Let’s dive in.

Rewardful Overview

Rewardful provides automated, customizable referral and loyalty marketing software. Main capabilities include:

Referral Marketing

• Trackable referral links
• Automated reward delivery
• Social sharing integration
• Custom new user promotions
• Detailed referral analytics

Loyalty Programs

• Custom tiered point systems
• Rewards catalogs
• Member leaderboards
• POS and CRM integrations
• Automated enrollment

Platform

• Templates to launch quickly
• User segmentation
• Real-time dashboards
• Trigger automations
• Open API for customization

Over 700 ecommerce, retail, consumer app, and agency clients use Rewardful to drive measurable engagement and growth.

ShareASale Overview

ShareASale provides affiliate marketing software to help brands manage, track, and optimize thousands of publisher partnerships driving leads and sales. Key features include:

Affiliate Tracking

• Cookie tracking
• URL parameters configuration
• Custom conversion events
• Referrer and channel attribution
• Real-time transaction reporting

Affiliate Management

• Recruit, manage and pay affiliates
• Commission rules configuration
• Automated approval workflows
• Robust affiliate portal
• Payout integration

Analytics

• Reporting on ROI, EPC, conversions
• Lifetime value tracking
• Monitor affiliate links and creatives
• Manage allowed traffic sources
• Custom dashboards

Thousands of brands use ShareASale to maximize the ROI of their influencer, partnership, and performance marketing efforts.

Now that we’ve provided quick overviews, let’s compare Rewardful and ShareASale across key capabilities.

Rewardful vs ShareASale Feature Comparison

While Rewardful and ShareASale share some functionality, Rewardful focuses on consumer programs while ShareASale handles B2B affiliate management.

As you can see, Rewardful specializes in consumer referral and loyalty initiatives while ShareASale excels at in-depth affiliate tracking, optimization and management. But both provide automation and insights to maximize relationship marketing ROI.

Next let’s examine the analytics, customization, and support offered.

Rewardful vs ShareASale Analytics

To track program performance, built-in analytics are crucial. Here is an overview of reporting:

Rewardful

• Charts showing key engagement metrics
• Track user activity over time
• Monitor loyalty activity
• Measure referral metrics and ROI

ShareASale

• Granular tracking across refers, clicks, conversions, revenue
• Customizable analytics dashboards
• Affiliate leaderboards
• ROI, EPC, and LTV tracking
• Monitor traffic sources and creatives

While metrics differ based on use case, both platforms provide excellent analytics and visibility into the key performance indicators for their respective programs.

Rewardful vs ShareASale Customization

To match unique brands and workflows, customization is vital:

Rewardful

• White-labeled with your branding
• Flexible rewards catalogs
• Custom loyalty point programs
• Personalized email templates
• Open API for advanced customization

ShareASale

• Whitelabeled affiliate portal
• Flexible commission rules
• Custom conversion and event tracking
• Tailor affiliate application flows
• Personalized affiliate communications
• Open API for deep customization

Rewardful and ShareASale both enable extensive configuration without reliance on developers. Users can personalize programs to meet unique needs.

Rewardful vs ShareASale Support

In terms of customer support, both Rewardful and ShareASale offer:

• Email ticketing
• Phone and chat options
• Onboarding assistance
• Ongoing account management
• Robust help documentation

Support receives positive feedback on both platforms. ShareASale may cater better to technically-adept B2B users while Rewardful suits casual business users. But expect quality assistance either route.

Next let’s examine integrations and mobile capabilities.

Rewardful vs ShareASale Integrations

Expandability through app integrations is important. Here are some key integration capabilities:

Rewardful

• CRM systems like Salesforce, Hubspot
• Email systems like Mailchimp, Drip
• Commerce platforms like WooCommerce, Shopify
• Slack, Segment, Zapier

ShareASale

• CRM systems like Salesforce, HubSpot
• Email platforms like Mailchimp
• Shopping carts like WooCommerce, Magento
• Accounting systems
• Zapier, Integromat

With Zapier and Segment, both platforms connect well with surrounding martech and sales stacks. But ShareASale offers more CRM, cart, and accounting connectors.

Rewardful vs ShareASale Mobile Apps

Mobile apps allow program users to track performance on the go. Here are the mobile capabilities:

Rewardful

• iOS and Android apps
• Check loyalty balances and rewards
• Make referrals from mobile
• Receive notifications

ShareASale

• iOS and Android apps
• Manage affiliates and offers
• View analytics dashboards
• Approve affiliate signups
• Track clicks and conversions

The mobile experience covers core business needs on both Rewardful and ShareASale for managing programs.

Rewardful vs ShareASale Pricing

Rewardful and ShareASale both offer free trial periods. Their paid pricing starts at:

As you can see, ShareASale offers significantly more affordable pricing for small businesses to get started. Rewardful costs almost 5X more monthly for core features.

Volume discounts available with both for large programs. But ShareASale aligns better to SMB budgets.

Ideal Users for Rewardful

Rewardful works well for:

• Restaurants, cafes, and retail chains
• Consumer apps wanting to increase user engagement
• Employers looking to drive staff retention
• B2C ecommerce brands focused on repeat purchases
• Agencies running loyalty/referral campaigns for clients
• Brands with limited budgets but seeking proven techniques

With turnkey templates and affordable pricing, Rewardful suits consumer-focused businesses extremely well.

Ideal Users for ShareASale

ShareASale best fits:

• Ecommerce merchants running affiliate programs
• SaaS and digital good companies
• Businesses promoting services through influencers
• Anyone managing partnerships with content creators
• Advertisers tracking publisher performance
• Marketplaces and aggregators with referred commerce models
• Large budgets aiming to maximize partnership marketing ROI

For businesses collaborating with B2B partners, influencers, or publishers to promote sales, ShareASale provides enterprise-grade capabilities.

Rewardful vs ShareASale Customer Reviews

Rewardful Reviews

“We’ve been able to create an automated, customized loyalty and referral program that our customers love using Rewardful.”

“The biggest value is having our loyalty and referral programs reinforce our brand creatively instead of looking like every other generic solution.”

“We’ve seen member enrollments increase over 15x in under a year since launching our program on Rewardful.”

ShareASale Reviews

ShareASale has been rock solid for 10+ years in managing our affiliate program as it scaled to over 25K partners – amazing tracking capabilities.

“The customizable dashboards and granular reporting on publisher activity has been invaluable as our affiliate channel has grown.”

“Hands down the best platform for anyone who needs to manage a large volume of affiliates and campaign data.”

Both platforms boast excellent reputations and stellar feedback from users.

Rewardful vs ShareASale: Which is Right for You?

So which platform is better suited for your needs – Rewardful or ShareASale? Here are some key considerations:

• Rewardful supports loyalty and referral programs targeted at end consumers.
• ShareASale specializes in managing large-scale B2B affiliate partnerships.
• Rewardful provides more templates and faster launch capabilities out of the box.
• ShareASale offers enterprise-grade capabilities but requires more expertise to tailor.
• Rewardful starts at $199/month with very affordable pricing.
• ShareASale is enterprise-priced but starts at just $40/month.
• Rewardful better suits smaller brands focused on overall engagement.
• ShareASale made for brands managing thousands of affiliates.

For most small businesses, Rewardful should satisfy requirements at reasonable rates. ShareASale prioritizes extremely robust enterprise B2B program management.

Think carefully about your budget, maturity, needs and objectives to pick the right platform for your goals. Both deliver excellent value but through tailored approaches.

Partnership Program Alternatives

While Rewardful and ShareASale lead their respective markets, here are some alternative partnership management options:

Referral Partnership Software

• Ambassador – Rewards users for referrals and shares. From $65/mo.
• Viral Loops – Specializes in viral referral and waitlist capabilities. From $205/mo.
• Referral SaaSquatch – Combines referrals with loyalty. From $199/mo.
• Extole – Advanced tools for loyalty and social advocacy. Enterprise quotes.
• Amplifinity – Loyalty and engagement platform tailored to retailers. Custom quotes.

Affiliate Marketing Software

• Everflow – Robust enterprise affiliate tracking and fraud protection. Custom quotes.
• Partnerize – Unified partnership automation platform. Custom quotes.
• LeadDyno – Affiliate + lead incentives and tracking. From $69/mo.
• Affise – Performance marketing and advertiser platform. Enterprise quotes.

Do thorough research to match the best platform to your specific business needs and budget. Both Rewardful and ShareASale make excellent starting points for evaluation.

Key Things to Know About Rewardful and ShareASale

When comparing Rewardful head-to-head against ShareASale, keep these key differentiators in mind:

• Rewardful specializes in consumer loyalty and referral marketing automation.
• ShareASale focuses on managing extremely large-scale B2B affiliate partnerships.
• Rewardful provides templates for quicker launch of common program types.
• ShareASale offers more advanced customization for complex partnerships.
• Rewardful starts at just $199/month with very affordable pricing.
• ShareASale starts at $40/month but scales up for bigger enterprise needs.
• Rewardful great for restaurants, retailers, and consumer brands engaging customers.
• ShareASale designed for major brands collaborating with thousands of business partners.

Determine the right fit based on your audience, budget, use case and technical capabilities when choosing between these two capable software options.

The Bottom Line

Both Rewardful and ShareASale provide partnership automation, but tailored for different users:

• Rewardful focuses on managing consumer loyalty initiatives, ambassador programs, and buyer referral campaigns.
• ShareASale specializes in automating extremely large-scale enterprise B2B affiliate partnerships.
• Rewardful starts at just $199 per month with transparent SMB-friendly pricing.
• ShareASale starts more affordable at $40/month but scales up for bigger programs.
• Rewardful great for loyalty, referrals, and consumer-focused engagement.
• ShareASale made for major brands running vast affiliate and publisher programs.

Review your specific program objectives, audiences, and budgets to determine the right long-term platform provider. But investing in automation pays dividends either route.