Demystifying the Confusing World of Affiliate Tools Pricing: Tracker Software (19)
Demystifying the Confusing World of Affiliate Tools Pricing: Tracker Software
Since bobliu's "Best Tracking Software 2016?" poll attracted so much attention, we thought it would be useful to show a comparison of the top 3 favorite trackers according to poll results.
In case you didn't bother checking out the poll, the top 3 trackers were:
Unfortunately like many affiliate software tools, it can be difficult to determine exactly how much each tracker will end up costing you.
If you're trying to decide on which tracker to use, I'm assuming cost will be a major consideration. Of course there are others such as tracker features, ease of use etc. However, this post is designed to demystify the pricing structure of this essential software. It will compare the 3 trackers purely from the economical standpoint - to calculate some estimated costs based on some assumptions of your current (and future) traffic levels.
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"Hits" or "Events" Defined
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Before doing anything else, let's define what "hits" are, because that is the main metric that determines tracking costs.
Basically, a "hit" is anything that results in data being logged in the tracker - when a banner is clicked, when a pop lander is displayed, when a lander is clicked through, or when a conversion is posted to the tracker from the affiliate network or offer advertiser.
For self-hosted trackers, more hits means you need a more powerful server. For managed trackers, the cost is calculated based on the number of hits as well.
Voluum charges by the number of "events", which is practically the same thing as hits. One interesting point about Voluum is that it does not count “events” from its sister company Zeropark as chargeable hits, so if you are running mainly Zeropark traffic, Voluum can be a very cost effective option.
Thrive charges by initial hits only. This is important, since it will only count banner clicks for display traffic, or lander impressions for pop traffic. No matter how many lander click-throughs or conversions you have, prices are based only on initial hits.
FunnelFlux’s software costs is a flat $99 per month. However, Funnelflux is a self-hosted solution, which means that you are responsible for your own hosting. Your hosting costs will necessarily increase with the number of hits as well: the higher your traffic volume, the more powerful your hosting will need to be, which will result in higher additional costs.
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Tracker Plans & Costs
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Voluum:
Voluum is a fully hosted and managed tracking solution, and has the following plans and corresponding costs:
PRO - $99/month. Includes 1 million hits. Hits over that cost $0.04 per 1000.
AGENCY - $399/month. Includes 10 million hits. Extra hits cost $0.036 per 1000.
ENTERPRISE - $999/month. Includes 30 million hits. Extra hits cost $0.03 per 1000.
You can find Voluum's monthly cost calculator here (scroll to the bottom).
Thrive Managed:
$299/mo - up to 200k hits/day
$499/mo - 500k hits/day
$799/mo - 1M hits/day
$1,199/mo - 2M hits/day
$1,599/mo - 3M hits/day
$2,399/mo - 5M hits/day
$4,499/mo - 10M hits/day
Note: Thrive charges by initial hits only - lander clicks and conversions are free.
(Prices are for reference only - subject to change at any time.)
FunnelFlux:
$99/month per license for single domain.
However, since FunnelFlux is a self hosted solution, you will need to factor in additional hosting costs. We have estimated the additional costs required for hosting based on higher traffic levels which results in total costs including license+hosting of approximately:
~$119/mo (including ~$20/mo for hosting) - up to 500k hits/day
~$139/mo (including ~$40/mo for hosting) - 1M hits/day
~$259/mo (including ~$160/mo for hosting) - 2M hits/day
~$499/mo (including ~$400/mo for hosting) - 5M hits/day
~$699/mo (including ~$600/mo for hosting) - 10M hits/day
(Note: "~" signifies approximate costs. Please see post below for details concerning the tests we have run to arrive at these prices.)
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Tracker Costs Comparison Graphs
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Here comes the interesting part - Hits vs. Cost graphs for the 3 tracking solutions.
Because Voluum charges by "events", Thrive charges by initial clicks/visits, and FunnelFlux server costs depend on the number of hits, the only way to compare apples to apples would be to calculate costs for each tracker based on certain Lander CTRs.
What do I mean by that? Allow me to take the first set of data points from the graphs, and explain what all the numbers mean:
In this table, "Initial Hits" are either banner clicks if running display traffic, or lander visits if running pop traffic.
Voluum's PRO Plan of $99/month includes 1M events per month. How much traffic or "Initial Hits" can you send to the tracker without going over 1M events?
->If you're direct-linking without using a landing page, the $99/mo plan will cover you for 1M "Initial Hits", which are banner clicks for display or offer page views for pop. 1M hits/mo = 33k hits/day.
->If you're using a lander, the 1M events will include "Initial Hits" plus the number of lander click-throughs. For example if your average Lander CTR is 10%, that means you can only send 1M/1.1 = 909,090 "Initial Hits" to the tracker to still be covered by the $99/mo plan. 909,090 hits/mo = around 30k/day.
->Similarly, the graphs will show you the number of "Initial Hits" you can send to each tracker for the costs shown, for 2 other Lander CTRs: 50% and 100%. These scenarios are provided to give you an idea on how lander CTR will affect tracker pricing.
(Note: Normally, the number of conversions are included as "events", but because they are usually negligibly low compared to initial hits or lander clicks, they are excluded for ease of calculation.)
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We have extended this analysis based on the same set of assumptions from initial 33,000 hits per day all the way to 10,000,000 hits per day.
Finally - below are the Tracker Cost Comparison Graphs under this common set of assumptions.
(Note regarding Voluum data in the graphs above: The Voluum Cost Calculator only goes up to 100M events/month, or 3.33M events/day - which costs $3099/month. All costs beyond this level are extrapolated based on known data.)
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Important Considerations
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1. While this analysis may seem to suggest that a self-hosted flat license fee solution is the most cost effective after a certain threshold, it is important to remember that with self-hosted trackers such as FunnelFlux, at high volumes your data storage costs will also become increasingly demanding. If you want to keep a huge amount of data on a server and run regular reporting on increasingly massive dataset, you need the resources and additional budget for that. Otherwise, you will need to purge data regularly or backup off-site.
Tom Fang from Thrive has wisely pointed out that “Scaling a database is no simple task by itself [...] when your database drive is 500GB and need to scale to 1TB, do not think that it will be an easy task to just ask your hosting provider to increase your drive size [...] this is a huge undertaking the more clicks you have.”
2. With non-managed infrastructure that does not auto-scale, you should invest in a technical staff member who knows how to handle things. There's no point sending 10 M / day clicks to a server you set up blindly and have no idea what to do with.
3. These tests do not take into account tracking performance (latencies and redirect speeds), those will depend on your server, its location, and your traffic, as well as load balancing of the system.
4. When choosing a tracker, pricing should not be the only consideration. Always going for the cheapest option can be a false economy. Other important considerations are tracker performance (i.e. redirection speed, report generation speed), ease of maintenance (of database for example), and whether the tracker contains the features you're needing.
Questions? Comments? Please ask/make them below!
Amy
Reserved
Wow. It is always good to see some real testing on complex matters such as this.
We have used or tested all three internally. And there are definite advantages and disadvantages to each type of solution.
We also did a price comparison internally, and while it was nowhere nearly as detailed as this one, the conclusion we came to was the same:
1. As volume of traffic increases, having a fixed fee for tracking software becomes much much less expensive.
2. However, this needs to be balanced against the other, indirect benefits that a hosted solution can provide.
Nice!
Thanks Amy for documenting this. I guess I'll have to change our pricing lol 
Semi-joking here... as we're clearly underpriced.
Especially considering all the features we have and all the new ones coming in today's upgrade.
Wow, didn't expect to see
Well written and informative Amy, I'm very pleased to read points 3 & 4 as they're very underrated:
Originally Posted by vortex
We have a team just shy of 100 people (of which 40 are senior engineers) working on our products which isn't chump change when it comes to overhead. And a six figure monthly bill with AWS to cover the cost of our 9 data centers (200+ servers). This is what's required to process and track 500M+ visitors a day & $1B of annual ad spend on
Unless you have really good server skills or a server admin that you can ping 24h , I think it's better to try the managed route, struggling with all the server stuff instead working on your campaigns doesn't really pay off on the long run. You never know when you server crashes for different reasons and until you get it back on, you already lost a ton. Not even talking about redirect speed, load times etc.
@rob_gryn I didn't know you have your HQ in Krakow, just went there this summer, beautiful city...
Originally Posted by rob_gryn
Scaling self-hosted tracker installs to deal with global traffic, in an intelligent way, is definitely not for the faint-hearted.
It's one of those things where it is more likely to work well when a) you know the tech side well, b) you can hire people to do it, c) the cost savings are worth it vs simplicity and time savings from managed infrastructure, and d) you get some sense of achievement from doing it.
I know the challenge of making it work can be one of the main reasons the more tech savvy people are interested in that (e.g. having 10 independent installs with subdomains for each, or DNS-level load balancing with some synchronization stuff, automation of this and that, etc.). It's again not something people should take lightly.
Thanks for taking the time to do this Amy - will save a lot of those looking for a tracking solution a huge amount of time. It's great to see a side-by-side cost vs volume comparison - the deciding factor for many. There's only so much a solution can do to shave MS of redirect speeds.
Shocked to see such huge cost differences between each solution.
Originally Posted by zeno
Aside from having to manage scaling, databases, tech problems, etc. in your main server you also need to worry about scaling in different servers, redirect speeds, different domains, etc. according to your campaigns unless you never run in different countries.
Amy's costs comparison are great assuming you're running the same traffic every day, but any seasoned affiliate knows this can change a lot from one week to another if an offer dies or any other problem surges.
You could be running 500k/day visits this week and next week scale to 3m visits per day and then scale it hard for a couple weeks and go back to 100k visits per day after a good run.
If you're using a managed solution it will auto scale, but you're paying a lot of extra things and scaling plans that you might not use the next month (you know you could use them if you hit it again) then it feels like you're being charged for something that could OR could not be used.
Very very informative. Thanks Amy
I have a problem with people always talking about 'what is cheaper', especially when you are not dealing with commodities.
One major lesson I recently learned from a billionaire who is an investor in my buddys company, is to hire the best possible people you can, with the best possible track record, and prepare to pay TOP price for them.
He did NOT say, "Hire the cheapest people"
...he did not say, "Hire the person that is the best value"
...he did NOT say "Hire the most familiar person"
...he clearly stated to hire the smartest people in that given field.
I used to run all my companies by hiring cheap designers, cheap developers, and cheap media buyers who I could train in countries like the philippines, brazil, and romania.
I figured "hey, ill do a little extra legwork in training and communication, to save some money"
I did this for years.
And all these years I have constantly had to transition from one outsourcer/employee, to the next, to the next.
Constantly shifting.
Constantly chasing new campaigns, and business models, to try and get to that magical 'passive' income.
I always thought I could find a new way to hire someone smart, for a good value, and use a new point of leverage to keep them working for me.
But what I found is that my mindset was fucked.
I was in pure scarcity mentality.
Thats why I was failing.
One of the biggest things I've learned over the past few years, is to stop trying to find 'the cheapest'.
I believe this is very closely related to the dilemma that many newbie affiliates go through, where they are always trying to find 'the best' (ad network, lander, offer, cloaker, etc)
Instead, I believe the goal should always be to find 'the best'.
I still always have to catch myself.
I'm looking to hire for a number of positions in my company.
I have this urge to just hire someone goshdarnit... but i have to resist, and save myself the pain of hiring another 'pretty good' employee, and instead hold myself out for a spectacular game-changer.
Elon Musk hires A+++ players in all his companies.
He only hires the BEST.
People whom he can learn from.
Stop looking for 'the cheapest', and instead focus on finding the best.
Originally Posted by johnaff
What the OP is recommending is that you should know what things cost before you buy it.
I definitely do not buy the cheapest traffic source.
But I definitely know what different traffic sources cost.
Because unless you know what things cost, you can't make the right tradeoffs.
It is pointless arguing that X is better than Y, if you don't know how much more X costs than Y.
And AM is all about making the right tradeoffs so that you can optimise the metrics that really matters.
@johnaff - definitely agree with you on how it's not always wise to go with the cheapest option. Thus this last point in the original post:
Thank you all for the feedback and discussion! Keep it coming!
Amy
Originally Posted by vortex
I know these posts are not easy to write, and I imagine it required a lot of time and work.
All I can say is, well done.
And encore!
Agreed with cmdeal, it's not easy to cover everything in a post from all angles while remaining neutral about your position.
Posts like this should get more attention, kudos Amy.
AMY!! I love this post.
For those looking for a high performance tracker, also consider TRACK REVENUE.
Track Revenue is a fully hosted and managed tracking solution (Cloud SaaS), and has the following plans and corresponding costs:
FREE TRIAL - (free) includes 100,000 hits.
PRO - $99/month. Includes 2 million hits.
AGENCY - $359/month. Includes 10 million hits.
ENTERPRISE - $899/month. Includes 30 million hits.
There is even a promo offer right now if you are a MPIRE NETWORK affiliate. If you are an affiliate there, the MPIRE Plan is FREE for you ($250 value) for 4,000,000 hits.
What a great post! It looks like it took so much effort! Great job!
Adsbridge is another affordable option as well.
Our pricing is competitive too!:
Free Trial - 50.000 visits
Starter - 100.000 visits - $29/month ($25/month if paid annually)
Professional - 1.000.000 visits - $89/month ($75/month if paid annually)
Business - 10.000.000 visits - $359/month ($305/month if paid annually)
Enterprise - 25.000.000 visits - $699/month ($595/month if paid annually)
Exckusive - 50.000.000+ visits - Individual pricing
-Zach
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