Home > Questions and Answers > Tracking Questions

---

Which Tracker? (18)

---

I'm having some paralysis analysis trying to decide which tracker to start out with. Voluum or Binom or Funnelflux? I like that Voluum has optimizer features built-in, so I'm leaning that way, but I'm worried my costs will skyrocket down the road.

I did search the forum and tried to find threads where people were discussing the pros/cons of each, but really wasn't able to find anything to help my decision.

Any advice? Also, if I pick one tracker and end up wanting to switch down the road, how much of a hassle is that?

TIA

---

If you like Voluum and can afford it, why not start with it and not overthink it.

Both Binom and Funnelflux have options to import from Voluum
https://docs.binom.org/settings-voluum.php
http://docs.funnelflux.com/en/articl...nother-tracker

You should not be worried. If they skyrocket, it means that you found a way to make AM work for you. You will have time along the way to understand all the features of a tracker and you will know what is important for you when switching (if needed to).

---

What traffic do you want to run?

When you want to run pops it´s better to use a self hosted tracker where you don´t have any limits in terms of volume.

There you can check FunnelFlux, first month is $1 only.

Funnelflux also offers a managed solution, it´s basically exactly the same as self hosted but there they take care about the server stuff.

Funnelflux also has a cloud hosted version that you can use for free at the moment for up to 1M visitors/month, you can check it out HERE

Binom is also selfhosted and is very good to use.

They have a live demo that you can check HERE and they also offer a free trial.

I was using CPV Lab for several years and when I started with pops in beginning of 2017 I switched to Voluum because it has better features.

It only took me few weeks before I had to switch to a selfhosted tracker because I already had too much volume.

---

Twinaxe started pops in 2017. Like 3 years ago. In weeks he was hitting volume and event caps. My brain hurts.

---

I mean, that's an excellent point.

While I've been doing AM for 10+ years with content sites and search traffic, I'm definitely a noob when it comes to paid traffic. I was going to start with the 40-day pop tutorial and then expand from there. Sounds like FunnelFlux might be a good option for me then. Especially the $1 first month, that definitely helps. While I have money to invest in making this happen, the more I can save for buying traffic, the better.

It's good inspiration for me!

---

I just realized the Binom and FunnelFlux versions of the 40-day pop tutorial are not complete. For the sake of following the tutorial, I'm going to probably just stick with Voluum then. After I've completed the tutorial and have more experience, I can always switch at that time to one of the others.

---

They appear not complete as Amy did separate posts only for the chapters that use the tracker. All chapters not requiring to use the tracker are in the Voluum directory, but apply to all trackers.

---

I agree that I should be able to translate the Voluum steps into whichever tracker I choose fairly easily, but since I'm completely new to trackers, I might still just go with Voluum for simplicity sake with following the guide. Plus I am interested in Voluum and this way I'll get to use it. As you said, the other trackers have options to import Voluum data if I change my mind or need to switch based on volume.

---

Hey @skolvikings, you'll be happy with your choice. Amy's Voluum tutorial is very detailed so you shouldn't have any problems with following it but in case you do, you can always talk to me and I'll help.

Use our discount for stm members to register: https://stmforum.com/forum/showthrea...l=1#post399124 and you will get 1. cheaper Voluum's subscription and 2. increased Automizer limits for free.


Karolina

---

Have loved Binom since switching over last year, no complaints fast support and nice clean interface

---

You are right - I had meant to finish those versions but never could find the time to.

Voluum will do just fine. After you've finished the tutorial and have some experience, if you're planning on continuing with pop and starting to run more traffic, you can always compare costs between trackers then and re-evaluate.


Yup that's the idea - thanks for clarifying!

But it's also true that I never got around to finishing the binom version, or start on the funnelflux version.

Which is a shame really - as they are both excellent trackers (all 3 are!)



Amy

---

Quick question... I was talking to someone about CPA and everything involved in POP. They were wondering what to do if the tracker was having an outage, because you'd be screwed sending traffic to a tracker that was down.

Are there ways to mitigate that possibility?

---

This is a very real concern for sure! And this is also part of the reason why some affiliates prefer to pay more for cloud tracking solutions.

Let me get an expert to answer this questions for you - stay tuned!



Amy

---

If it's your tracker, you can do a check every 10 minutes to see if the domain responds, and connect to the tracker API to fetch the timestamp of the last visit in any landing page.

In case it detects an anomaly, just trigger a pause in spending in all traffic sources through their API.

---

In the end an outage can happen everywhere, cloudhosted as well as selfhosted.

On cloudhosted an advantage can be that these platforms have many users so it should be in the platforms interest to solve such issues as soon as possible.

A disadvantage however is that you often have to rely on the paltforms then and can´t do anything to solve the issue yourself.

When they then take too long for it or don´t get it fixed you´re screwed.

On selfhosted trackers the whole responsibility to keep it running is at you.

So when something goes wrong you have to fix the issue to get it running again yourself.

But I wouldn´t really worry too much about it.

I am no server guy at all and have no idea about server administration and such stuff but I also use a selfhosted tracker and have to take care of the server myself.

This is from my current server



You see, 447 days uptime with no issues at all.

The real uptime is about 3 1/2 years without any downtime.

I just had to reinstall everything once because I first ran the server with Plesk and that messed up the setup a bit.

Now I run the server without any control panels and it runs and runs and runs

---

Thanks everyone for the answers and advice! I figure I can set an UptimeRobot alert for my tracking domain, have it email my smartphone's SMS email address. It shouldn't be too hard to manually pause campaigns for now if needed, since I'm just starting out and only have 2 traffic sources at the moment. As things scale, I can look at the possibility of automating things, but for now this should work.

---

Don't overthink it. Even if anything is down for 24 hours with you not noticing it, it will just be 0.3% of your yearly ad spend. And from my experience cloud hosted solutions will never be down so long, maybe a few hours max... It's more likely that the offer is down in my opinion... but even then: focus on the more important stuff.

---

I agree with the above, don't stress over it. The likelihood of downtime is low and arguably higher for offers... both the networks and stuff like the offer getting capped, the advertiser page having issues, and so on.

You have multiple players after the tracker who are generally more likely to screw you, and you can't do much about them. Monitoring offer URLs/advertiser pages for uptime, content changes etc. in the long run will likely yield greater dividends.

---

Home > Questions and Answers > Tracking Questions