What is AffiliateWP?
AffiliateWP is a WordPress plugin built for site owners who want to add a basic affiliate program to their site. The appeal is clear: installation is quick, it lives inside your WordPress dashboard and pricing looks reasonable at first glance. But AffiliateWP is not a true affiliate platform. It only works in WordPress, the feature set is limited to basic referral tracking and payouts, and almost everything beyond that depends on extra add-ons or custom development. Many users also complain that performance drops as databases grow and that support for complex commission rules is very thin.
For a small WordPress shop that just wants a lightweight referral plugin, AffiliateWP can get the job done. For any serious affiliate or lead-gen operation that requires more, it simply does not compare.
One platform. All the tools.
From tracking to payouts – Paldock replaces the mess.
AffiliateWP vs PalDock
We spent hundreds of hours researching our competitors. Instead of guessing, we built a full step-by-step guide on How to choose the right affiliate software. We used it ourselves to analyze dozens of different tools, mapping over 30 features and limitations along the way. We didn’t stop at the surface. We actually integrated them and went through their onboarding like real users. These are the key differences:
| AffiliateWP | PalDock | |
|---|---|---|
| Tracks affiliate links |  | |
| Lead capture via embedded forms |  | |
| Lead capture via embedded API | | |
| Unified dashboard for link, form and API conversions | | |
| Advanced lead handling | | |
| GDPR compliant | | |
