Universal_Soul

Hi,

Sorry for being repetitive - I know this question was asked somewhere in the past, but I really need some help here.
I'm about to chose my affiliate program, and I narrowed it down to these two programs.
I heard about some limitations on idevaffiliate and on the other hand about poor technical support for Affiliate pro + problems with installing software and overall technical problems.

Can anyone who used one of these, or preferably both, enlighten me which one I should chose?

Many Thanks in advance

JJ

JDSalinger

I tend to do my share of affiliate selling and of course run into both programs as an affiliate. In my opinion, idevaffiliate is a little more user-friendly than post affiliate pro. This is something to keep in mind b/c the affiliates will be using the program. Obviously, can't speak to actually creating the affiliate program on these softwares, but when in doubt I would pick idevaffiliate as it is a little easier to use for the affiliates. Why not join a couple of affiliate programs that use each software and see for yourself which layout you like? There should be some examples or testimonials of each on their websites?

Greg Jacobs

post affiliate pro does EVERYTHING you could ever want, however it does require a person knowledgeable in programming to get it configured correct...

unitminer

Because I'm Quality Unit owner, I will put here link to comparison of pap vs idev published by 3rd party company without relation to idev or quality unit: Affilla - A Comparison of Two of the Best Affiliate Tracking Programs - iDevAffiliate vs. Post Affiliate Pro.
... it is one of the latest comparisons published this year.

I don't think you need higher technical knowledge for integration of PAP as for idev.
Both softwares are easy to integrate and comes with prepared html codes for integration into your website.
PAP could look more complicated, because has much more features, but you can turn them off if you don't need them all.
What is definitely better in PAP is quality of tracking (it use flash cookie tracking). If you like to read more about different types of tracking, you can read more here: Sales tracking with Flash Cookies - ABestWeb Affiliate Marketing Forum

In QU we try to offer better support starting from January 2010 - now we have 24/5 support, which includes live chat, phone, email, forum, knowledgebase 24 hours a day during business days

I don't want to do any promotion here, so please send me private message if you want to know more.

icon

I have to disagree with unitminer on one point.

IMHO - PAP4 does indeed require higher technical knowledge for integration. In addition, PAP4 does look more complicated ... because it *is* very complicated.

I cannot do a *fair* comparison w/ that of iDev Affiliate (because I do not yet own an iDev Affiliate license). However, I did go through iDev Affiliate's online admin demo area extensively, and there's no doubt in my mind that it requires much less configuration as compared to PAP4.

PAP4 definitely has a *lot* of features. But one thing I found is that often times there are multiple areas within the Merchant interface from which one must configure a single feature. Very confusing at times. Their support has been good (it started out sub-par until an individual named Tomas began responding to my support requests ... he proved to be excellent), but you can only get support via a usually cumbersome support ticket system. On occassion I could get some "real-time" support via their Live Support IM system, but on more than one occassion I was told that the Live Support IM system was reserved for Pre-Sales questions only and that all of my technical questions had to go through the (non-real-time) ticket system.

The company resides in Slovakia, so after submitting support tickets during normal working hours (here in the U.S.) I often found that I wouldn't get a response until the following (very early) morning. With the myriad of features provided by PAP4 and the added complexity of trying to figure out how to configure them, I've come to the (unfortunate) realization that it's simply too much for a single individual to conquer (and this is coming from someone with over 25 years of software experience).

To that end I would conclude with the following (personal) observation/conclusion:

If you are trying to set up an affiliate program by yourself, PAP4 may simply be too complex to tackle (even if you have a medium to advanced level of experience)

However, if you have a company along w/ an experienced (Apache/Linux/CPanel) employee that you can turn loose to handle the daily support tickets that will undoubtedly ensue, then I *would* definitely recommend PAP4 (because it is indeed very feature rich)

unitminer

Hi Icon,

thx. for sharing your experience. I will arrange improvements in support processes in our company.
Actually we did some changes from middle of February 2010 already:
1. our support is online 24 hours a day (Mo - Fri), you can reach support crew any time during a day, doesn't matter in which time zone you are.
You can contact us by phone and Live Chat if you need immediate support.
In case you have deep technical question, which needs assistance of developers, our live chat support will ask you to create ticket, which will be answered within 24 hours, but standard questions about setup, installation and integration can answer every live chat agent.

2. you don't need technical knowledge of Cpanel, Linux, Apache, because we offer with each license FREE INSTALLATION by our support crew
With full integration package we also do full setup of PAP and full integration with your existing web site. You just tell us what you need and we will setup all for you.


If you will tell me, which parts of system were hard to configure, I will create tasks for developers to make the process more simple.
We listen very carefully to feedback of our customers and we try to implement mostly just features, which customers requested from us .... we don't try to develop something, because we think customers will need.


Once again thank you for your feedback - it is very valuable for all of us.

Universal_Soul

unitminer

Great, that all was resolved. I expect Martin just suggested you to copy and paste click integration code into footer of your website.
As you see, our new 24/5 live chat really helps a lot in resolution of technical problems.

I hope your affiliate program will be great success for you. It would be great, if you will share your experiences with us after some time. If you will not like any workflow or you will need any improvement, just let me know.

Thx.

Kooza

I have used both quite extensively both as a merchant and an affiliate and I would recommend going with iDev unless there is a feature you must have which PAP has and iDev doesn't, of which there are quite a few. iDev is much easier to install and get setup and is much more user friendly. Support is also much, much better.

PAP has a lot of potential but I have found it to be buggy, clunky and things just don't work or be located as and where you would expect. I think it is built using Ajax or similar and to me it just doesn't seem to work well with this framework. The templating system is also awkward.

I remember last year getting frustrated with their support (PAP) and being told I was being unreasonable as they were all on holiday and shouldn't be expected to work 24/7. You can imagine a hosting company telling this to their clients, they would be out of business in a matter of days.

For some reason all posts on the forum have to be approved by a moderator too now which can take a while and my last post was simply ignored. This 24/5 live support sounds great though where exactly do we go to access this? I can't find any mention of it on the site?

unitminer

For Kooza:

- Installation is very easy and for clients who request it, we offer also free installation by our staff

- We offer 24/5 support (phone, chat, email) - yes, it is true, that during weekends and holidays we don't work
-> I don't think, that with iDev it is different ... also I don't agree, that from iDev you will get better support, we have multiple customers, which came from iDev to PAP, because they didn't receive support from iDev
On PAP support is working every day 7 agents - I'm not 100% sure, but iDev has not so much employees together

- posts in forum are moderated, because we are attacked every day by spam robots with hundreds of posts (captcha and protections like this doesn't work, somebody is attacking our forum with retyping services)
In case your forum post was not against our rules, there is no reason, why it should not be approved - I can double check your posts if you will give me your username in our forum

- Yes, PAP is based on GWT framework and templating is based on Smarty templates (I think Smarty is used also in iDev, so there is no big difference in templating mechanism between those systems


I'm sorry if you had bad experiences with our support in the past, we try to be better every day - in case you have still any problem with PAP, you are welcome to contact us, our agents will try to help you.

Kooza

Obviously I can only speak from my own experience and I did some research at the time and discovered a lot of others were also not happy with PAP support. However this was several months ago and things may have improved since then.

I did use your live support which was OK except I was told to submit a support ticket which kind of defeated the purpose of using the live support in the first place. The link to it on your site seems to come and go for some reason, perhaps it only shows when someone is available.

I wasn't aware that you offered a hosted solution I am going to try that as I think that would make things a little easier to manage. Hopefully we can move from our server to yours.

unitminer

Yes, we try to improve our support every month.
e.g. this year we started with phone support (January), later (February) we started with 24/5 support, each few months we employ new and new support agent, we watch also external forums, where users discuss about PAP and we try to help also there.

e.g. year ago we had about 2-3 full time support agents and now is working 7 support agents on PAP support

On live chat is sometimes not possible to resolve every problem, because our agents need to discuss some problems also with developers and in such case we ask customer to create standard ticket. Also sometimes is on live chat connected 4-5 customers in same time and deeper technical problems is hard to resolve in real time.

In case you will need any help and you will not receive good support from our live chat or tickets, please PM me, I will try to help you and also arrange improvement in our company. Also every feedback to PAP functionality is welcome.


Yes, we offer also hosted PAP accounts and from March we offer also affiliate network software (Post Affiliate Network)

Thank you

PaymentMaven

I am also choosing an affiliate program. However, I have special requirements.

I don't have a shopping cart and don't sell a product per se.

When an affiliate referrs a lead to me and that lead signs up for a merchant account, I will pay the affiliate either a flat fee one-time or percentage of my profit.

They can refer leads to me from a link in their email or from a link on their website or a phone call to me or in-person introduction.

For Leads via phone call or in-person, I need to manually add a client and tag the client to the referrer.

I need to manually add all commissions.

I will pay the referrer based upon the amount of the fee I receive (varies - not a fixed amount).
The referrer can choose to receive...
- a one time flat fee with performance increase
For example: $100 for $1 - 4,999.00; $200 for $5,000 +
- a percentage of my profit with performance increase
For example: $10% $1 - 4,999.00; 15% for $5,000 +
Need to be able to have different commissions for different referrers.
For links that get created for the referrer, I need to have a short cut like: www.myurl.com/referer_name.
Referer software should be able to look like my website with navigation.
Referrer signup and login to view referrals and payments.
I don't have the time or knowledge to program, so if needed, I will pay to have someone program.

unitminer

Hi Paul,
I answered you also in another thread.
I think, that with PAP you will be able to solve your requirements.
Also we can do for you full integration with your website (cost extra $199) and also template customization (cost depending on complexity - we charge $40 per hour of work)

PaymentMaven

unitminer - Thank you. I will look at your demo.
Cheers.