What to build your affiliate program on? Review of the Saas platform Alanbase

Hello, everyone! This is the chief editor of AffJournal, and today's article is a bit unusual because below we’ll be talking about a highly specialized Saas service, or as I understood it for myself — a platform that allows you to build affiliate programs and organize the work of media buying teams. Yes, as you figured out from the title, we’ll be discussing the Alanbase engine.

 

If you have long been contemplating the idea of creating your own affiliate program, then be sure to bookmark this article and come back to it when you start taking action. And I'll start my review.

 

A bit of information about the service itself

Alanbase is positioned (and rightly so) as a platform for brand development and the creation of CPA networks, covering a wide range of verticals from iGaming to Ed-Tech. It’ll also be useful for media buying teams, for example, for lead tracking, analytics on working with specific sources and buyers.

 

Among the platform's users are well-known affiliate programs such as Betboom, Glory Partners, DataMotion, Serious Partners, IceLeads, and others, which somewhat confirms its reputation as a leading solution for affiliate products.

 

It's probably also worth noting that this is one of the few Saas services in this niche that offers individual adaptation of the platform to the specific needs of the client, using both ready-made solutions for common directions in affiliate marketing and for some specific needs.

 

Well, I think that's enough praise; let's see what Alanbase can really offer.

 

Opportunities and advantages of the Alanbase platform over other engines

Here I'll allow myself to shamelessly borrow information from the service's promo page, as, forgive me, I haven't had the experience of owning an affiliate program. But from the perspective of a former media buyer, I more or less understand what's what.

 

So, if we set aside cliché things like "24/7 support", "ease of integration", "flexible dashboard settings", and all that, we can highlight the following features:

 

• Flexible analytics. A super overused phrase, but the guys claim that on their platform, you can set up monitoring for the stats of any arbitrary events and goals. It’ll come in handy, especially when you need to analyze and calculate specific metrics within your niche.
• Comprehensive tracking. Registrations through promo codes, referrals, external leads. The platform sees everything if you set up tracking parameters in advance. In other words, as an owner, you'll precisely know which marketing activities yielded results and which ones went down the drain.
• Access management. In addition to the classic division of rights for manager accounts, affiliates, and advertisers, you can also set up access for affiliate managers so that they don't see metrics that they don't need to know. For example, they won't see other affiliate partners.
• Customization of the payout system for affiliates. You can customize payouts, enable auto-generation, and set minimum thresholds for various currencies.
• Support of all well-known payout models for offers. In other words, the platform adequately aligns finances not only for CPA and RS but also for Hybrid, CPM!!, and other custom qualifications. Separate balances are implemented for CPA and RS.
• Working with landing pages. Apart from the classic method of adding landing pages to the offer card, you can add private landing pages and grant access to them to the partners you choose.

• Offer access configuration. You can add public/private offers and offers with pre-moderation.

 

And many other custom features that are needed for guys with specific working conditions. In short, the main message is that if you lack some functionality in competitive platforms, then with a 99% probability, it's already here.

 

By the way, about competitors. The guys went through each of them (except for Sceleo, as far as I can see) and, in general, clearly showed what they can be interesting for.

 

 

Spoiler: a well-balanced ratio of price and functionality. You can go to the website and click around yourself.

 

Tariffs in Alanbase

Now, about how much this pleasure costs. If you had time to click on the website and compare prices with competitors, you’ll notice two things — the price is significantly lower, and the functionality is many times greater.

 

Important! There is a 14-day trial where you can add your offers/products to the system and thoroughly test the functionality.

 

The tariffs themselves (monthly!) at the time of writing the review look as follows: 

 

• Super Lite: Starting from $350. The plan includes 5000 conversions and 200000 clicks.
• Lite: $500 during the first six months, then $1000 per month. The plan includes 50000 conversions.
• Pro: $1400 during the first six months, then $1900 per month. The plan includes 250000 conversions, promo codes, and anti-fraud.
• Custom: For those who need individual solutions and options. The final cost will depend on your specific requirements.

 

If you subscribe for 6 months at once, which will be the most correct solution for most clients, a discount of 7% will be applied to all plans. After all, who among us has never forgotten to pay for hosting, right? :)

 

 

How to start working with Alanbase

Again, there is a ready-made instruction on the service's landing page. But I don't want to just repeat the guys' landing page, so let's dive into the details.

 

 

To start working with the service, you need to visit their official website and request a demo version. After that, the guys will contact you via Telegram or Skype and create a personal account for you. That's all there is to registration.

 

 

 

Afterwards, you gain access to your personal account (demo). Let's take a look around here and see what other interesting aspects we can note.

 

 

In the demo, we can see a dashboard with statistics, conveniently presented in tile format. For those who prefer curves on a graph, they are also available here. Naturally, all of this is customizable in the dashboard settings.

 

 

The "Product" tab is responsible for adding offers and the actual products. The first screenshot — adding a product, and the second — adding an offer.

 

 

When you click on the "+ New offer" button, you get a form like the one shown above. As seen in the screenshot, you can immediately choose the offer status (private, public, pre-moderation), select the product it’ll be associated with, add promo materials, offer description, and parameters for postbacks.

 

 

Next, in the offer card, you can grant access for specific partners registered in the system, change parameters for tracking specific conversions, adjust the rate for a particular partner (in the "Individual conditions" tab), and add promo materials and landing pages (also in respective tabs). In general, everything is intuitively clear, and additional onboarding for your new affiliate manager is unlikely to be needed.

 

 

In the statistics section, you can find a variety of filters for all key metrics. Additionally, you can use the product switcher in the top right corner to check statistics for each product individually. Plus, by clicking on the "+ Add column" button, you have a wide selection of additional metrics to add to this table. It's impressive how extensive the targeting options for statistics are and the effort put into it.

 

Next in the personal account, you can find tabs such as "Customers", where you can see all your clients. In the "Payments" tab, the current situation with partner payouts is displayed, and in "Promo-materials", all materials are pre-loaded onto the server to prevent file conflicts later on.

 

 

Also, as I mentioned earlier, the platform is excellently geared towards tracking marketing communications. Here's an example of a tab with promo codes. So, you see the promo code, the number of partners who came through it. Then you check how much traffic these partners have driven and evaluate the success or failure of placement in the media.

 

 

And there are still tabs like “News”, where you can post current data on offers, congratulate partners on holidays, and so on, and “Members”, with lists of everyone using the platform categorized by status. That's about it.

 

 

Summary

The team at Alanbase has done a colossal amount of work, resulting in a product that addresses the pain points of many affiliate companies. You've seen it all for yourself above. However, we recommend taking advantage of the 14-day trial and exploring each tab on your own, trying out the functionality for your business. And with that, I bid you farewell, wishing you profits and prosperity!