Tapfiliate Alternative: Is There a Free Way to Run an Affiliate Program?
If you're comparing Tapfiliate alternatives, you're probably running into the same wall most growing companies hit: Tapfiliate's cheapest plan starts at $89/month before you've earned a single referral sale, and it caps you at 500 tracked conversions before overage charges kick in.
Promio takes a different approach: €0/month to start, with no click or conversion caps, and no cut of your affiliates’ commissions on any plan. You run the whole program free for as long as you like; you pay a flat monthly price only when you want Promio to collect the commissions and pay your affiliates for you. Below is a factual, feature-by-feature breakdown so you can decide which model fits your stage.
TL;DR
| Promio (Free plan) Best value | Tapfiliate (Launch plan) | |
|---|---|---|
| Monthly base fee | €0 | $89/mo ($74/mo billed annually) |
| Cut of affiliate commissions | 0% — on every plan, including the paid ones | 0% — but the flat fee is due from month one |
| Setup fee | €0 | €0 |
| Free trial | Not needed — Free plan has no time limit | 7 days |
| Click limit | None | 5,000/mo, then $1.50 per 1,000 |
| Conversion limit | None | 500/mo, then $15 per 1,000 |
| Affiliate limit | Unlimited | 50 |
| Affiliate payouts | On Free you pay affiliates yourself — Promio gives you the owed list, an export and a settlement record. From €89/mo it invoices the commissions at cost and pays every affiliate for you. | Not on Launch — automated payouts start on Scale ($179/mo) |
| Best for | Companies that want to launch free and pay only for the work they hand over | Companies that already have volume and want a flat predictable bill |
One number, published — and it doesn’t move when the program works
Promio charges a flat monthly price for the software and nothing else: no percentage of commissions, no per-click or per-conversion metering, no overage line. On a paid plan you are also invoiced your affiliates’ commissions — at cost, passed through in full — because that money is going to your affiliates, not to us. Every tier is on the pricing page, no sales call.
Tapfiliate pricing, in full
Tapfiliate runs a three-tier flat-fee model with no free plan — only a trial:
The flat-fee structure means the bill is the same in a slow month as it is in a great one — and if a campaign spikes traffic past your click or conversion allowance, the overage charges land on top of the base fee.
Promio pricing, in full
One flat monthly price for the software. What separates the tiers is how much commission Promio collects and pays out on your behalf — never how much you are allowed to track:
Two things are true on every plan, including Free: Promio takes 0% of your affiliates’ commissions, and nothing is metered — clicks, conversions, affiliates and programs never trigger a charge. The plan bands are on commission Promio pays out for you, not on revenue you track: go past the band and only the money movement pauses, while the commissions stay tracked, owed, and payable by you directly that month.
When Promio does handle payouts, it invoices you your affiliates’ commissions at cost and passes them through in full — that invoice contains no Promio revenue at all. The payment provider’s transfer fee (from €0.25) is deducted from each affiliate payout, the way PayPal and Wise do it, and is shown to the affiliate before it is taken.
There's no trial to run out, because the Free plan has no time limit and no card. A quiet month on Free costs nothing at all; a quiet month on a paid plan costs the plan price and no commissions, because there were none to pass through.
The real difference: who handles the money
This is the part comparison pages usually skip. Tracking clicks is table stakes — both platforms do it well. The bigger operational gap is what happens after a sale converts, and it is the one thing Promio actually charges for:
- On Tapfiliate, you're responsible for calculating what each affiliate is owed, moving the money (PayPal, bank transfer, or a payout tool you connect yourself on the Scale plan and above), and keeping your own records for reconciliation.
- On Promio Free, you also move the money yourself — but you're not doing the arithmetic or the record-keeping: the dashboard shows exactly who is owed what and since when, exports the list, and logs each payment you make so the affiliate sees it in their own history.
- On a paid plan, Promio invoices you the commissions at cost, you pay that one invoice, and it sends every affiliate transfer via Stripe Connect for you. That handover is the entire product you're paying for — the tracking was already free.
If your team doesn't have a dedicated ops person to own payouts, this is usually the deciding factor — not the sticker price.
Where Tapfiliate has the edge
To be fair to Tapfiliate: its feature set (MLM/multi-tier commissions, deeplink generation, 30+ native integrations) is more mature for complex, high-scale programs that have outgrown a simpler tool, and its plans have no ceiling on how much commission you can push through them. Promio's tiers do: the top plan disburses up to €20,000 of commission a month, and past that you're talking to us rather than clicking upgrade. If you're running a large, complex program today, that's a real difference worth weighing.
Who should switch to Promio
Who should stay with Tapfiliate
FAQ
Start free, no card required
Promio's Free plan runs your whole program — tracking, attribution, affiliate dashboards, payout records — for €0, with no cut of your commissions. Upgrade only when you'd rather not send the transfers yourself.
Start your free program →