iDevAffiliate is one of those scripts that have been in the market for a long time. In those days, affiliate programs for small businesses are were pretty new, certainly not as widely implemented as they are now. Today, it is still being actively supported and developed. That on its own is a nice feather in iDevAffiliate’s cap. You know it isn’t going anywhere anytime soon.

What It Has Going For Them

It is a pretty solid script. Well thought out and feature rich. After so many years in the market, you’d expect it to be. You can also expect some common and advanced features like:

• The ability to plug into just about any payment system or shopping cart. They do officially support quite a large number of carts and offer easy integration solutions. But if they don’t officially support it, that’s not the end of the road because it uses simple pixel tracking. Which means all you really need to do is paste a small HTML code on your thank you page. You don’t even need a cart to use it. And thus if you use PayPal buttons only, this will work. Incidentally, this will also work if you plan to use Wishlist Member and PayPal.
• It is pretty easy to install, but installation can also be handled for you for a $45 fee.
• It can be quite simple to implement even for those not technically inclined. As mentioned above, you just need to copy and paste one code. But as with anything else, the more knowledgeable or skillful you are, the more advanced features you can dig into, like setting different commissions for different products and working with the API to connect it to another script or app.
• Provide affiliates with text ads, banner ads, plain text links, email ads, Peel Ads and PDF flyers. More on the PDF thing later. Affiliates can also create deep links to your web site. This means if you wrote a great post on your blog, your affiliates can use their affiliate link and still have people land on your blog post.
• It can capture commissions as Pay-per-lead or Pay-per-click in percentage or flat rate.
• It can capture recurring subscriptions and one-time payment product sales. You can also use it to manage affiliate programs for different sites.
• The ability to delay commissions. This is useful when you offer a money back guarantee. You can set the commissions to be delayed the same amount of time as your guarantee period. Affiliates still get the commission, but will be held back from payment until after your guarantee period. This reduces the chances of negative commissions when a customer requests for a refund.

There are many more features, I highly recommend you explore them on iDev’s site. These are just a few that are most commonly looked for.

Limitations

What might be limitations to us may not be for you or they can be a complete deal breaker. These are listed here so you know what to expect.

• The PDF option is not a PDF brander if any of you are familiar with the concept of brandable PDFs. This just allows you to upload for a PDF that affiliates can print and hand out. The tracking links are not built into the PDF. However, it works with and they do have an offline marketing option that allows affiliate to provide people with a ‘code’ – essentially their affiliate ID and you can let people enter that code into your site and the affiliate be credited for the sale.
• There doesn’t seem to be the ability to customize commissions for special affiliates. Let’s say, you want super affiliate A to have a higher commission, it doesn’t seem to support this option. At least we aren’t aware of it yet. However, with a little creative technical know-how, you could make this happen. It would require more work and maintenance on your side.

Overall, I find little fault with the iDevAffiliate script. I’m not saying that because I am their affiliate. Rather, I would not be one if I didn’t think this script can do the job well. I work with  clients who use it without too much problems and it is overall a stable script. Easy to use, manage and set up. Especially pleasant to use if you have a simple affiliate program to manage.

In the event you do need help with the setup, we do offer help with that. Just ask.