Awin vs FirstPromoter

Awin is one of the largest affiliate marketing networks in the world. It traces back to Affiliate Window, founded in the UK in 2000, which merged with Germany's zanox in 2017 to form Awin, headquartered in Berlin and part of the Axel Springer group. Awin also bought the US network ShareASale in 2017 and completed moving ShareASale advertisers onto the Awin platform in August 2025. Its core job is connecting brands with publishers, from cashback sites to creators, and tracking and paying their commissions.

Advertisers get a partner directory and marketplace, campaign and commission management, tracking, reporting and partner payments. Self-serve pricing comes in two tiers, Access for newcomers and Accelerate for growing programs, both with a monthly fee plus a percentage tracking fee on each sale, while Advanced is a custom package with managed services and full feature access. Publishers join for free.

Awin fits retailers and DTC brands that want reach: the company reports about 30,000 advertisers, a million publishers and 1,400 employees. If you want to run your own branded program with only your own partners, software such as Refersion or PartnerStack is simpler, and impact.com is the stronger choice for enterprise partnership automation beyond classic affiliates.

Before you sign, model the total cost: on a $100 sale with a 6 percent commission, the partner earns $6 and Awin takes $3.50 on Access or $2.50 on Accelerate, on top of the monthly fee. Former ShareASale accounts closed on October 6, 2025, so ShareASale-era guides are out of date.

FirstPromoter is affiliate and referral management software built specifically for SaaS and other subscription businesses. Its main job is to attribute signups and payments to affiliates or referring customers and calculate recurring commissions correctly over the life of a subscription, including upgrades, downgrades, refunds and cancellations.

It integrates directly with billing systems such as Stripe, Paddle, Chargebee, Recurly and Braintree, and offers a JavaScript tracking script and API for custom setups. Program managers can run several campaigns with different commission rules, tiered and multi-level rewards, coupons tied to affiliates, fraud detection for self-referrals and suspicious traffic, branded affiliate portals and payout management via PayPal or bulk files. Plans are priced by the referral revenue tracked each month, so cost grows with program success, and some extras cost more.

FirstPromoter suits subscription companies whose billing is not only Stripe or that need nuanced commission logic. It does not give you a marketplace of affiliates to recruit from, so you bring your own partners. Rewardful is simpler and popular with Stripe-only startups, Tolt is a newer low-cost option, and PartnerStack or Impact fit larger partner ecosystems with discovery and enterprise contracts. The interface is functional rather than modern, but tracking depth is the reason teams choose it.