5 Best Affiliate Link Cloaking Plugins for WordPress
Hey guys,
Are you looking for the best affiliate link cloaking plugin?
You’re at the right place.
Affiliate links often look untrustworthy, so you’ll lose link clicks and eventually commissions if you do not cloak your affiliate links.
Let’s put a full stop to that.
Today, we’ll see the best affiliate link cloaking plugins for WordPress. I’m sure atleast one in this list will fit all your needs. I’ll also share details about what you should look for in a affiliate link cloaking plugin and which one I’m using currently.
Lets get started.
- Feature Rich plugin: Pretty Links
- My Choice: BetterLinks
- Best for Amazon Integration: ThirstyAffiliates
- For Link Analytics Lovers: Lasso
- Multipurpose (Ad management + Link Cloaking): Advanced Ads
What is Affiliate Link Cloaking and Why Does it Matter?
Let me put it in simple words.
Affiliate link cloaking is just masking the affiliate link with your own domain link which has your audience trust already.
Here is an example. Lets assume you got an affiliate link for a sony camera.
Normal Affiliate Link: www.imp.sony3e.io.xyz
Cloaked Affiliate Link: www.yourdomain.com/sony3e
This is not any magic. Link cloaking plugin will help you create a cloaked link by setting up a redirect.
Okay, why is it important to cloak your affiliate links?
Will you click on a link that looks spammy? Most probably no, right?
Then how can you expect your readers to click on such links.
Lets say you have a well written article that is ranking #1 on Google. But what if people go through your content but didn’t click on your affiliate link to purchase it just because the URL looks like a spam?
Simple. You will lose your commissions even after putting in all those efforts.
Do you know? On an average, affiliate marketers lose an estimated 15-25% of their commissions when their links appear suspicious.
Based on my experience, I can say that people will hesitate to click on uncloaked affiliate links that seem untrustworthy, as they may look like spam or malware.
I actually feel sad for those affiliate links. Think in this way. Is it a spam link? No. Is it going to direct people to any unnecessary page? No. All it does is redirect user to the expected page with just an extra unique ID in the URL. It doesn’t look good. Thats the only problem.
This has been the problem for ages among humans. We judge based on looks.
Anyway, you need a human to purchase a product through your affiliate link to earn money. So, your affiliate links needs to looks good and trustworthy.
Essential Features to Look for in Link Cloaking Plugins
Now that you know why it is important to cloak your affiliate link, lets see what you must look for in a affiliate link cloaking plugin that helps you in this process.
1. Geo-targeting Options
If the company you are associated with as an affiliate has region specific offers, you will need a geotargeting feature.
For example, if the company has 2 different offers for the same product in USA and UK market, you need to redirect the visitors properly based on their region.
This geotargeting feature will help you achieve it. It’ll allow you to submit different target URLs for different countries. So when someone clicks on your cloaked link, they’ll automatically be redirected to their region specific offer page.
2. Link Management
Choose a plugin that lets you organise the links you create using it.
So technically you should have an option to create your categories and tags. Whenever you create a new link, you can assign a category to it.
When you have numerous affiliate links, this will be very useful to organize and find whatever you want quickly.
3. Analytics
If you want to know how your affiliate links are performing, then its important to look into the data.
See if the plugin offers analytics data such as click-through rates, conversions, demographics, etc.
4. Bulk import/export functionality
This might not seem like a important feature that you need while choosing your first ever link cloaking plugin.
But trust me, when you want to migrate to another plugin in the future, you will be looking for this. It’s a lifesaver.
If the plugin that you choose now doesn’t have this feature and in case if you want migrate in future after creating hundreds of links, you’re done. It will take a hell lot of time to do this manually. So do not take this one lightly.
5. Automatic Link Redirection
One cool benefit of using cloaked links is you have one link which you can share anywhere and don’t have to worry about it.
Because you can always change where the link should direct people inside the link cloaking plugin dashboard by changing the target URL.
But what if that target URL changes?
Imagine this. You need to promote a specific season offer for 2 weeks and there’s a separate sales page for this offer. You may forget to change the target URL to the regular product sales page after 2 weeks.
If you forget, users will be landing on a 404 page. There’s a high chance for this. Or they may see a message like “Offer Closed”.
Whatever might be the reason, but it’ll be you who will lose commissions.
This is where you need Automatic Link Redirection. This feature lets you choose a specific time until when your cloaked link should direct users to a specific page. You can give another URL and say redirect users to this page after this duration.
Its a cool feature. I love it and need it. Most probably, you will also need something like this if you are promoting products through affiliate marketing.
6. Redirect Speed
Last but not least, redirect speed. This is the most important aspect which a lot of people take lightly.
While cloaked affiliate link redirect speed relies mostly on hosting provider, the plugin can also have an impact on it.
If the plugin is poorly coded with unnecessary code lines, it can also slow down the redirect speed.
So you should also check the redirect speed of a affiliate link cloaking plugin before choosing it.
I feel these are the most important features. But we all have different needs. So always check if the plugin you choose can do what you need.
Don’t worry much. The ones in this list of best affiliate link cloaking plugins are all loaded with these features and many more.
Best Affiliate Link Cloaking Plugins in 2024
Pretty LinksOverall Best Affiliate Link Cloaking Plugin
Pretty Links is the most popular link cloaking plugin in WordPress. It has been around since 2009 and already has over 300,000 active installations.
It has amazing pool of features like pretty bar, QR code generation, bookmarklet for quick link creation and a lot more.
If you look for a feature rich option, I would recommend Pretty Links. It will beat every other plugin in this list when it comes to features.
I started link cloaking with Pretty Links for my first blog website. Back then, it provided access to a lot of features I needed for free. But now, you can’t even create custom category with its free version.
It is a pricey option and doesn’t provide a lot of features in its free version. But its absolutely worth it.
Pretty Links have 3 plans: Beginner, Marketer and Super Affiliate. Starts at around $100 per year.
So, opt for Pretty Links only if you have the budget and want to go with the popular one.
BetterLinksBudget-Friendly Option
This is the one that I’m currently using. But that doesn’t mean I’ll be biased. Thats the reason why you are seeing BetterLinks at number two.
BetterLinks is an amazing link cloaking plugin for affiliates. While its not as popular as Pretty Links, it does its job quietly without any hassle.
It is available for free, so you can try it out and then go for the pro version if required.
Their support is fast and good. The speed of the redirection is also pretty fast. It also provides built-in UTM builder for advanced tracking.
BetterLinks Pro subscription is available for $69 per year for one site.
It falls under the budget friendly ones. You can also buy a lifetime plan for BetterLinks Pro if you need it.
ThirstyAffiliatesBest for promoting Amazon products
ThirstyAffiliates is another fantastic option for link cloaking.
While ThirstyAffiliates have a lot common with other wordpress plugins in this list, I feel its very well designed for amazon affiliate program.
It has a automatic Amazon API integration for up-to-date pricing and availability. Thats a cool one to have.
Similar to Pretty Links, ThirstyAffiliates also has 3 different pro plans: Basic, Plus and Advanced. Basic plan is available for $100 per year.
They have recently added product display feature but its available only in their advanced plan that costs around $200 a year.
Opt for ThirstyAffiliates if your website relies heavily on promoting Amazon products.
LassoBest for cloaked link analytics
Lasso is not just a simple link cloaking plugin. It has more for affiliate marketers.
I love Lasso for its beautiful product displays, revenue tracking analytics and direct integration with major affiliate networks like Impact, Rakuten, etc.
If your blog focusses on creating product reviews and comparisons, I’m sure you’ll find this Lasso WordPress plugin very useful.
I didn’t get a chance to test their customer support but I have heard a lot of positive responses about their support from other people. Note that all those people with whom I spoke had one of the premium Lasso plan, so I’m not sure how good it’ll be for the free plan.
So Lasso has 3 plans: Free, Startup($15/month) and Pro ($39/month). It may look another pricey option but the features they provide makes it a worthy option.
Advanced Ads2 in 1 – Ad management plugin with link cloaking feature
This pick might surprise you. What does this ad management plugin have to do with link cloaking? Let’s find out.
So Advanced Ads is primarily focussed on ad management for wordpress but they also have link cloaking features.
Link cloaking feature is available only in their Tracking Add-on. So please note that Advanced Ads Pro doesn’t have this option.
There are 2 pricing plans for Advanced Ads: Pro (€59/year) and All Access (€129 / year).
If you choose All Access plan, you will get both Advanced Ads Pro and Tracking Add-on that lets you do link cloaking.
In addition to affiliate marketing, if you are also interested in displaying ads on your blog to make some money, you can use this plugin as it this can play a dual function for you.
Hmm. This is interesting. I love to reduce the number of plugins I use to improve my WordPress site speed. After seeing this plugin, I asked myself this. Why should I use a separate plugin for ad insertion and link cloaking if I can do both with a single plugin?
I’m going to look into this plugin in deep in future and I’ll update you.
Final Words
These are all most popular and trusted WordPress plugins for affiliate link cloaking. So you need not worry about security measures.
If you ask me to recommend one, I’ll go with BetterLinks. I’m using BetterLinks because its a budget friendly option, offers all the necessary features for link cloaking, and also has a lifetime plan. PS: I hate these monthly & yearly subscriptions.
If you need the most popular affiliate link cloaking plugin, go for PrettyLinks. Or you can also try Thirsty Affiliates or Lasso for promoting products through creating amazing visual displays.
But remember this, there’s no one size that fits all. Most of these plugins have a free version, so give it a try and see which one is more suitable for your needs.
Check the plugin features, see if your needs are covered in it and also if it falls under your budget. If all this ticks for one, choose that affiliate link cloaking plugin. That is the best one for you.