How do I Create a Referral Link?

If you own a business and want to create a referral tracking link to track the success of your referral program, here are the general steps you can follow: 1) Set up a referral program for your business, either through a referral program software or by creating your own program. 2) Create a referral link or referral code that customers can use to refer your business to their friends, family, and network. This can be done through a referral link generator tool or by manually adding a referral parameter to your business's website link. 3) Share the referral link or referral code with your customers through email, social media, or other methods. 4) Encourage your customers to share the referral link with their friends, family, and network. 5) When someone clicks on the referral link and makes a purchase or takes a specific action, the referral tracking parameters in the link will be recorded, allowing you to track the success of your referral program. It's a good idea to incentivize your referral program by offering rewards or discounts to customers who refer your business to others. This can help encourage more people to participate in your referral program and increase its success. It's also important to clearly communicate the terms and conditions of your referral program to your customers so that they understand how it works and what they need to do to participate.

What is a Referral URL Generator?

A referral URL generator is a tool that allows you to easily create customized referral links that you can share with your friends, family, and network. These links typically contain a referral code or tracking parameters that allow the company to track the success of their referral program. Referral URL generators are often provided by companies as part of their referral program, but there are also standalone referral URL generators that can be used with any referral program. To use a referral URL generator, you will typically need to sign up for the referral program and provide your personal and payment information. Once you are signed up, you can use the referral URL generator to create a referral link by specifying the tracking parameters that you want to include in the link. You can then share the referral link with your friends, family, and network through email, social media, or other methods. Referral URL generators can be a useful tool for businesses and individuals looking to promote products or services and earn referral rewards. However, it's important to read the terms and conditions of the referral program and ensure that you are following the guidelines for promoting the products or services.

Is a Referral Link the Same as an Affiliate Link?

A referral link and an affiliate link are similar in that they both allow the person sharing the link to earn a commission or reward when someone clicks on the link and makes a purchase or takes a specific action. However, there are some key differences between referral links and affiliate links: Referral links are typically used to promote products or services to friends, family, and personal networks. They are often used as part of a referral program offered by a company, and the person sharing the referral link is typically a customer or user of the company's products or services. Affiliate links, on the other hand, are used to promote products or services to a wider audience through various marketing channels, such as blogs, websites, social media, and email newsletters. The person sharing the affiliate link is typically an affiliate marketer who earns a commission for promoting the products or services of a company. Referral links are usually created and shared through a referral link generator tool provided by the company, while affiliate links are typically provided by an affiliate program or network. Referral programs and affiliate programs may have different terms and conditions, commission rates, and payment policies, so it's important to carefully read and understand the terms of each program before participating.

What is a Referral ID?

A referral ID is a unique identification number or code that is associated with a referral program. It is typically used to track the success of the referral program and to identify the person who is sharing the referral link. In most cases, a referral ID is included in the referral link as a tracking parameter. For example, a referral link might look something like "https://www.example.com/?ref=123456", where "123456" is the referral ID. When someone clicks on the referral link and makes a purchase or takes a specific action, the referral ID is recorded, allowing the company to track the success of their referral program and attribute the referral to the person who shared the link. Referral IDs are often assigned to customers or users of a company's products or services when they sign up for the referral program. The referral ID is typically unique to each person, so it can be used to differentiate between referrals and accurately track the success of the referral program.

How Do You Track Your Referral Links?

There are several ways to track your referral links, depending on the referral program and the tools that are available to you. Here are some common methods for tracking referral links: Use a referral link generator tool: Many referral programs provide a referral link generator tool that allows you to create and customize your referral links. These tools often include tracking and analysis features that allow you to track the clicks and conversions on your referral links. Use referral tracking parameters: You can manually add tracking parameters to your referral link to track its performance. For example, you could add "?ref=yourname" to the end of the referral link to track referrals from you. When someone clicks on the referral link and makes a purchase or takes a specific action, the tracking parameters will be recorded, allowing you to track the success of your referral program. Use a link tracking tool: There are many third-party link tracking tools available that allow you to track the clicks and conversions on your referral links. These tools typically provide detailed analysis and reporting features, as well as the ability to customize tracking parameters and create short, easy-to-share links. Check your referral program dashboard: Many referral programs provide a dashboard or account area where you can view the performance of your referral links. This may include information on clicks, conversions, and commissions earned.

What’s an Example of a Referral Link?

A referral link is a special type of link that is used to promote products or services to a personal network as part of a referral program. Here is an example of a referral link: https://www.example.com/?ref=123456 In this example, "https://www.example.com" is the base URL for the company's website, and "?ref=123456" is the referral tracking parameter. The referral ID "123456" is a unique identification number or code that is associated with the referral program and is used to track the success of the referral program and attribute the referral to the person who shared the link. When someone clicks on the referral link and makes a purchase or takes a specific action, the referral ID is recorded, allowing the company to track the success of their referral program and attribute the referral to the person who shared the link. Keep in mind that referral links may vary in format and content depending on the referral program and the tools used to create the link. Some referral links may contain additional tracking parameters or use different syntax for the referral tracking parameter. It's a good idea to read the terms and conditions of the referral program to understand the specific requirements and guidelines for creating and sharing referral links.

7+ Best Referral Link Generators & Tools

Our Reviews of the Best Referral Link Generator:

Here is a list of the best referral link generators:

Everflow

Growann's Software Review:

4.4

out of 5

Read our full Everflow affiliate marketing review.

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Everflow is a Partner Marketing platform for managing your partnerships, tracking all marketing channels, and amplifying your performance.

Take ownership of your growth: Quickly onboard and manage your affiliates, influencers, referral partners, and strategic partners. Consolidate your partnership and performance channels allowing you to understand the true value from each traffic source, control your attribution, and optimize towards your best performers. Get the attribution and analytics that are the keys to accelerating your revenue.

Track every channel: Everflow's tracking starts when users reach your website, letting you consolidate your performance reporting for affiliates, influencers, referrals, and media buying. Having all of this data in one place makes it easy for you to analyze and understand the value from each source of traffic.
Attribute unlimited events: Everflow lets you go beyond the sale or lead, and track every engagement that delivers value from your campaigns. Start paying your partners on CRM pipeline stages, approved leads, subscription renewals, and upsells. Understand your traffic better by analyzing engagement around newsletter signups, pricing page visits, and community activity.
Scale your partnerships: Better data and attribution empowers you to align your payouts with the partners that drive your best customers, motivating them to ramp up their promotions. Onboard your own partners in a few clicks, give them the tools to be successful and keep growing by discovering new relevant partners in Everflow's marketplace.

Tracks every channel and provides unlimited partner management
Powerful integrations with CRMs, Shopping Carts, and full access API
Makes it easy to view and optimize performance on the placement level

Vast number of capabilities can be overwhelming
Doesn't provide a massive marketplace for affiliates
Lacks robustness for emailer campaigns

The pricing starts at $750 per month for unlimited access to the platform. You must contact Everflow for a customized plan for more in-depth onboarding and dedicated customer success manager.

Best Fit For:

Small Business & Mid Market Businesses

Free Trial Offered?

YES!

NO.

Pricing Plan 1:

$750/month

Pricing Plan 2:

CUSTOM

Shopify
HubSpot
Optizmo

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Kademi

Growann's Software Review:

4.5

out of 5

Read our full Kademi partner management review.

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Kademi is an all-in-one partner relationship management platform built for B2B organizations needing a highly customizable partner channel program. The team at Kademi knows to build a highly successful and profitable channel program, you need a partner management solution that’s seamless to set up and can be customized to the specific needs of your business – whether that’s a reseller, distributor, referral, or even affiliate partnership. Partnership leaders rejoice – The Kademi platform offers easy to use and code-free solutions with drag and drop partner portal editor, mitigating the time and resources needed from developers. The Kademi platform doesn’t end at a PRM solution – offering additional valuable features like its sales incentive software, an in-platform learning management solution, and commerce & payment handling from its extensive eco-system of modular features. It’s no wonder premier brands like OPPO and Zoetis trust the Kademi platform to power their partner channel programs.

Partner portals
Deal registration
B2B loyalty
Sales incentive software
Channel partner training (LMS)
Partner onboarding & Enablement

K-Journey: Kademi “K-Journeys,” also known as workflows, allow organizations to build automated flows to nurture and engage partners. Their flow builder is visually appealing, making it easy to set up flows to help partners, admins, and sales reps with daily tasks and quickly move them along their partnership journeys. Easily one of our favorite features.
Deal Registration: With Kademi’s deal registration feature, you can onboard new partners and enable them to register deals easily. The dealer dashboard is highly customizable, showing several metrics from; active deals, deals won, pending payouts, and so much more.
Sales Incentive Program: Build incentive programs for your channel partners to access within their secure partner portal. You can add dynamic components and leaderboards based on your channel partners' pacing toward their sales targets. Your channel partners can also file sales claims to be reviewed and approved within the portal.

Although Kademi does have the ability to launch an affiliate program within their partner management solution, they do not currently have access to an internal network of publishers or other potential affiliate or influencer partnerships. You will need to research and recruit these partners outside of their platform to join your affiliate program.
If you’re a new startup or small business with a tight budget and a single-person partnerships team, their solution likely won’t be the best fit for you. Their PRM solution works best for organizations that need a customizable program and has invested in channel sales and partnerships.
For partnership professionals who haven’t built a channel program on PRM software before, you’ll likely need to commit to their onboarding training program to set up your program correctly. Or you can also use one of their go-to agencies and consultants to help you set up your channel program.

Pricing for Kademi can vary greatly depending on what types of features and needs your team is looking for. That said, pricing for Kademi can vary from $500/month to $1250/month.

Best Fit For:

Small Business & Mid Market Businesses

Free Trial Offered?

YES!

NO.

Pricing Plan 1:

$500/month

Pricing Plan 2:

CUSTOM

XTRM
Shopify
Xero

Get started →Get started →

Voluum

Growann's Software Review:

4.3

out of 5

Read our full Voluum link tracking review.

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Voluum is a software that allows you to optimize your marketing campaigns. It tracks, manages, and optimizes all your traffic sources in one place. With its AI-powered tools, Voluum helps you automate your traffic optimization and collaboration features enable you to work together on different access levels. With banking-standard infrastructure and secure data storage, Voluum helps you achieve higher ROI.

Voluum will help you find bots, spiders, and bad actors that can deflate your numbers by identifying suspicious clicks and visits in your reports.
Traffic Distribution AI is an automated system that analyzes your data over the course of a day, then distributes your visitors across campaigns to maximize revenue.
Manage all of your affiliate conversion tracking with one platform. Easily monitor your ad campaign metrics such as visits, clicks, costs & profits.

Has a ton of software integrations with other platforms.
Granular link tracking testing is available for all plans.
In-depth traffic source tracking is amazing.

Pricing isn’t built for low-budget individuals/teams.
You can’t display more than 3 dimensions within the interface.
It can take some time to learn the platform's ins and outs.

Voluum pricing starts off at $89/month for individual users and then can increase up to $1,999/month for enterprise businesses.

Best Fit For:

Mid Market & Enterprise Businesses

Free Trial Offered?

YES!

NO.

Pricing Plan 1:

$499/month

Pricing Plan 2:

$1,999/month

Facebook
TikTok
Google Ads

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Rebrandly

Growann's Software Review:

4.1

out of 5

Read our full Rebrandly link tracking review.

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Rebrandly is an easy-to-use tool that lets you shorten, customize, and track links.

Link shortening is a technique used to make web addresses easier to remember and share. When you shorten a link, you're just taking the long address and making it shorter so that it's easier to use on social media or in emails.

When you create a new Rebrandly account, you can choose to create your own personal link or customize one of our pre-made templates. Depending on whether you want a static link or one that tracks clicks, we have options for both!

A simple link builder that lets you create custom links with your own domain name or a subdomain.
With Rebrandly's analytics, you can see and evaluate the performance of your campaigns in real-time.
With Rebrandly, you can route traffic to the right place, based on your knowledge of which sites convert best.

Simple and easy-to-understand analytics dashboard for all types of users!
Link retargeting capabilities through platforms like Facebook, Twitter, etc.
You have a dedicated onboarding team to help you get set up with ease.

There could be more sorting and filtering options added to the UI.
Sometimes it can take a little while to hear back from their customer support team.
It can sometimes crash on different operating systems.

Rebrandly offers a free account to get started, but pricing can reach $499/month for additional features.

Best Fit For:

Small Business & Mid Market Businesses

Free Trial Offered?

YES!

NO.

Pricing Plan 1:

$0/month

Pricing Plan 2:

$417 /month

Zapier
HubSpot
Buffer

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TinyURL

Growann's Software Review:

4.0

out of 5

Read our full TinyURL link tracking review.

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TinyURL helps you create shorter links. Whenever you want to share a link on social media, you probably want it to be as short as possible. That's where TinyURL comes in. It allows you to take a long URL and convert it into a shorter one—one that doesn't have all those extra letters and numbers that nobody wants to type out.

Link management services by TinyURL.com allow you to manage long URLs in your email marketing, social media, and other customer communications.
Unlike other link tracking software out there, with TinyURL, you can create branded and custom short URLs that your customers or users will trust.
TinyURL's analytics dashboard provides you with a broad array of information, including data points that show how your marketing campaigns are performing across channels, regions, countries, and more.

You can get started right away with their URL link builder without the need to create an account.
The signup and analytics tracking process is really straightforward to use for most users.
Their pricing is definitely eye-catching for most users and scales nicely as you grow too.

Their UI could use some improvements compared to other link tracking platforms.
You are not able to view analytics with the free version of their software.
Some platforms don’t like the formatting of TinyURLs’ link builder.

TinyURL provides customers with a free account to start, but pricing can grow up to $1499/month for users that need millions of API credits.

Best Fit For:

Small Business & Mid Market Businesses

Free Trial Offered?

YES!

NO.

Pricing Plan 1:

$0/month

Pricing Plan 2:

CUSTOM

Pipedream
API

Get started →Get started →

LinkTrackr

Growann's Software Review:

4.1

out of 5

Read our full LinkTrackr link tracking review.

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LinkTrackr is the perfect link tracking software for you if you are looking to track links and view their data. With their easy-to-use interface, you can quickly set up a link tracker and start tracking links in just minutes.

Create campaigns to track and identify the source of your conversions by identifying which banner ads, solo email ads, links on your website, and other marketing strategies are most effective.
LinkTrackr's automatic conversion tracking system helps you avoid duplicate conversions and identify the most profitable traffic sources.
LinkTrackr's reports provide you with information on how much revenue a conversion has generated; the profit generated by that conversion, your return on investment and many other KPIs you’d like to measure.

You’re able to cloak your affiliate links if needed.
They seem to have easy-to-use A/B split testing capabilities.
A URL rotator that allows you to split traffic across different partner URLs.

Their customer support is not listed within the pricing of the platform.
They only provide a few payment gateways for payment.
Integrating their software can be confusing for some not “tech-savvy”

LinkTrackr prices start at $7/month (billed annually) with their most expensive plans at $47/month (billed annually).

Best Fit For:

Small Business & Mid Market Businesses

Free Trial Offered?

YES!

NO.

Pricing Plan 1:

$7/month

Pricing Plan 2:

$47/month

Google Ads
Facebook Ads
Cj Affiliate

Get started →Get started →

Featured Partners:

Everflow

Get Started →

Kademi

Get Started →

Software Rankings:

Disclaimer:

Each sponsored placement is distinguished with a distinctive blue ribbon, ensuring that you are aware of and informed about the content you're consuming.

Link Generator Pricing Comparisons:

Below we showcase the difference in pricing between all of the link generators in our list.

Platform	Free Trial?	Pricing #1	Pricing #2
Everflow	false	$750/month	CUSTOM
Kademi	true	$500/month	CUSTOM
Voluum	true	$499/month	$1,999/month
Rebrandly	true	$0/month	$417 /month
TinyURL	true	$0/month	CUSTOM

Link Generator Review Comparisons:

Below we showcase the difference in performance between all of the link generators in our list.

Software	Customer Support	Performance	Value	Total Product Rating
Everflow	4.4	4.6	4.2	4.4
Kademi	4.4	4.6	4.6	4.5
Voluum	4.1	4.7	4	4.3
Rebrandly	4.3	4.2	4.1	4.1
TinyURL	4.3	4.3	4.3	4

6+ Best Referral Link Generators & Tools in 2023

The Best Referral Link Software of 2023:

Our Reviews of the Best Referral Link Generator:

Everflow

Overview

Features

Benefits

Pitfalls

Pricing

Product images

Customers

Integrations

Kademi

Overview

Features

Benefits

Pitfalls

Pricing

Product images

Customers

Integrations

Voluum

Overview

Features

Benefits

Pitfalls

Pricing

Product images

Customers

Integrations

Rebrandly

Overview

Features

Benefits

Pitfalls

Pricing

Product images

Customers

Integrations

TinyURL

Overview

Features

Benefits

Pitfalls

Pricing

Product images

Customers

Integrations

LinkTrackr

Overview

Features

Benefits

Pitfalls

Pricing

Product images

Customers

Integrations

Important Features to Look For in Referral Link Software:

Link Generator Pricing Comparisons:

Link Generator Review Comparisons:

How do I Create a Referral Link?

What is a Referral URL Generator?

Is a Referral Link the Same as an Affiliate Link?

What is a Referral ID?

How Do You Track Your Referral Links?

What’s an Example of a Referral Link?

Factors we use to Rank Referral Marketing:

Similar Categories to Referral Marketing

Nick Cotter