# Affiliate tracking software vs an app (2026) · Campaign Buyer > Source: https://campaignbuyer.com/compare/simple-affiliate-tracking-software-vs-app Simple affiliate tracking: software vs appmedia buyer software ## RedTrack vs BeMob By [Dana Rourke](/authors/dana-rourke), Lead reviewer. Reviewed by [Campaign Buyer Editorial](/authors/editorial). Updated 9 September 2026\. **Disclosure:**We may earn a commission when you buy through links on this page. It never affects our rankings. RedTrack, from $83/mo. BeMob, from $49/mo. Quick answer Pick RedTrack if you buy media across sources and need server-side postbacks and CAPI that scale with real spend; pick BeMob if you are still learning or spending lightly and want a genuine free tier to test on before you pay for anything. ### Side by side __Feature comparison across 2 tools__ | Tool | From | | ----------- | --------- | | 1. RedTrack | Free tier | | 5. BeMob | Free tier | If you searched for a simple affiliate tracking tool and ran into the question of software versus an app, here is the honest version of the fork. In affiliate tracking, "app" almost always means a plugin that lives inside one platform you already run, a Shopify referral app being the common case. "Software" means a standalone tracker you log into on its own, wire your traffic sources into, and point at any offer on any domain. The dividing line is where your conversions happen. If every sale closes inside one store, a platform app is enough, and you should stop reading and go install one. If you buy media across Meta, Google, native or email and send it to offers on more than one domain, a store plugin cannot see traffic it did not originate, and you need standalone software. Most people reading this are in the second camp, which is why this page puts two standalone trackers side by side. RedTrack and BeMob are the two a simple-affiliate buyer usually ends up choosing between: BeMob because it starts free, RedTrack because it is the one most buyers graduate to. They do the same core job, built for two very different stages of the same journey. ### BeMob: the free place to learn BeMob is the gentlest on-ramp into tracking that exists. The free plan is a working tracker with no time limit: ten campaigns, real landing-page and offer management, and reporting good enough to understand how postbacks and traffic tokens actually behave. For a buyer validating a first funnel, it is the right place to make the early mistakes before money is on the line. Paid entry is cheap as well, and because it is cloud-hosted there is nothing to install or keep patched. The limits arrive faster than beginners expect. BeMob counts every impression, visit, click and conversion as an event, so the free allowance disappears the moment you run impression-heavy traffic like native or push. Custom tracking and cloaking domains, which most serious campaigns need, only start on the $249 Business plan. BeMob is excellent at getting you tracking for free while you work out whether an offer is worth scaling, and most buyers leave the free tier once one is. ### RedTrack: the software you grow into RedTrack is the standalone software most buyers move to once real spend is flowing. Its whole design assumes the modern problem: browser pixels keep dropping conversions and ad platforms keep over-reporting ROAS. So conversions are sent back to Meta and TikTok through CAPI, cost is pulled from the ad platforms automatically, and the dashboard shows tracked profit instead of a number you assemble by hand. One account covers affiliate offers, lead-gen forms and ecommerce checkouts. Affiliate and lead-gen plans start with Solo at 5M events a month, ecommerce brands can begin on the free Relay plan, and RedTrack is the tracker we rank first overall. The catch is the on-ramp. Postbacks, conversion mapping and traffic-source tokens take real time to wire up correctly, and buyers arriving from a pixel-only world underestimate it. The interface is dense and looks dated next to newer dashboards. Budget an afternoon for setup, and expect the first numbers to disagree with the ad platforms until the mapping is right. After that, RedTrack largely runs itself, and it keeps doing the job long after BeMob's free events would have run out. ### How to choose between the two Stage and traffic type decide this. If you are testing your first offers, spending lightly, or simply want to learn tracking without a bill, BeMob's free tier is the correct answer and nothing else here beats free. The moment you are running consistent paid social or ecommerce traffic, need conversions flowing back to the platforms, or start watching BeMob's event counter climb toward its cap, RedTrack is the better home. Many buyers do both in sequence: learn on BeMob, then move to RedTrack when the spend justifies the depth. That order keeps the bill at zero until the traffic pays for it. One thing neither tool changes is the work you still own. A tracker reports what you tell it to track, so whichever you pick, the setup discipline (clean postbacks, consistent tokens, a number that reconciles against the ad platform) is what makes the data trustworthy. Pick the tool for your stage, then spend the afternoon getting the wiring right. ### A third route: tracking built into the app that hosts the sale If you sell your own offer through a checkout or funnel app, that app may be able to fire the affiliate postbacks itself, so the tracking comes with a tool you already pay for. [ElasticFunnels](/reviews/elasticfunnels) works this way. It is a funnel platform for teams running paid traffic, and it sends server-side postbacks to affiliate networks on purchase, refund, chargeback and renewal from its own checkout, which suits a vendor who runs pages, checkout and reporting in one place and does not want a second login. It starts with a 14-day free trial that takes no card, on plans from $97 a month plus 0.5% of revenue processed through its hosted checkout. Its drawback is a short public record: it is newer than both trackers here and has very little independent review coverage, while RedTrack has years of public setups and threads behind it. That is normal for a platform this young, and the no-card trial lets you check its numbers against your network's before you rely on them. For a media buyer whose traffic closes on offers they do not host, a dedicated tracker is still the right call. ### The bottom line "Software versus app" is mostly a wording problem. If all your conversions happen inside one platform, use that platform's app. If they do not, you want standalone software, and the real choice narrows to which one for your stage. BeMob to learn on for free. RedTrack to scale on once the spend is real. Start where you are, and move when the event counter or the missing conversions tell you to. ### RedTrack ##### What works * CAPI and server-side postbacks are built in, so conversions reach Meta and TikTok even after the pixel drops them * Pulls ad spend from the platforms automatically, so ROI is calculated for you * Every paid plan carries CAPI, ad-spend sync and Stop Rules, from Solo at $141/mo on annual billing with 5M events * Handles affiliate, lead-gen and ecommerce tracking from one account ##### What to watch * The setup rewards patience. First-time users spend real time wiring postbacks and mapping conversions * The interface is dense and looks dated next to newer dashboards * Event-based pricing means a traffic spike can push you into the next tier mid-month ### BeMob ##### What works * A genuinely usable free plan: 100K events, 10 campaigns and real reporting * Cheap paid entry at $49/mo for 1M events * Cloud-hosted, so there is nothing to install or maintain ##### What to watch * 100K free events disappear fast once you log impressions or run any volume * Custom tracking domains only start on the $249 Business plan * Less depth than Voluum or RedTrack once you scale past testing ### Pricing RedTrack: from $83/mo. Affiliate and lead-gen plans are priced by events and seats. Solo is $141/mo billed yearly ($169 monthly) with 5M events and one user. Team is $333/mo ($399 monthly) with 20M events and five users. Enterprise is $833/mo ($999 monthly) with 75M events and fifteen users. Overage costs $0.04 per 1,000 events on Solo, $0.035 on Team and $0.025 on Enterprise, and tracking keeps running past the cap. Ecommerce plans are priced by tracked revenue: Relay is free with UTM-based last-click attribution, Brand starts at $83/mo billed yearly ($99 monthly) and Agency at $499/mo ($599 monthly). Faster ad-spend sync is a paid add-on. Paid plans start with a 14-day free trial. BeMob: from $49/mo. The Free plan covers 100,000 events a month with one month of data retention. Professional costs $49/mo for 1M events and one month of retention. Business is $249/mo for 10M events and three months, and Enterprise $499/mo for 30M events and six months. BeMob counts every impression, visit, click or conversion as an event. Overage is billed per 1,000 events at $0.05 on Professional, $0.025 on Business and $0.02 on Enterprise. Custom tracking and cloaking domains start on the Business plan. Prices as of 12 October 2026 Our pick ### RedTrack RedTrack is the pick if you buy paid social or run ecommerce and need server-side conversions flowing back to the platform without stitching three tools together. [Visit RedTrack (opens in a new tab) ](https://www.redtrack.io/?utm%5Fsource=campaignbuyer.com&utm%5Fmedium=affiliate&utm%5Fcampaign=comparison) ### Frequently asked questions Which is cheaper, RedTrack or BeMob? BeMob is cheaper to start, at $49/mo against $83/mo for RedTrack. Both add charges as usage grows, so price each one at the volume you actually run. Is affiliate tracking software different from an affiliate tracking app? Yes. An app sits inside one platform and only sees the sales made there. A standalone tracker follows any traffic source to any domain, which is what a paid-media buyer needs. Is there a genuinely free affiliate tracker? BeMob has one: 100,000 events a month and ten campaigns, with no end date. Native and push traffic can use that up quickly, so plan to upgrade once an offer works. Do I need CAPI for affiliate tracking? For paid social and ecommerce, yes. Pixels now miss conversions, and server-side sync keeps Meta and TikTok optimizing on real sales. RedTrack builds its product around it, while BeMob gives it less weight. Can an app builder like MIT App Inventor track affiliate sales? No. App Inventor and similar no-code tools make mobile apps and know nothing about click IDs, postbacks or attribution. Use a purpose-built tracker. Should I build my own affiliate tracking instead of buying it? Almost never. Click IDs that survive redirects, server-to-server postbacks, deduplication and bot filtering take more engineering than a year of a $49/mo tracker costs. Build it only if tracking is your actual product. ### Sources #### Other sources 2 discussions and reviews read for this page. Quotes are excerpts; open a link to read the original in context. 1. \[r1\] [AMA: 15 years in affiliate marketing / media buying ](https://www.reddit.com/r/Affiliatemarketing/comments/1lmxud2/ama%5F15%5Fyears%5Fin%5Faffiliate%5Fmarketing%5Fmedia%5Fbuying/) Reddit, 1 Jun 2025 2. \[r2\] [Keitaro vs RedTrack vs Voluum - which one for popunder affiliate with S2S tracking? Need real experiences ](https://www.reddit.com/r/Affiliatemarketing/comments/1sk4d3l/keitaro%5Fvs%5Fredtrack%5Fvs%5Fvoluum%5Fwhich%5Fone%5Ffor/) Reddit, 1 Feb 2026 [RedTrack review](/reviews/redtrack) [BeMob review](/reviews/bemob) [Best ad tracker ranking](/best) [All head-to-heads](/compare) Written by Dana Rourke Lead reviewer Dana Rourke is the lead reviewer at Campaign Buyer. She owns the tracker and attribution coverage: reading what long-term users report about each tool, checking its documentation and pricing, and verifying prices with the vendor before writing the verdict. Keeping the rankings honest mostly means writing down what the top pick gets wrong, so she does that first. [danar@campaignbuyer.com](mailto:danar@campaignbuyer.com) Last checked 2026-09-09 --- Campaign Buyer reviews the trackers, landing page builders, attribution tools and ad-spy software that performance media buyers actually run. We read what long-term users report and verify pricing with each vendor, so every pick names what it is bad at, not just what it sells. [Campaign Buyer](/) © 2026 Campaign Buyer. Independent and reader-supported. We may earn a commission when you buy through links on this page. It never affects our rankings.