Show HN: Reflio – Open-source affiliate program creator for SaaS
reflio.com
reflio.com
My (possibly misguided) thought is that when dealing with self-hosted referral tracking the affiliate needs to trust that their commission is being tracked properly. But when the SaaS controls the database themselves the affiliate is putting a huge amount of trust in them that tracking is working. And if it isn't working, it seems suspicious at best and fraudulent at worst.
With third party tracking you have external "proof" if presented with compliance or legal needs.
With that said, I see they do offer a hosted option, which is interesting too.
You can see what’s on the roadmap here: https://reflio.canny.io
Custom events will be possible in the upcoming analytics update :)
Now I use a custom query on Stripe Sigma, which is actually cheaper, but probably won't scale as well.
Anyway, glad to see an open source option in this space. Hopefully my anecdote will be interesting to you. Would love to see support for promo codes in the future.
We do support promo codes right now but it’s manual, however, a direct sync with your available Stripe coupons in the future would be cool. I’ll get it added to the roadmap!
I've got my app using the custom API, and it works just fine (although lately a lot of ad blockers have started blocking leaddyno js, but that's a whole different can of worms)
There’s a lack of docs right now since it’s still so new, working on this as a priority.
Curious if SaaS could use this for managing commission payments to internal and external sales teams and agents...
Last time I looked at your competitors nobody seemed to be doing it, so I implemented a halfway version myself. I currently generate a unique Stripe promo code for each new customer. If someone uses the promo code it gives them a small discount and gives the referrer credit against their account. Its not very popular as it stands.
If you have any advice, or know of any existing SaaS that can handle this, please do give a shout.
It just saves you all of the leg work in setting up these systems basically :)
I’ll add a fee cap though of maybe ~$50 or so though to account for higher ticket conversions.
Our landing and pricing page isn’t as clear as it needs to be right now, I will be updating it soon with all of the different functionality we offer that’s also unique.
Then you’d learn something, or not. But by pushing back “no” you’ll definitely not.
Just from my point of view, I’ve done a lot of research in this market so I’d be very surprised to learn that there’s competitors offering affiliate marketing program creation/management for the same pricing as us or better.
Our nearest competitor seems to start from $29/month, but that’s with an additional 9% fee for each referral. And they don’t allow you to upload your own logo to your campaign invite page…
I do appreciate I should have worded my response better though, it’s been a long day
All data is processed in the EU, and our company is registered in the UK.
I think it’s fair. The licensing states that you’re allowed to use Reflio 100% for free, as long as you keep the codebase in a public repository. Otherwise, if you want to use Reflio in a closed repo, you have to obtain a commercial license.
If I don't agree with your enterprise edition terms I have to manually remove that part of the code from my installation. Why don't you just separate them instead?
Second, what license is the Reflio referral tracking script under? It appears that this script should be integrated into the SaaS product itself? Having that script AGPL would be a poison pill that no sane non-AGPL SaaS would swallow.
The idea was that Reflio is 100% free to self-host in your own public repo. If you wish to make the code private, then you need to purchase a commercial license. That’s how I plan to set up the licensing. I’ll be changing the licensing file and README shortly to reflect this.
The AGPL on everything should accomplish that, and you can just note that commercial licenses are available for those wanting to keep their fork private.
But I suggest you license any javascript or client side libraries under a more permissive license, probably MIT or similiar-- because your SaaS customers probably don't want to make their entire SaaS app AGPL (Unless you only want to serve AGPL licensed SaaS customers). I think you use Sentry- look at the way they have their server under a NOT open source-available license, but the client libraries are under a permissive open source license- you can have the server under the AGPL, while using a more permissive library on the client libraries.
Beyond that, you should consider that there are many successful open source companies that use more permissive Open Source licenses and many companies that refuse to even consider AGPL licenses software. Personally not a huge fan of the AGPL due to to many uncertainties involved with it.
It is your project and you can license it however you want, and I appreciate that you have chosen an Open Source license, even if it is the AGPL. I just want to help you be more clear about the licensing and maybe put some consideration into if the AGPL is really the right license, rather than just following others :)
Also, consider that you can state your intent in the readme and that is great- you should- but it is the license that companies look to to decide if they want to use it or not, and generally to determine what they can and can't do
As far as I can see it's not AGPL, like Cal.com. It's actually AGPL + Commercial. That's to say if you clone the repo into a private repo but don't make any changes then you have to pay for some magical "licence", AGPL doesn't require that.
I'm not sure what achieves beyond AGPL.. but like others mentioned think about MIT licensing the client, and come up with contributor agreements if you're selling the code commercially.