Are you searching for top-notch referral program software to enhance your business? Referral programs effectively expand your product’s reach through promotion by others. Utilizing referral program software facilitates the creation and administration of such programs easily.
In this article, we’ve gathered a list of the 15 best referral program software that works well with your eCommerce store.
15 Small Business Referral Software To Manage Your Program
| Referral software | Best for | Free Plan/Trial | Pricing |
| UpPromote | Small to medium-sized Shopify stores | Yes | From $29.99/mo |
| Referral Rock | Medium to large businesses | Yes | From $200/month |
| Referral Factory | All-sized businesses | Yes | From $95/month |
| Referral Candy | All-sized businesses | No | From $59/month |
| TapMango | Retail stores and restaurants only | Not revealed | Not revealed |
| Revetize | Small to medium businesses | Not revealed | Not revealed |
| Referral SaaSquatch | Large firms | Not revealed | Not revealed |
| ReferralMagic | SaaS businesses only | Yes | From $245/month |
| InviteReferrals | Businesses of all sizes | Yes | From $99 per month |
| Mention Me | Medium to large businesses | Not revealed | Not revealed |
| Ambassador | Medium to large businesses and enterprises | No | From $250 per month |
| Yotpo | Businesses of all sizes | Yes | From $199 per month |
| Genius Referrals | B2B, SaaS, and B2C brands of all sizes | Yes | From $89/mo |
| FriendBuy | All-sized businesses | Yes | From $249 per month |
| HelloReferrals | Small businesses | Yes | From $39/month |
UpPromote
Pricing:
- 14-day free trial
- Free plan
- Grow Affiliate: $29.99/mo
- Professional: $89.99/mo
- Enterprise: $199.99/mo
UpPromote stands out as a top-recommended Shopify affiliate & referral marketing app, earning trust from top brands and experts worldwide to boost their businesses. It boasts a user-friendly affiliate system suitable for all types of companies, having already served 115,000 businesses globally with a whopping 193,000,000+ click records.
UpPromote is a handy app for Shopify’s new stores that helps you get more customers by letting your current ones spread the word about your products.
With UpPromote’s Customer Referral program, Shopify brands can quickly get their current customers to tell others about their products. The program is simple to set up and can be customized to fit the needs of any business.
Plus, it’s easy for customers to see and join, thanks to website widgets. And everyone involved gets rewarded, which encourages more people to join in.
UpPromote puts a little pop-up on your website after someone buys something (Post-purchase popup feature), inviting them to join the referral program. This friendly reminder can boost sales and bring in new customers.
The software also gives businesses detailed reports to see how well your referral program works. These reports show things like clicks, referrals, and sales in real time, helping companies to make smart choices to improve your referral strategies.
UpPromote is also outstanding for its exceptional support, which is responsive and attentive. Their commitment to user feedback ensures a reliable and seamless experience.
Key features:
- Create rewards and discounts to encourage people to buy through referrals
- Convert customers to affiliates with a Post-purchase popup
- Keep track of partners bringing in orders with affiliate links, coupons, and connected emails
- Motivate partners by giving them bonuses, gifts, store credit
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Referral Rock
Pricing:
- Starter $200/mo
- Growth $400/mo
- Established Business $800/mo
Referral Rock is a robust referral program software designed to help brands kickstart their customer growth from scratch. With a focus on creating seamless referral experiences, the app offers a range of features to facilitate effective referral marketing campaigns.
Referral Rock makes it easy for your customers to tell others about your products or services. You can set up rewards and incentives to motivate them to share more. Plus, the solution has a special website where customers can easily refer their friends and keep track of their referrals.
You can also customize how you reward your customers for referring others. It’s not just about giving discounts – you can get creative with your rewards to make them really appealing.
If you need help getting started, Referral Rock offers a service where experts can guide you through the process. They’ll help you determine the best way to set up your referral program and ensure everything runs smoothly.
Key features:
- A dedicated referral website portal to simplify the referral process for customers
- Advanced reward management to offer customizable incentive programs
- Flexibility for different programs that support customer referral, partner and affiliate, and brand ambassador programs
- Seamlessly connects with CRM systems and other marketing tools
- Delivers instant insights on referral performance and sends timely notifications
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Referral Factory
Pricing:
- Starter $95 / month
- Basic $200 / month
- Pro $400 / month
- Enterprise Custom
Referral Factory stands out with over 1,000 referral program templates catering to various industries worldwide. With support for 18 languages and numerous integrations, it offers flexibility and global reach.
Additionally, it features its own referral program and seamlessly integrates with popular CRMs like Zoho, Intercom, Pipedrive, HubSpot, and Salesforce.
The app simplifies the process of enrolling, tracking, rewarding, and managing referring customers, influencers, and affiliates.
This referral software empowers marketers to acquire top-quality customers more efficiently by harnessing the effectiveness of word-of-mouth marketing.
Key features:
- 100+ personalized templates covering widgets and popups
- Comprehensive tracking and analytics package
- 200+ referral rewards and motivation schemes
- Adaptable webhook and API functionality
- Extensive integration options with popular tools such as HubSpot, Zapier, Intercom, Zoho, and others
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Referral Candy
Pricing:
- Premium $59/month
- Plus $299/month
- Enterprise (custom pricing)
ReferralCandy is a user-friendly tool for online shops. It makes it easy for beginners to get into word-of-mouth marketing.
With features like one-click affiliate payouts to affiliates, ready-to-use email templates, and custom rewards, managing your referral program is simple.
Plus, you get detailed reports to see which affiliates are performing best. You can test different offers to see what works best for your customers. And it helps you automate inviting new customers to join your program through emails and popups.
The software connects smoothly with platforms like WooCommerce, Shopify, and popular email tools.
Key features:
- Automated invitation to invite customers to join your referral program
- Use post-purchase popups, landing pages, and referral widgets to enroll more customers
- Extend your referral program to subscription products by applying coupon codes
- Reward customers with cash, store discounts, or custom gifts for successful referral programs
- Create campaigns that enroll specific groups of people, such as those who sign up via website widgets
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TapMango
Pricing: flexible; contact the support team
TapMango is one of the great customer loyalty programs and online ordering platforms for small businesses. It helps businesses keep customers coming back by offering cool features like a marketing tool, a tablet for customers, and even their own mobile app.
With TapMango, companies can make personalized loyalty programs that fit their needs and make customers happy.
TapMango also helps businesses make extra money by offering special deals and letting customers pay in advance for stuff. Plus, it’s all about making customers happy with fun games and a cool look.
Key features:
- Manage campaigns, customers, and more through an easy-to-use back-end system
- Customers can track points, offers, and deals.
- Seamlessly integrate with major POS systems, converting sales transactions into loyal customers.
- Fully customizable branding and complete control over rewards and specials
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Revetize
Pricing: Custom pricing
Revetize is an app made for small local businesses to handle online marketing, stay in touch with customers, and encourage loyalty. It helps manage reputation, find new leads, and communicate with customers. Businesses can ask happy customers for referrals and reviews easily.
The software has two plans, Basic and Golden, but you’ll need to check with the sales team for details. It works with Bookafy for scheduling and has a feature where customers can text a special word to trigger automated campaigns.
The support team is quick to respond, but there’s no free trial available.
Key features:
- Manage customer interactions and relationships
- Monitor performance and progress in real-time
- Gain insights into customer behavior and campaign effectiveness
- Schedule campaigns and communications
- Generate new leads through referral marketing programs and promotions
- Reward customers for referrals and loyalty
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Referral SaaSquatch
Pricing: customize based on your needs
Referral SaaSquatch is a customer referral platform tailored for B2C brands in the on-demand sector seeking to harness the power of a refer-a-friend program for growth.
Designed specifically for on-demand businesses, consumer service/box subscriptions, or online marketplaces with 5,000+ customers, this multi-channel referral software offers advanced features such as funnel analytics and fraud detection.
Moreover, Referral SaaSquatch boasts over 50 integrations with payment and marketing systems, enhancing its compatibility and functionality for businesses leveraging referral programs for accelerated growth.
Key features:
- Customizable widgets for both sides of a referral
- Tiered and purchase-based reward programs
- Advanced users segmentation and enrollment
- Integrations with subscription management systems, link tracking, cookie tracking, and JavaScript widgets
- Simplified program set-up with integrations and APIs
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ReferralMagic
Pricing:
- 7-day free trial
- MONTHLY $ 245 Per month
- ANNUAL $2205 Per year
- ON-PREMISE $9700 One time license fee
ReferralMagic is a highly user-friendly and straightforward referral marketing solution crafted for online SaaS businesses. It encompasses all the essential features required to execute successful referral marketing campaigns.
With ReferralMagic, you can effortlessly create multiple referral marketing campaigns concurrently within minutes.
Moreover, the software seamlessly integrates with various third-party applications, enhancing its versatility and compatibility with your existing tools and systems.
Key features:
- Real-time referral statistics, reward management, referral code generation, etc
- Integration with more than 1000 third-party solutions using Zapier. ReferralMagic
- Various monetary for both referees and referrers
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InviteReferrals
Pricing:
Following a complimentary 14-day trial, pricing begins at $99 per month for businesses with up to 1,000 new referrers per month.
InviteReferrals is a straightforward marketing tool that offers simplicity, powerful tracking features, and in-depth analytics.
The tool combines ease of use with robust tracking capabilities, making it a versatile choice for businesses seeking to leverage the power of referrals in their marketing strategy.
Designed to be user-friendly across all devices and platforms, InviteReferrals utilizes adaptable Referral Program Widgets that adjust to each user’s platform, even integrating seamlessly with Facebook timelines.
With an intuitive “What You See is What You Get” editor, building your referral campaign is a breeze, allowing you to customize it to your liking.
Plus, customers have referral options spanning Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, and Google+.
Key features:
- Detailed analytics with daily or weekly updates
- Track clicks, conversions, shares, and more
- Powerful referral tracking and rewards system
- 25+ languages available
- Integrations with WooCommerce, WordPress, and Bigcommerce
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Mention Me
Pricing: Contact the support team
Mention Me specializes in “referral engineering” for brands focused on growth, boasting a client roster of over 450 brands, including Zipcar and PrettyLittleThing.
It offers a plug-and-play referral platform with sharing features designed to seamlessly integrate with your existing marketing stack.
You can manage, track, test, and optimize your referral campaigns from one central location with Mention Me. The platform provides access to a wealth of referral data, and you can easily gain insights into your campaign performance.
Additionally, the provider’s client success team offers actionable advice to help you maximize your referral program.
Key features:
- Create highly targeted messages throughout the advocacy journey
- Easy customer segmentation
- Live support for onboarding continual optimization
- Integrate with various platforms such as Magento, WeGift, Klaviyo, Dotmailer, and more
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Ambassador
Pricing: begins at $250 per month and covers up to 2,500 contacts.
Ambassador is an all-in-one referral software that handles various marketing programs like referrals, affiliates, partners, influencers, and advocates all in one place.
It helps you find your ambassadors, run personalized campaigns, track their performance, and reward them easily. Its user-friendly editor makes the process smooth.
Plus, Ambassador works well with other tools you might use, like your CRM, email service, online store, and payment system.
You can create different referral programs for different types of customers and track everything closely.
Some of Ambassador’s success stories include companies like Posigen, Skulpt, and StockX.
Key features:
- Create custom-branded referral experiences, track rewards, and incentivize customers
- Control your brand message by loading your videos, images, audio clips, or any other multimedia content
- Equip your ambassadors with customized landing pages
- Monitor engagement metrics, track reach and impressions, and analyze the performance of your ambassadors
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Yotpo
Pricing: Free plan available, price starts at $199 per month
Yotpo’s marketing platform is great because it helps with customer reviews, pictures, referrals, and text messages. Big companies like Google and Shopify use it for its helpfulness.
It works well with all your other marketing tools and helps you sell more and make better customer journeys online.
If you want to use it to get more people to refer to your products, you can pick from ready-made campaigns and offer different rewards. You can also make a system where people get rewards as they refer more friends.
Key features:
- Engage customers with welcome messages, abandoned cart reminders, post-purchase cross-sells, and more
- Collect and display customer content using AI
- Collect reviews in multiple languages and display reviews on-site in multiple languages
- Analyze customer feedback at scale and gain actionable insights
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Genius Referrals
Pricing:
- 30-day free trial
- Starter $89/mo
- Silver $219/mo
- Gold $429/mo
- Platinum $849/mo
The Genius Referrals platform makes setting up and running a referral program simple. They break it into seven steps.
Once you’ve set up the program to fit your business, you can start a new referral campaign with multiple tiers. Templates in their design center can help speed things up, or you can make your own. Then, you use the code snippets they give you to put the referral template on your site.
You can tell your customers about the program through email or social media and make the emails match your brand.
The platform also gives you detailed info on how your referral program is doing, so you can make changes if needed.
Key features:
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FriendBuy
Pricing: After a free 30-day trial, Friendbuy’s pricing begins at $249 monthly for businesses with up to $50,000 in total monthly revenue.
Friendbuy simplifies the launch of your referral program with lightweight code snippets, getting your program up and running quickly.
Their mobile-friendly widget templates are optimized for easy sharing, allowing you to activate referrals anywhere on your site or in your mobile app.
Friendbuy handles reward fulfillment automatically for various types of rewards, including affiliate coupon tracking codes, account credits, loyalty points, and gift cards. It employs robust fraud detection algorithms and flexible reward criteria to ensure quality and eligibility.
You can improve user referrals through easy A/B testing for every part of the referral funnel. Experiment with different offers, creatives, and messaging to discover what drives more sharing and conversions. Friendbuy makes creating variants and measuring gains for all your key performance indicators simple, allowing for quick adjustments.
Their referral marketing tools also include email templates for automated programs and the flexibility to design custom communications. You can set event-based triggers and reports to power more communications to customers and prospects.
Key features:
- Customizable referral widget templates to match branding
- Placement of widgets on key locations such as Homepage, Post Purchase Page, Stand-Alone referral pages, and User Account pages
- A/B testing of copy, offers, and other elements without developer resources
- Conversion tracking pixel to follow referred visitors through to order confirmation
- Real-time referral tracking
- Integration with existing CRM, website, or email platforms
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HelloReferrals
Pricing:
- 14 Day Free Trial
- Pro $39/mo
- Enterprise: Custom
HelloReferrals is a web-based referral marketing platform that tracks referrals and referral sales leads, facilitating collaboration among businesses and their networks. It offers tools for monitoring, reporting, and organizing trusted partners.
With HelloReferrals, you can send and receive business referrals and word-of-mouth leads while managing and tracking them.
The platform enables centralized communication within your referral group, ensuring networking activities are consolidated and current. You can send messages, arrange meet-ups, and organize events to support each other throughout the sales cycle.
Key features:
- Create your own-brand referral program using the simple campaign builder
- Pre-designed and customizable referral sequence campaigns
- Reward your customers or network with automated VISA eGift Cards or create your own reward
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How Can Small Businesses Benefit From Referral Software?
Referral marketing is like a big puzzle. You’ve got to keep tabs on every friend or customer who recommends your business and every one they bring in. Each time someone new comes in, you want to be sure the right person gets credit.
And your biggest fans? They need to know when their friends sign up because of them. They should be able to check in on their rewards and know exactly how to use them.
Instead of starting from scratch, businesses today can use referral marketing solutions to handle all this. These tools help design and set up referral campaigns easily. Plus, they automate most, if not all, of the steps involved in tracking referrals.
Let’s break down into how small brands can take advantage of the referral program app.
Easy Tracking: The software solutions keep track of who refers new customers, making it simple for small businesses to know who brings in business.
More Customers: By encouraging current customers to refer friends, businesses can get new customers without spending much on ads.
Better Relationships: The software helps businesses connect with customers and partners by sending personal invites or giving rewards for successful referrals, making relationships stronger.
Save Money: Referral software is a cheap way to market since businesses only pay for new customers brought in by referrals.
Helpful Insights: The software gives businesses useful info, like which referral methods work best or which customers bring in the most referrals, helping them improve their referral programs.
That’s why referral software helps small businesses grow by getting more customers, strengthening relationships, and saving money on marketing.
What To Look For When Choosing Referral Software For Small Businesses?
When selecting referral software for small businesses, it’s crucial to consider several factors:
Ease of Use and User Interface
When picking a referral software, its ease of use matters a lot. UpPromote, for example, is straightforward and requires no special training to start using it.
You can easily set up the customer referral display or post-purchase popup within the app. It also lets you track and analyze total referrals.
UpPromote has a tutorial video showing you everything you need to know about referral program setup. Videos are helpful because they’re easier to follow than just reading. So, before you decide on a software, check out what kind of help they offer.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WyKkxhxXmJk&ab_channel=UpPromote
Pricing and Scalability
It’s all about the money. Long and pricey contracts don’t make sense if you’re short on cash. Small and medium-sized businesses have to be picky with their marketing budget. It can really limit the choices when it comes to pricing options.
Customer Support and Training
Some providers offer extensive customer support for businesses without an IT team or wanting to ease the workload. They’ll guide you step-by-step through the setup. However, some businesses find DIY help or using knowledge bases is enough.
Automated Tracking and Reward Management
In addition to being easy to use, the referral software you choose should also make good use of automation. Features like automated reporting and referral tracking are crucial. Accurate data is vital for setting up and improving your referral program, and automation saves you time.
Customization
Customization is important in referral software because it lets you personalize your communication with different groups of people. Look for software that allows you to change things like sign-up forms to make them fit your brand.
For example, Friendbuy is great for customization. It lets you make your widgets and emails match your brand, and you can set up custom rules for giving out rewards.
Fraud detection and prevention
Having a built-in fraud prevention feature is crucial for a successful referral program. It ensures that your program remains profitable and based on accurate data. Preventing bots and other fraudulent activities is essential for maintaining customer loyalty.
Ideally, the software should use safety measures and technology to identify and flag unqualified referrals. Without this feature, you may need to review redemptions, making scaling your referral program challenging manually.
Integration Capabilities
The app should seamlessly integrate with existing CRM, email marketing platforms, and other business tools, enhancing operational efficiency
Language and Currency Options
If your target audience is international, ensure that the software offers enough language and currency options
By considering these factors, small businesses can choose the most suitable referral software to manage and grow their referral programs effectively.
How to Choose the Best Referral Software for Small Business
In addition to the checklist of essential features, having your own summary of requirements is crucial. While referral software may have all the key features, it must align with your budget and scalability needs.
You should consider the following questions to refine your shortlist:
- Does the software integrate with your existing tools or those you plan to adopt in the future?
- Is your team proficient in managing a referral program, or will you require extensive support during setup?
- Is white-label customization a priority for your branding needs?
- Is the software widely used in your industry, indicating its suitability and reliability?
- Does it offer adequate language and currency options for your target audience?
- Are there diverse reward options to incentivize your customers effectively?
- Does the software support the number of participants you anticipate?
- Are there any transaction limits that could affect your operations?
Answering these questions will guide you in selecting the most suitable referral marketing software for your business.
Last words
Referral marketing is a powerful strategy that allows you to attract new customers while nurturing relationships with existing ones. While paid marketing has its place, word-of-mouth referrals can bring in some of your most valuable leads.
Building a strong referral community requires more than just identifying potential advocates. You need to engage with them actively on a regular basis. That’s where referral marketing software comes in handy, streamlining the entire referral process and allowing you to manage and nurture your referral network effectively.
With the right referral tracking software solution, you can encourage referrals, strengthen customer relationships, and drive business growth.
