We live in a digital age.
70% of businesses now have a website or some kind of online presence.
Each of those businesses require web hosting.
Many of those business will search for a new web host once every 3 years on average.
Any hosting affiliate knows that when it comes to choosing hosting affiliate programs, you have a wide range of options.
This is both a blessing and a curse: while you have many choices from which to choose, you also have that many more bad options to choose from too. (That’s a lot of hosting affiliate programs to keep straight!)
To make things a bit easier, I’ve compiled a list of the top 5 best Web hosting affiliate programs for 2021 (and the 2 worst).
From there, you can decide for yourself which one you choose to promote.
1. The Hostgator Affiliate Program.
Hostgator’s affiliate program is popular with a lot of Affiliate Marketer’s due to it’s high paying commission structure.
I promote Hostgator myself, the high commission is one of the reasons and the other reason is what I’ll talk about in just a second.
You can earn $65 per sale with Hostgator for your first 6 signups (per month).
The more people you refer, the more money you’ll make.
Here’s a breakdown of Hostgators Commission payout structure:
1-5 sales per month: $65 /signup
6-10 sales per month: $75 /signup
11-20 sales per month: $100 /signup
21+ sales per month: $125 /signup
The REAL reason I promote Hostgator, is because Hostgator is a great host for beginners to get started with and plans start from just $2.75 Per month, so it’s a no-brainer and an easy sale to make.
Even if someone signs up on the cheapest $2.75 per month plan, you’ll still get paid $65 dollars in commission, so food for thought.
2. The Bluehost Affiliate Program
https://www.bluehost.com/affiliates
Bluehost also payout $65 commission per sale.
However, as far as I’m aware, they don’t increase the payout even if you refer more people.
It’s a flat $65 dollar payout. (as far as I know, this might have changed).
However, from an Affiliate Marketers perspective, it’s one of the most competitive affiliate programs to promote, in an already extremely competitive landscape.
Every affiliate and his dog seems to be promoting this, so if you choose to promote Bluehost, you better be suited and booted for battle!
Not much more to say here.
3. The WP-Engine Affiliate Program
WP Engine has the highest paying web hosting Affiliate program I’ve seen at the time of writing this blog post.
They pay a whopping $200 per referral OR 100% of the first months payment.
So you’ve got to consider if it’s worth going for the $200 upfront or 100% of the first month.
WP Engine’s pricing starts from $30 per month to $290 per month on their most expensive plan.
Personally, if I was promoting WP Engine, I’d choose their $200 flat fee commission per referral.
Because if even if someone signs up to their cheapest plan ($30/month) I’d still get $200 commission, and quite honestly, not many people are going to take their most expensive deal @$290/month to make the 100% first month commission worth it.
WPEngine is for hosting WordPress websites, so they won’t be an option for anyone who uses static HTML based websites or websites built on any other platform that isn’t wordpress.
WP Engine run their affiliate program through Shareasale, so on the plus side, you’ll have no issues getting paid.
4. BigScoots Hosting Affiliate Program.
BigScoots.com is my hosting of choice and it’s who I personally use.
My blog you’re reading right now is hosted on Bigscoots.
However, whilst their affiliate commission isn’t the highest, their customer service and server speed is top notch, both of these things considered, means their customers stick around.
I’ve been with Bigscoots for 5 years and counting.
Bigscoots pay 90% commission of the first month on any of their plans.
So if you referred a business to their “Enterprise” level dedicated server, which bills at $697 per month, you’ll get a massive $627 dollars commission.
So if you target small to medium sized businesses ($697/month is chump change to real businesses) you’d make $627 every single time one of those businesses sign up.
Simple maths says, if you could get just 5 businesses to sign up each month, that’s nearly a $40,000 per year income.
Even if you just promoted their “entry” level dedicated plan @ $235/month, you’d still make @ $210 per sign up!
Just to be clear…I’m not connected with Bigscoots in any way, other than being a very satisfied customer of theirs.
5. Siteground Webhosting Affiliate Program
https://www.siteground.co.uk/affiliates
Siteground run to types of affiliate payment structure:
Referral credit
Flat fee commission.
The first one “Referral Credit” is best suited for affiliate marketers who are already EXISTING Siteground users.
The way this works is, you’ll get up to 3 months free hosting per each validated customer you refer.
So basically, it’s a way to get your web hosting for free.
The second method, and this is the method I would choose, is the Flat-Fee commission payout structure.
This is setup very similar to Hostgators affiliate program setup, however Siteground pay quite a bit less than Hostgator.
Siteground will pay the following:
1-5 Sales/mo = $30 /sale
6-10 Sales/mo = $50 /sale
11-20 Sales/mo = $65 /sale
On the plus side, Siteground are a well known company, so making sales isn’t that difficult, due to a high level brand awareness.
So those were my TOP 5 Web Hosting Affiliate Programs you can promote and make money as an Affiliate Marketer with.
I’m now going to quickly show you the WORST.
Now, before I go any further, I want to make it abundantly clear this blog post was intended to show you the best and worst web hosting affiliate programs, it was by no means intended to bad mouth anybody.
I’m purely ‘playing the ball and not the man’.
In other words, the programs listed in this blog post, are based on the pure FACTS of the programs (at the time this post was written) with a few of my own personal opinions thrown in as well.
My opinions should be treated exactly as that…Opinions and nothing more.
So with that being said…
These are the WORST Web Hosting Affiliate Programs I’ve found:
Namehero
https://www.namehero.com/affiliate
Whilst I’ve heard great things about Namehero, several people I know use them, their affiliate program isn’t that great for ONE reason.
Although their payouts are actually pretty good (up to $125 per sale), they run a ‘First click’ commission program.
What this means is, the ONLY way you’ll get paid for a referral, is if your affiliate link is the FIRST affiliate link the customer clicked.
Here’s how it works…
So, let’s assume “Roger” is looking for web hosting, he searches around, and clicks on a Namehero affiliate link that isn’t your link, but doesn’t decide to buy.
He then comes across YOUR link, you write up a good review of Namehero’s web hosting services, Roger then clicks your link and hey presto…decides to buy, guess what?….
…you won’t get the commission, the other guy will.
Because the other guy’s link was the first affiliate link that Roger clicked, hence ‘First click commission’.
So even though you did all the heavy lifting and motivated Roger to buy Namehero’s webhosting, the other guy will benefit and be credited with the sale and not you.
That sucks and I can’t think of any logical reason why any affiliate marketer worth their salt, would promote an affiliate program set up like this.
Where possible, ALWAYS, ALWAYS choose an affiliate program that operates on a last click commission, NOT ‘first click’.
If Namehero’s affiliate program operated on a last click commission basis, you would have been credited with the sale.
Now, here’s the thing, if Namehero suddenly changed their terms to a ‘last click commission’ structure, they would have made my TOP list.
And instead I’d say they were a pretty good webhosting company to promote, but this ‘First click commission’ malarkey really let’s them down, maybe it works for them just fine, I have no idea, but from an affiliate marketers perspective, it sucks.
Next up…
GoDaddy
https://uk.godaddy.com/affiliate-programs
I’ve listed Godaddy more based on what I’ve heard rather than the Affiliate program itself, although their affiliate program isn’t exactly a world beater anyway.
The fact that Godaddy doesn’t openly mention their commission rates on their website is a bit of warning sign to me, but on further research, I’ve found that Godaddy pay around 15% on all their products, including webhosting.
Their Affiliate Program is run through CJ.com formerly Commission Junction, which isn’t my favorite platform for a start.
GoDaddy are first and foremost a domain registrar more than a web host, although they do offer webhosting services now.
Their webhosting packages start from @$5 per month right up to around $500 per month for a dedicated server plan.
So even at their most expensive $500 per month dedicated server package, the absolute most you’re going to make as an Affiliate is $75 at their feeble 15% commission rate.
As I’ve listed above, there are FAR better Webhosting affiliate programs you can promote and make far more money at that level.
Check out Bigscoots I mentioned in my TOP 5.
Also, I’ve heard in the past that under GoDaddy’s previous ownership, Affiliates sometimes ran into roadblocks and often had a hard time getting paid the commissions they were owed.
As I’ve said, this was under their previous ownership, they may have improved in that aspect but at a measly 15% commission rate, it’s hardly worth the time or effort to find out.
If you would like me to add any good or bad Web Hosts to this list, let me know in the comments below!
