The 10 Best Affiliate Link Cloaking WordPress Plugins
Affiliate marketing is one of the best ways for making money online where you promote a product/service, a user clicks on your affiliate link, purchases it, and you get paid. Super simple! But affiliate links are super ugly and long. You don’t like it; your users don’t like it; even search engines don’t like it. And this is where link cloaking plugins come into the picture.
Also read:
– The 9 Best WordPress Affiliate Plugins to Start Your Own Affiliate Program
– 25 Best Amazon Affiliate WordPress Themes of 2021 to Create Micro Niche Sites
If you are using a WordPress website, then you can install a WordPress link cloaker plugin. This will help you to shorten the affiliate link and use your own domain name to mask it. This increases trust, makes the links brandable, and even improves SEO score.
And with this in mind, we have put together a list of the 10 best affiliate link cloaking WordPress plugins. So without further ado, let’s get started:
#1. Pretty Links
Pretty Links is one of the best link cloaker plugins for WordPress. The plugin will let you cloak, manage, and track affiliate links or any other URL for that matter.
It is super easy to use, comes with a clean UI, and bakes in all the necessary bells and whistles right into its free version. No wonder it has over 300,000+ active installations making it the most popular free link cloaker out there.
However, if you are looking for more advanced features like the option to automate redirects, access conversion reports, create expiring links, and so on, then you can get the pro version which starts at $79/year for a single site license.
Now in case you are wondering which version of the Pretty Links WordPress link cloaker you should get, then here’s a quick overview of its key features to give you an idea.
Features:
- Create clean and simple URLs with your domain name that will redirect to your affiliate links, thereby cloaking them.
- The free version works with 301, 302, 307 redirects only. More redirect options are available with the Pro version.
- Generates 3-4 character slugs for your URL. You can also set a custom slug for your URL.
- Tracks the number of clicks and unique clicks per link.
- Comes with a reporting interface with filtering support where you can see your daily number of clicks.
- Cookie-based system for tracking visitor activity across clicks.
- Social Sharing integration. (Pro)
- Powerful automation feature to help you create redirects and replace URLs. (Pro)
- Google Analytics integration. (Pro)
#2. ThirstyAffiliates
ThirstyAffiliates is another well-known WordPress link cloaker in the affiliate marketing community and a powerful one at that. Like Pretty Links, ThirstyAffiliates also follows a freemium model with a free link cloaker available with basic features and a Pro version that ships with more advanced bells and whistles.
But with that being said, the free version of ThirstyAffiliates offers additional features compared to Pretty Links. This includes the option to uncloak selective affiliate links and also add images to affiliate links. Other than this, all the basic features necessary for a link cloaking plugin are present.
With the Pro version, which starts at $49/year, you get to step up your game with access to advanced features, automatic keyword linking, access to advanced statistics reports, redirect users to geographically relevant affiliate URLs, and much more.
Here’s a look at its key features to give you an idea of what the free and pro versions of ThirstyAffiliate have to offer.
Key Features:
- Create 301, 302, and 307 redirects to cloak your affiliate links.
- Smart link cloaking and uncloaking features. This is useful if you share Amazon Affiliate links that don’t approve cloaking alongside other links that need to be cloaked.
- Powerful link managing features. Allows you to organize your links into categories.
- Add Images to Affiliate Links.
- Access actionable reports and statistics on which links were clicked.
- Seamless integration with your WordPress visual editor. Allows you to enter affiliate links to blog posts on the fly.
- Automatic keyword linking. (Pro)
- Redirect users to geographically relevant affiliate links. (Pro)
- Automatic Link Health (404) Checker. (Pro)
- Built-in Amazon’s Product Advertising API. Allows you to search and import amazon affiliate links without leaving your WordPress backend. (Pro)
#3. Affiliate Links by custom4web
Despite its simple name, Affiliate Links is a powerful link cloaker plugin and an excellent tool for managing all affiliate links and URLs on your WordPress website. However, it is also worth noting that, unlike the previous two plugins, Affiliate Links is purely available as a premium link cloaker with no free versions available.
So what can you expect in exchange for its $25 (no yearly subscriptions) price tag?
Well, it gives you a hassle-free way to cloak your affiliate links with a custom URL (preferably your domain name), uses those links as widgets and shortcodes, applies conditional redirects, tracks click stats, and much more.
Overall, Affiliate Links is a great option if you want access to some advanced features but don’t want the commitment of a yearly subscription.
Key Features:
-
- Shorten and cloak your affiliate links and other URLs with your custom domain name.
- Uses 301, 302, and 307 redirects.
- Option to add noindex and nofollow tags to cloaked URLs.
- Create categories to organize all your links.
- Access detailed click stats – how many times the user clicked on the link, what browser they were using, what language they were using, and so on.
- Use conditional URL redirects based on the visitors’ language, browser, operating system, and likes.
- Use affiliate links with shortcodes and widgets.
- Integration with Google Analytics.
#4. HighWayPro
Like Affiliate Links, HighWayPro is another premium-only WordPress link cloaker plugin; however, this one is more expensive.
A lifetime license for the plugin with 6 months of support will cost you $45. But at the same time, it is also much more feature-full compared to Affiliate Links.
Apart from the basic link cloaking, management, and tracking functionalities, the plugin also allows you to use conditional logic to redirect users and access advanced stats on who clicked your links and from where.
The plugin also comes with tons of quality-of-life features, including automatic link insertion, as well as a super intuitive dashboard.
Here’s a bit more detailed look into its feature set to give you an idea of what the plugin has to offer:
Key Features:
- Create, track, and manage cloaked URLs.
- Offers unique cloaked redirect URLs based on the visitors’ device, country, referrer, user role, and so on.
- Create cloaked URLs for your social media campaigns.
- Automatically insert links to your existing posts.
- Geotracking support. Redirect users to geographically relevant affiliate links.
- Access to advanced analytics. Know who, when, and where clicked on your cloaked links.
- Features a super organized and intuitive dashboard for link cloaking, viewing stats, and all other stuff.
#5. Easy Affiliate Links
Easy Affiliate Links is another handy link cloaker plugin for cloaking and managing affiliate links on your WordPress website. It follows a freemium model just like some of the earlier plugins, with a free version offering basic functionality and a Pro version handling the advanced functionality.
But with that being said, the free link cloaker is considerably powerful, and the features you get should be more than enough for most users. Apart from all the basic tools for cloaking, managing, and tracking your URLs, the plugin also seamlessly integrates with your WordPress editor – both Gutenberg and Classical editors.
Now coming to the Pro version, it costs $29/year and includes some additional features like access to advanced click statistics, automatic broken link (404) checker, and support for conditional geo or device-based redirecting.
Key Features:
- Shorten and cloak your affiliate links.
- Option to uncloak some links and cloak others. This helps if you are an Amazon Associate.
- Use ugc and sponsored attributes for your links.
- Add an automatic text disclaimer for your affiliate links. Useful for GDPR compliance.
- Manage links by assigning them to categories.
- Track the total number of clicks each cloaked link receives.
- Get detailed insights and charts on click statistics. (Pro)
- Automatic broken link checker to quickly detect 404 errors. (Pro)
- Conditional redirect support. Allows you to forward redirect URLs to users based on their geographical location or the device they are using.
- Dedicated button on Classical and Gutenberg editor for inserting cloaked affiliate links into content.
#6. URL Shortener by MyThemeShop
Download URL Shortener by MyThemeShop
MyThemeShop is a well-known and trusted name in the WordPress community, and this is their link cloaker plugin. Now you can get URL Shortener as a free link cloaker, and it should suffice for most users. However, there’s also a Pro version starting at $29, adding some useful features we will discuss in a bit.
First, let’s go over the free plugin. It helps you with link cloaking, customizing the shortened URL, organizing cloaked links into categories, and so on. It also lets you bulk replace links into old posts and pages, and also replace keywords with the cloaked links.
Coming to the Pro version, you unlock more impressive features like the option to redirect using JavaScript, meta refresh tag, and even with an invisible iFrame. It will also show a cloaked URL when users hover over a particular link. And of course, you get access to advanced data to give you actionable insight on click stats.
Key Features:
- Cloak affiliate links by creating customized shortened URLs.
- Organize all cloaked links in categories.
- Redirect users with 301, 302, and 307 headers.
- Add “nofollow,” “noreferrer,” and “title” attributes to cloaked links.
- Bulk replace links in posts and pages.
- Replace keywords with cloaked links.
- Disallow robots.txt to prevent bots from following the cloaked links. (Pro)
- Set up a redirection delay to boost user site time by just a bit. (Pro)
- Redirect links using JavaScript, “meta refresh” tag, and invisible iFrame. (Pro)
- Access advanced stats and analytics on link clicks. (Pro)
#7. URL Shortify
URL Shortify is pretty similar to all the other link cloaking plugins we discussed above.
You can get it as a free link cloaker with access to basic features, or you can upgrade to its Pro version with many more advanced functionalities. The feature list is also comparable to all the other plugins mentioned in the list.
But that being said, URL Shortify is a relatively new plugin on the market and is promising some awesome features with its upcoming updates. This includes support for traffic routing, adding retargeting pixels, saving preset templates for UTM, and yes – even access to A/B testing.
As such, we highly recommend keeping an eye on URL Shortify because when it drops with all these features, it is going to be a game-changer.
Key Features:
- Cloak links by hiding them behind short and customized URLs.
- Redirect with 301, 302, and 307 redirects.
- Organize all short links into categories.
- Track click stats based on user location, device, referrer, browser, IP, and more.
- Add “meta refresh” tag to redirect URLs. (Pro)
- Password protect links. (Pro)
- Create QR codes for short links. (Pro)
- Blacklist IP Addresses. (Pro)
- Filter out Robot clicks. (Pro)
- Convert your site into a URL Shortener Service. (Pro)
#8. Auto Affiliate Links
Auto Affiliate Links is a simple plugin mostly used to add affiliate links to your content automatically. However, it also has a link cloaking feature allowing you to use it as a link cloaker plugin.
Just remember that you can’t use the plugin to cloak certain URLs manually. It works on auto-pilot and only cloaks the affiliate links it auto-fetches from different websites.
But that being said, it is worth noting that the plugin supports almost all the major affiliate marketplaces starting from Amazon, and ClickBank, to eBay and BestBuy.
So if you are trying to create a massive affiliate website and want a tool to auto-fetch and cloak your affiliate links, this is a really useful plugin.
Key Features:
- Automatically fetches affiliate links from top affiliate marketplaces and adds them to your content.
- Option to cloak all fetched affiliate links.
- You can also choose your keyword and add links manually as well.
- The plugin doesn’t modify your content. All links get added when the content is displayed.
- Assign “nofollow” and “dofollow” to all redirect URLs.
#9. ClickerVolt
ClickerVolt is by far one of the most feature-packed free link cloaker for WordPress. Apart from its use for link cloaking, the plugin is primarily targeted at affiliate marketers looking for almost all possible metrics to understand their visitors and evaluate their campaign performance.
Most of its features revolve around collecting and tracking user data and presenting them to you in a digestible fashion. It can be a bit overwhelming for users who are just looking for an easy way to cloak and manage their affiliate links.
However, as they call it – if you are a “performance marketer” and you want your hands on all possible user details and metrics to optimize your affiliate marketing campaign, then this is the best link cloaker plugin for the job.
Key Features:
- Cloaks and hides affiliate links.
- Works with all major affiliate marketplaces.
- Integration with all major traffic sources.
- Get access to unparalleled amounts of actionable data to understand your visitors and increase your profits.
- Supports AIDA tracking.
- Add-ons to give you direct support from industry experts.
#10. WooCommerce Cloak Affiliate Links
Download WooCommerce Cloak Affiliate Links
And for the final link cloaker plugin on our list, we have the WooCommerce Cloak Affiliate Links. It’s a really useful WordPress link cloaker, but only in niche situations.
Let’s say you want to create a WooCommerce store where you display tons of products, but when a user clicks on the product, you want to send them to a different vendor. You will then earn by affiliate or referral commission from that vendor.
In these types of use cases, this free link cloaker plugin is perfect for your needs.
In functionality, it’s super simple without any extra bloat or unnecessary features. Once installed, it will cloak (shorten using your domain name) all external links in your WooCommerce store.
And that’s it!
Key Features:
- Shorten and cloak external links in your WooCommerce store.
- Set status code for the redirects to either 301, 302, or 307.
- Option to add “disallow” to your robots.txt file. This prevents bots from following the cloaked links.
- Manage cloaked links by assigning tags and categories.
Wrapping Up
So this was our list of the 10 best affiliate link cloaking WordPress plugins. We hope that this list helped you in finding the best link cloaker for your needs and requirements.
Do let us know which link cloaker plugin you liked the best! Also, if you think we missed out on a great WordPress link cloaker plugin, then also mention them in the comments. It should help out your fellow readers looking for more options.
