Compare · FirstPromoter and PartnerStack
FirstPromoter vs PartnerStack: pricing, partner network, and which one fits a B2B SaaS program
These two land on the same shortlist more often than they should, because they are answers to different questions. FirstPromoter, operated by Igil Webs SRL, is affiliate tracking you buy the way you buy any SaaS tool: the prices are on the website, the trial is 14 days with no card, and the meter is the monthly revenue your affiliates drive. $49 covers up to $5,000 of that revenue, $99 covers up to $15,000, and Enterprise starts at $149 above it. You can model your first year before you talk to anyone.
PartnerStack is a different kind of purchase. It runs three tiers, Launch, Growth and Enterprise, and publishes no price on any of them; every button on its pricing page books a demo. What you are buying is not really tracking software, it is access to a partner network that AppDirect put at more than 138,000 B2B partners when it acquired PartnerStack on April 14 2026 in a deal reported at upwards of $150 million, paid mostly in AppDirect stock. That acquisition matters to a buyer in September 2026 and almost no comparison page mentions it, because PartnerStack's roadmap now sits inside a larger subscription commerce and marketplace company rather than a standalone PRM vendor.
So the honest framing is this. If you already know who your affiliates are and you want to track and pay them without a sales call, FirstPromoter is cheaper, faster and completely knowable. If the reason you are shopping is that you do not have partners yet and you want to be listed where partners already look, that is PartnerStack's actual product, and no amount of affiliate tracking substitutes for it. The mistake is buying PartnerStack for its tracking, or FirstPromoter for a recruiting problem it was never built to solve.
Ranked by fit · outreach you approve · no marketplace tax
Describe your product, find your partners
Partnerships surfaces the companies who should resell, refer, and integrate with you, ranked by a transparent fit score, then drafts the outreach for you to approve.
Ideal partners for
ranked by fitDrafted outreach · Drafted outreach
WritingClick a match to draft a first-touch message in your voice.
A human approves every outreach before it sends. Nothing goes out automatically.
Partner pipeline
One co-sell overlap surfaced from account mapping. Referral and co-sell revenue tracked per partner.
Live, interactive · ranked by transparent fit
Ranked by transparent fit · you approve every outreach · no marketplace tax · you own your partner list
Choose FirstPromoter if your affiliates already exist and you want published pricing, a same-day start and commissions that follow your Stripe or Paddle billing. Choose PartnerStack if partner recruitment through its 138,000-partner network is the thing you are buying and you can absorb a quote-only contract. Choose Partnerships if you need to find the right partners in the first place and still want the price on the website.
The short answer
What is the difference between FirstPromoter and PartnerStack?
FirstPromoter is self-serve affiliate tracking with published prices: $49 a month up to $5,000 in monthly affiliate revenue, $99 up to $15,000, and from $149 above that. PartnerStack is a quote-only B2B partner platform with a marketplace of more than 138,000 partners attached, and it was acquired by AppDirect on April 14 2026. The practical difference is that you can start FirstPromoter this afternoon with a 14-day trial and no credit card, while PartnerStack requires a demo before you learn any number at all. Pick FirstPromoter if you want affiliate tracking you can price today. Pick PartnerStack if partner recruitment through its network is the thing you are actually buying.
Last updated September 2026 · pricing re-verified on each vendor's own pricing page
- FirstPromoter published pricing
- $49, $99, and from $149 a month, banded by affiliate-driven revenue
- PartnerStack published pricing
- None. Launch, Growth and Enterprise all say book a demo
- PartnerStack ownership
- Acquired by AppDirect, announced and completed April 14 2026
- FirstPromoter ownership
- Igil Webs SRL, independent
- PartnerStack partner network
- More than 138,000 B2B partners, per AppDirect at acquisition
- FirstPromoter partner network
- None. It tracks the affiliates you already recruited
- Free trial
- FirstPromoter 14 days, no card. PartnerStack has no published trial
- Partner and seat limits
- FirstPromoter 1,000 affiliates on Starter. PartnerStack states no partner or seat cap
- Motions covered
- FirstPromoter: affiliate only. PartnerStack: affiliate, referral and reseller
- Third-party price estimates
- Widely quoted for PartnerStack, not vendor-published. We do not repeat them as fact
- What neither one does
- Tell you which specific companies should be promoting you
- Partnerships pricing
- $79/mo flat, published, no revenue meter and no percentage of partner revenue
Side by side
FirstPromoter and PartnerStack vs Partnerships, honestly
A fair look at what each does well. Both are capable tools. Here is where they differ.
| What matters | Partnerships | FirstPromoter and PartnerStack |
|---|---|---|
| Can you see the price before you talk to sales | Yes. $79, $199 and $449 a month, published | FirstPromoter yes, every tier. PartnerStack no, all three tiers book a demo |
| Entry price | $79 a month flat | FirstPromoter $49 a month. PartnerStack unpublished |
| What sets your plan | Feature tier only | FirstPromoter meters monthly affiliate-driven revenue. PartnerStack is quoted per account |
| Time from decision to running | Self-serve | FirstPromoter: same day, 14-day trial, no card. PartnerStack: demo, then quote, then contract |
| Partner recruitment | AI discovery that surfaces and ranks specific companies with reasons | FirstPromoter: none. PartnerStack: a marketplace of 138,000+ B2B partners, its strongest asset |
| Motions supported | Affiliate, referral, reseller and co-sell in one pipeline | FirstPromoter: affiliate only. PartnerStack: affiliate, referral and reseller |
| Deal registration | Included, with conflict checks against your own pipeline | FirstPromoter: no. PartnerStack: yes, on the tiers that include lead and deal tracking |
| Billing integrations | Tracks against your billing and your sales pipeline | FirstPromoter reads Stripe, Paddle, Chargebee, Braintree and Recurly directly. PartnerStack integrates with CRM and billing but is sold as a platform, not a billing listener |
| Partner and seat limits | No caps | FirstPromoter: 1,000 affiliates on Starter, unlimited above. PartnerStack: states no cap on partners or seats |
| Ownership | Independent | FirstPromoter is Igil Webs SRL. PartnerStack has been part of AppDirect since April 2026 |
| Percentage of partner revenue | None. The subscription is the whole bill | FirstPromoter: none published. PartnerStack: not published either way, so ask in writing |
| Best fit | Teams that need partners found, then managed, at a published price | FirstPromoter: SaaS with an existing affiliate roster. PartnerStack: SaaS buying access to a partner network |
Comparison reflects general, publicly understood positioning. Capabilities change, so check each product for the latest.
Verified figures
FirstPromoter, PartnerStack, and Partnerships side by side
Checked against firstpromoter.com/pricing and partnerstack.com/pricing in September 2026. PartnerStack publishes no figures, so every price cell for it reads unpublished rather than an estimate borrowed from elsewhere.
| FirstPromoter | PartnerStack | Partnerships | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Entry price, monthly | $49 | Unpublished, demo required | $79 |
| Plan names | Starter, Business, Enterprise | Launch, Growth, Enterprise | Starter, Growth, Scale, Enterprise |
| Second tier | $99 a month | Unpublished | $199 |
| Top tier | From $149 a month | Unpublished | $449 |
| What the meter counts | Dollars of affiliate-driven revenue | Not disclosed publicly | Feature tier only |
| Entry plan allowance | Up to $5,000 a month in affiliate revenue | Not disclosed publicly | No cap of any kind |
| Affiliates or partners on entry | 1,000 | No stated cap on partners or seats | Unlimited |
| Campaigns or programs on entry | 3 campaigns | Not disclosed publicly | Unlimited |
| Team members on entry | Unlimited | No stated seat cap | Included |
| Free trial | 14 days, no credit card | None published | Waitlist, no self-serve signup |
| Partner marketplace included | No | Yes, 138,000+ B2B partners | No marketplace. AI discovery instead |
| Affiliate tracking | Yes, its core product | Yes | Yes |
| Referral and reseller motions | No | Yes | Yes |
| Deal registration | No | Yes | Yes, with conflict checks |
| MDF management | No | Yes, from the Growth tier | No |
| Billing systems read directly | Stripe, Paddle, Chargebee, Braintree, Recurly | Not positioned as billing-native | Not required |
| Owner | Igil Webs SRL | AppDirect, since April 2026 | Independent |
| Finds new partners for you | No | Yes, through its marketplace | Yes. AI discovery with fit scores and reasons |
PartnerStack removed public pricing years ago. You will find confident figures for it on aggregator and competitor blogs, including a monthly range and a percentage commission override. None of those are published by PartnerStack, so we list them as unpublished rather than repeat someone else's estimate as a fact. Ask for the subscription, the percentage if any, and the term length in one written quote. Prices in this category change often. Confirm with each vendor before you budget.
Why teams pick Partnerships
AI prospecting and drafted outreach, with no marketplace tax
PartnerStack belongs to AppDirect now, and most comparisons have not caught up
On April 14 2026 AppDirect announced it had acquired PartnerStack, in a deal reported at upwards of $150 million and paid primarily in AppDirect stock. PartnerStack is no longer an independent PRM vendor; it is the partner-relationship layer of a larger subscription commerce and marketplace company. For a buyer in September 2026 that is not trivia, it is due diligence. Acquisitions change three things a vendor review should care about: the roadmap, because priorities get set against the parent's strategy rather than the product's own backlog; the support and success model, which is usually where integration savings are found first; and the commercial terms, because packaging tends to be revisited once a platform is folded into a parent's catalogue. None of that is automatically bad. AppDirect's stated logic is to combine PartnerStack's network with its marketplace infrastructure, which is a coherent fit rather than a financial roll-up. But if you are signing a multi-year quote-only contract, ask directly how the acquisition affects your renewal terms and your data, and get the answer in writing. FirstPromoter, by contrast, is still operated by Igil Webs SRL and is not part of a group.
One of these you can price today, the other you cannot price at all
This is the difference that decides most evaluations, and it is not a small one. FirstPromoter puts three numbers on a public page: $49, $99 and from $149, each tied to a stated ceiling on monthly affiliate-driven revenue. You can work out what year one costs at your current run rate, and what it costs if the program triples, without speaking to a human. PartnerStack publishes three tier names, Launch, Growth and Enterprise, a feature list for each, and a demo button. There is no price, no starting price, and no published trial. That is a legitimate way to sell enterprise software, but it has a real cost to the buyer: you cannot shortlist on budget, you cannot compare like for like, and you spend a sales cycle finding out whether the product was ever in your range. If you are a seed-stage or bootstrapped SaaS deciding this week, the asymmetry alone usually settles it. If you are running a procurement process with a demo phase built in anyway, it costs you nothing.
Work out the percentage break-even before you take the call
PartnerStack does not publish whether it takes a percentage of partner-driven revenue, and we will not assert that it does. What we can give you is the arithmetic to run the moment a number appears in your quote, because a percentage and a subscription behave completely differently as a program grows. A flat subscription is bounded: FirstPromoter Enterprise at $149 a month is $1,788 a year whether your affiliates drive $200,000 or $2 million. A percentage is unbounded by construction, so the only question is where it overtakes the flat plan. Divide $1,788 by the rate you are quoted. At 3% the crossover is $59,600 of annual partner-driven revenue. At 5% it is $35,760. At 10% it is $17,880. At 15% it is $11,920. Past those lines the percentage model costs more than FirstPromoter's most expensive published plan, and it keeps growing while the flat plan does not. That is not an argument against paying a percentage, because a network that actually delivers partners may be worth far more than the fee. It is an argument for knowing the number before you sign, and for asking whether the override applies to revenue the network sourced or to every partner dollar including the ones you recruited yourself. Those two contracts are wildly different and they are often described with the same sentence.
The marketplace is PartnerStack's real product, and FirstPromoter has no answer to it
We would rather be accurate than flattering here. If your problem is that you have no partners, FirstPromoter cannot help you and neither can any other affiliate tracker. It hands you a link, a dashboard and a payout rail, all of which sit idle until someone is actually sending traffic. PartnerStack's network, put at more than 138,000 B2B partners by AppDirect at acquisition, is a genuine distribution asset: agencies, consultants and resellers who already browse for software to recommend, and who can find you without you finding them first. That is worth real money and it is the honest reason to pay a quote-only price. The caveat worth knowing is that marketplace inbound skews toward partners who are shopping for programs to join, which is a different population from the ten specific companies whose customers most need your product. Broad self-serve recruitment and targeted recruitment solve different problems. Most programs that work end up doing both.
Honest about where each one beats us
FirstPromoter beats us on affiliate billing mechanics and on price. If you bill through Stripe, Paddle, Chargebee, Braintree or Recurly and you want commissions that follow upgrades, refunds and churn with nobody touching a spreadsheet, it does that better than we do and it does it for $49 a month. PartnerStack beats us on distribution. We do not run a marketplace, so we cannot put you in front of 138,000 partners who are already looking, and if that is your bottleneck you should take their demo. Where we fit is the step both of them skip: deciding who should be promoting you in the first place. Our agent reads your product, surfaces newsletters, creators, review sites, agencies and adjacent tools that already reach your buyers, ranks them on a transparent fit score with the reasoning visible, drafts outreach for a person to approve, and nothing is ever sent automatically. Starter is $79, Growth $199, Scale $449, published, no percentage of your partner revenue. Plenty of teams run one of these alongside us.
Good questions
FirstPromoter and PartnerStack vs Partnerships, answered
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Find your partners with Partnerships
Describe your product, get partners ranked by fit, approve the outreach, and track the revenue they drive. Flat pricing, no marketplace tax, your relationships stay yours.
Ranked by transparent fit · you approve every outreach · full lifecycle in one place · no marketplace tax