The impact.com alternative that never takes a cut.
Impact.com's Starter tier is $30/mo or 3% of partner-driven monthly revenue — whichever is higher — plus a performance fee on the commissions it tracks, and every tier above it is quote-based. Qanary meters meaningful events instead: a flat $49/mo that never looks at your revenue.
"whichever is higher" is doing a lot of work in that sentence.
- Flat $49/mo on Core — never a % of partner revenue
- No performance fees on commissions, on any plan
- Free plan to validate — impact.com bills from day one
Switch, or stay? Depends what you're running.
impact.com is an enterprise partnership-automation suite — affiliate, influencer, ambassador, and B2B partnerships run as a channel portfolio. Qanary is affiliate + referral software for SaaS. The real question is which of those programs is actually yours.
Stay on impact.com if…
You run partnerships as a portfolio — influencer contracting, ambassador programs, B2B deals — you rely on its publisher and creator marketplace to find partners at scale, or you want global payouts and compliance workflows handled for you. That's genuinely what the enterprise price buys.
Switch to Qanary if…
You're a SaaS running an affiliate and referral program and the 3%-of-partner-revenue math stings — you want flat self-serve pricing, a free plan to validate, fraud review before a commission accrues, and a setup your AI agent can do over MCP.
$30 sounds cheap. Until "whichever is higher" kicks in.
impact.com's entry price is $30/mo or 3% of partner-driven revenue — whichever is higher — so the fee is designed to scale with your success, before performance fees on commissions. Qanary meters meaningful events — a bot-filtered click or a new conversion — and never touches your revenue:
| As your program grows | impact.com |  Qanary |
|---|---|---|
| Getting started | $30/mo or 3% of partner revenue (whichever is higher) | $0 — Free plan, 5,000 events/mo |
| $10,000/mo partner-driven revenue on the entry tier | ~$300/mo (3%) + ~2.5% performance fees on commissions | $49/mo flat — Core |
| Moving up to the mid-market tier | From ~$500/mo, quote-based | $49–$99/mo, self-serve |
| What makes the price move | Your partner-driven revenue | Meaningful events only (350,000/mo included on Core) |
Figures from public buyer guides and impact.com's published Starter pricing at impact.com, July 2026 — Essential (from ~$500/mo), Pro (from ~$2,500/mo), and Enterprise deals (commonly $50k+/yr per buyer reports) are quote-based and vary by contract. Full Qanary plans on the pricing page.
Feature by feature. No fine print.
| Capability | impact.com | Qanary |
|---|---|---|
| Flat, self-serve pricing at every tier | Quote-based beyond Starter | $0 to $299/mo, every plan self-serve |
| Price independent of your revenue | 3% or flat fee, whichever is higher, plus performance fees | Metered on meaningful events, never revenue |
| Free plan (not just a trial) | Starter bills from day one | Free plan, 5,000 events/mo |
| Publisher & creator marketplace | One of the largest anywhere | No — partners join via your branded portal |
| Double-sided referral rewards (advocate + friend) | Ambassador programs, enterprise workflows | Yes, rewards deliver themselves |
| Fraud review before a commission accrues | Compliance workflows at enterprise scale | Checked before it's billable, every plan |
| Payouts | Global payouts handled by the platform | Payout batches you pay through your own Wise or PayPal rail, with 1099s issued |
| Set up by an AI agent (MCP) | No | Yes — point Claude Code or Cursor at the MCP server |
What you'd give up. Said plainly.
The marketplace
impact.com runs one of the largest publisher and creator networks anywhere. If partner discovery at scale is the goal, Qanary has no marketplace to offer — affiliates join through your branded portal, which you promote yourself.
Cross-channel partnership types
Influencer and creator contracting, ambassador programs, and B2B partnerships with workflow tooling all live in one suite. Qanary does affiliate and referral programs for SaaS — deliberately — and doesn't try to run the rest of the portfolio.
Enterprise operations
Global payouts handled for you, compliance workflows, and a whole agency ecosystem. Qanary prepares payout batches you pay through your own Wise or PayPal rail and issues 1099s — you keep control, but the platform doesn't move the money for you.
Set up in an afternoon. No sales call.
1. Connect Stripe — one click, and webhooks wire themselves. No API keys to paste. Paddle, Lemon Squeezy, and Polar are on the roadmap; the REST API covers anything custom today.
2. Create your campaign — commission terms, cookie window, and your branded portal, configured in the dashboard or by your AI agent. Make it invite-only while you migrate.
3. Invite your partners — send your existing roster the portal invite link, or create them programmatically over the REST API from a CSV export.
4. Hand out fresh links — partners pick up their new links and coupon codes in the portal, and coupon codes attribute even when a link never gets clicked.
Faster still: point Claude Code, Cursor, or Codex at the Qanary MCP server and ask it to set the campaign up for you.
Fair questions.
Does Qanary charge a percentage of revenue or performance fees like impact.com?
No. Qanary meters meaningful events — a bot-filtered click or a new conversion — and never charges a percentage of revenue or a performance fee on commissions. Core is $49/mo flat with 350,000 events and unlimited affiliate revenue. Per public buyer guides, impact.com's Starter is $30/mo or 3% of partner-driven revenue, whichever is higher, plus a roughly 2.5% performance fee on commissions.
Isn't impact.com's $30/mo Starter cheaper than Qanary's $49?
Only until the program works. Starter bills $30 or 3% of partner-driven revenue — whichever is higher — so at $10,000/mo of partner revenue you're paying around $300, before performance fees. Qanary's Core plan stays $49/mo at that volume, and there's a $0 Free plan for validating first.
Can Qanary replace impact.com's marketplace for finding partners?
No — honest answer. impact.com runs one of the largest publisher and creator marketplaces anywhere, and Qanary has no marketplace. Affiliates join through your branded portal, which you promote. If partner discovery at scale is why you'd pay for impact.com, it earns its price there.
How do payouts work without impact.com handling them?
Qanary prepares payout batches you pay through your own Wise or PayPal account, and issues 1099s for US affiliates. You keep control of the money and the rail; impact.com handles global payouts for you, which matters more at enterprise scale.
Can I import my partner roster from impact.com?
Invite your existing partners to your branded portal with a link, or create them programmatically over the REST API — your AI agent can script the import from a CSV export in a few minutes.
Your partners earn the commission. You keep the percentage points.
Flat $49/mo metered on events — never 3% of your revenue, never a performance fee. Start on the free plan and see for yourself.
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