Not many people know about link tracking and even fewer people implement it as part of their marketing strategy.
But, like it or not, link tracking is one of the best online marketing moves you can make at the moment and you are going to need it at some point if you want to take your business to the next level.
There’s no point in spending a ton of money on ads if they are not going to yield quality results, which is why link tracking exists to help you monitor your traffic source, analyze the insights, as well as identify fraudulent clicks and bot clicks alike.
Before we show you the alternatives to the ClickMagick tool, let’s show you its overview.
What Is ClickMagick?
ClickMagick is a top pick for many digital marketers and it has over 120 million features according to their website. A highlight of these features includes:
- Link cloaking
- Tracking traffic sources
- Tracking the quality of traffic
- A/B split testing
- Link down monitoring
- Geotargeting and mobile optimization
And lots more.
Meanwhile, you can check out this ClickMagick review.
There are many solid reasons you should use ClickMagick, but just like every other thing, it has its cons.
For example, not everyone feels comfortable with their editing feature. In fact, it may seem a bit technical and complicated to you, which is a deal-breaker for newbies.
If this or any of its other features (or lack thereof) bothers you, then you can pick from the five quality ClickMagick alternatives below.
Best ClickMagick Alternatives
#1. Voluum
Image source: Voluum
The first mention on our list of best ClickMagick alternatives is Voluum.
Voluum is a high-quality ads tracker that makes you realize how much time and money you will lose if you don’t track your campaigns.
With Voluum, you get a solution that helps you to track, manage, and optimize your ads campaign, all for one price.
One thing that makes Voluum special is that it is cloud-based, which means that no matter the amount of traffic you receive, your site’s loading speed will not be affected and you can make transactions without delay.
Unlike other link trackers, Voluum also has a mobile app that lets you receive notifications on your phone to tell you how your campaigns are faring.
Some of the best parts of Voluum include:
Direct Tracking Pixel
This feature lets you direct both free and paid traffic without having to redirect them first. By doing so, it covers you even if your traffic source does not allow redirects.
Here’s how it works:
Once a prospect comes across your placed ad and clicks on it, Voluum redirects them via the redirect domain before reaching the landing page, so the direct tracking pixel takes the customer from the ad to the landing page.
Voluum will provide you with a piece of code, which you will embed into the page. After this code loads in your backend, Voluum can then track the visits that come to your page, and it works on virtually any browser, including the ones that do not allow third-party cookies.
What you have to do is to create a landing page, host it externally on Voluum, and finally, add it in under the Lander tab.
Managing your affiliate campaigns was never easier. Voluum helps you to track, optimize and automate campaigns, giving you complete control of your marketing.
Impression Tracking
This is a feature you can use only if your traffic source supports it.
To find out if your traffic source supports impression tracking, first go to the campaign settings where you will see additional options that let you place an impression pixel.
If your traffic source supports impression tracking, go to your traffic source option to create a new traffic source, and toggle the impression tracking option on.
Once you have enabled impression tracking, you will still need to activate it in your campaigns. Then Voluum will generate a campaign URL and a pixel URL which you will copy and paste to the traffic source to properly track your impressions.
Custom conversion tracking
You can add custom conversion trackers to monitor whatever actions your users perform anywhere within your webpage.
Custom conversion tracking will require certain values of ET parameters that will specify what values will be sent to the postback URL. These values are usually provided by affiliate networks.
In Voluum, you are not restricted to only one custom conversion event. In fact, you can add as many as 10.
When setting up your custom conversion events, you can add up to four additional options.
One option instructs the system whether or not to count the custom conversion with other general conversions. The others are checked to include revenue column, include cost column, or send postback to traffic column.
You can use more than one affiliate network for custom tracking, but only if you set a different postback URL for each of them.
Traffic distribution AI
Voluum traffic distribution AI enables you to send website traffic or social media traffic to your highest converting campaigns and landing pages.
You can do this from the destination tab in your dashboard. Once you toggle on your traffic distribution AI option, you can determine if you want to optimize all of your pathways or not.
The best part about the traffic distribution AI is that you can use it in various combinations. For example, you can choose to optimize only certain parts of your campaign or take up groups like offers, landing pages, and pass.
You can specify if your campaigns should be optimized based on ROI, earnings per visit, conversions, or leave it on auto to allow Voluum choose for you.
For the best results, once you have turned this option on, Voluum will automatically adjust the weight and send traffic to the best performing part of your campaigns within the last 24 hours.
And since it works in real-time, it automatically redirects the traffic to a new landing page or offers if their conversion rate topples the previous one.
Grouping reports
If you want to be able to easily cross-reference data across different groups, then a campaign report is necessary. Voluum generates instant reports in real-time, showing every print, click, visit, and conversion on your webpage.
You can choose how your report is grouped. For example, you can set the data to be classified based on country, device, and operating system, and choose if it is to be presented to you in a table or tree report view.
This feature helps you with insights such that you can decide which parts and variables are essential to your campaign and which ones need to be discarded.
Managing your affiliate campaigns was never easier. Voluum helps you to track, optimize and automate campaigns, giving you complete control of your marketing.
Voluum Pricing
Voluum has four pricing plans: Discover, Profit, Grow, and Agency.
It recommends its entry plan for new affiliates seeking a hand-holding experience, the Profit plan is for marketers interested in optimizing their return on interest, and the Grow plan for users who have gotten the hang of link tracking and want to quickly scale up their business.
The subscription fees are set at $89, $149, $449, and $999 monthly in ascending order.
#2. LinkTrackr
LinkTrackr is one of the best ClickMagick alternatives that help you track your leads, goals, and other elements of your campaigns.
It is also preferred as one of the most suitable tools to create and cloak links. In fact, Link cloaking is arguably its foremost and advanced feature.
LinkTrackr helps users to easily track their conversions. Be it ads, links, leads or sales, it accurately tracks the entire funnel. LinkTrackr also allows you to cloak and shorten your URLs.
This is mainly because, unlike a lot of other tools that are used to cloak links, LinkTrackr will hide the actual URL of your page by rendering the destination page inside a complete iframe. If your ad network does not frown at concealing iframes existence, you can choose to make yours invisible.
Even though LinkTrackr is mostly regarded for its link cloaking abilities, its ads tracking system, paid or organic, is just as good.
This tool provides you with a considerable amount of good features that will ultimately optimize your campaigns.
Here are some of its features:
Reports and charts
LinkTrackr has various types of reports and charts based on the project you want to embark on. To access this, go to the dashboard page where you will find an overview of the entire performance of the project.
To switch to a different project, you can choose a new one from the drop down menu which you will find at the top left top corner of the page.
All the charts and graphs have many different elements, but with a few things that are consistent among them. For example, on the overview page, you can get the overall conversion rate of your webpage with just a few clicks.
If you run your mouse over the node of any point on the chart, it will give you an exact time frame that the particular data is based on.
LinkTrackr keeps your data intact so even if you want to view specific data after a while, you can filter your search options to get the said data whenever you like.
All of LinkTrackr’s reports are revealed whenever you hit their respective tabs and some of these reports have smaller layers underneath them.
When you request a report, by default, LinkTrackr will bring you only a couple of reports which you can expand by going to the following page or you can adjust the display options to see all of the data in a single page.
Splitting test
The splitting test has become one of the most vital components in marketing tools and it is present in LinkTrackr.
With LinkTrackr, you can choose to share traffic with multiple pages so that you can decide on their performances and scale up on the best pages.
URL customization
This is where link cloaking is especially important. This feature lets you turn those long and unattractive links into more appealing and professional looking ones.
Link cloaking/tracker
For a software of this magnitude, with LinkTrackr you can easily create links, submit them and place them in any category of your choosing.
You can hide the main URL, leaving only the customized link visible on the front end of your web page.
LinkTrackr helps users to easily track their conversions. Be it ads, links, leads or sales, it accurately tracks the entire funnel. LinkTrackr also allows you to cloak and shorten your URLs.
LinkTrackr Pricing
LinkTrackr has four pricing tiers according to its website. The major differences between these plans are the number of tracking links and clicks the tool allows and also the availability of A/B split testing.
The more expensive the plan is, the more the number of clicks and tracking links available.
#3. ThriveTracker
Image source: ThriveTracker
Do you want a ClickMagick alternative that helps you stay on top of your affiliate campaigns? Look no further with ThriveTracker.
ThriveTracker has been around for nearly five years and is considered an industry leader when it comes to link tracking and optimizing.
Many marketers tag this tool as the ultimate tracking software mainly because it is compatible with virtually every tracking source that has ever existed.
While ThriveTracker is equipped with a whole lot of important features, it is very easy to use and does not cost a fortune to subscribe to.
The platform is self-hosted, which means that users do not have to worry about securing separate hosting software before they can install it. This is partly responsible for its affordable subscription cost.
Here’s a look at some of the best parts of ThriveTracker:
User-friendly
When it comes to software, ease of use is a very important factor. In fact, the number of people that end up sticking with a platform after its initial use is greatly dependent on its user-friendliness.
The best part is that new users who have never used any link tracking tool will still not find it difficult to use. Everything is a breeze.
You basically need to sign up, download this click tracking tool, and the rest is easy.
Does not require additional hosting
ThriveTracker is a self-hosted platform, which means that the entire data infrastructure belongs to you alone, and this provides an extra layer of privacy. For this reason, many companies around the world that prefer to be in charge of their own data opt for Thrive.
Fast speed
One common thing with a number of self-hosted platforms is that they are plagued with slow speeds, but not ThriveTracker. In fact, it is arguably the best self-hosted platform in the market, at the moment, in terms of speed.
Its fast speed is not unconnected with the fact that cloud-hosted platforms benefit from a much faster redirection because of the clear paths marked for every individual user.
Record keeping
If you are a big fan of keeping a trail of records as you advance in your campaign, then this feature will suit you. Thrive provides a clear record of its users’ performance whenever they need it.
This is vital as it helps users to examine every part of their campaign with a bird’s eye and easily determine the most rewarding aspects and the ones that should be retouched.
ThriveTracker Pricing
The cost of using ThriveTracker monthly is $35 or $79 for the Cloud Lite plan or Cloud Classic plan respectively.
Note: ThriveTracker has a different pricing for self hosted platforms.
#4. Adsbridge
Image source: Adsbridge
Here is another suitable ClickMagick alternative that is ideal for link tracking, conversion tracking, and affiliate tracking.
Adsbridge is a cloud-based link tracking tool that has been around since 2013.
It is considered as one of the most versatile ads tracking platforms in the market. It can perform quite a bit of functions such as building sales funnel landing pages, performing split tests, auto-optimization, etc., alongside its primary function of ad tracking.
Despite the vast options that Adsbridge offers, the entire process of using it is easy and time-saving, so even if you are new to using ad tracking software, you will appreciate the ease with which you can use it.
It is supported globally and has data centers in more than seven different countries in different parts of the world to ensure that it delivers traffic via the shortest possible routes.
Some of its best features include:
Multiuser
Whether you are the CEO of a business or a developer, you will want to collaborate with other members of your team along the line, and this is where Adsbridge is known to shine.
The platform allows for more than one user to be able to sign in to a single account and work on a project together.
Of course, the owner of the account has the privilege of setting various roles for anyone that has access to the account.
For example, if you run a digital marketing business and you hire a web developer and an ads expert, you can permit the developer to have access to the landing pages alone, while the ads guy can only edit your campaigns.
Splitting test
With marketing, especially online marketing, it is not always easy to get it right on the go. Even if you do, there’s always room for improvement and it helps if you can compare your strategies, which is where the split test comes in.
In Adsbridge, you can perform split tests on your landing pages and offers to know the best-performing ones and double down on it.
Bot-filter
If you’ve ever been plagued by bots, then you must know how frustrating they can be. Thankfully, Adsbridge has an automatic bot filtering mechanism that easily detects Bot-traffic when they come in.
Adsbridge Pricing
You get a 14-day free trial period when you first sign up for Adsbridge, then you will be charged depending on the plan you choose.
Here are the Adsbridge pricing plans:
- Starter – $29 per month when billed monthly, or $299 per month when billed annually
- Professional – $89 per month when billed monthly, or $899 per month when billed annually
- Advanced – $199 per month when billed monthly, or $2029 per month when billed annually
- Business – $379 per month when billed monthly, or $3669 per month when billed annually
Image source: Adsbridge
#5. Improvely
Image source: Improvely
Improvely is by no means an honorary mention. It rightly deserves a place among any top ClickMagick alternative lists.
It was founded way back in 2009 and since then it has been used by some major marketing top dogs to monitor click fraud and track conversions.
The platform performs a wide range of functions and can easily integrate with some major third-party apps such as Facebook, Twitter, Adwords, etc.
Its top features are:
Click fraud monitoring
Improvely monitors any suspicious click activity on your ads and provides you with a detailed report thereafter.
Affiliate marketing
You can use this software to determine your best commission sources, protect your ads, and customize ugly links.
Improvely Pricing
Improvely has four subscription plans that range from $29 to $299 after the 14-day grace period.
Image source: Improvely
Is ClickMagick Free?
Like most of its alternatives, ClickMagick is not a free tool. However, for a start, it gives users a 14 days free trial period. During this period, a user can test out ClickMagick’s features. After the trial period, the user can determine if they want to commit to a subscription, or otherwise.
Following the trial phase, a user can pick from any of the three ClickMagick pricing plans. There is a Starter plan that costs $27 monthly, Standard plan that goes for $67 per month, and the Pro plan that costs $97 on monthly basis.
How Does Affiliate Link Tracking Software Work?
Affiliate link software usually works in synchronization with a website’s Uniform Resource Locator (URL).
For a start, all affiliate marketing arrangements usually assign a unique referral code to affiliate marketers. This code serves as an identity for each affiliate. It ensures that the traffic that each affiliate generates is properly documented. This code is then embedded in the link that customers will follow through to the intended brand’s website.
What link tracker software does in this process is to properly carry the affiliate ID information that has been embedded in the URL, from the affiliate platform to the brand website.
The whole essence of the affiliate link tracking software is to help brands properly determine the affiliate channels that work best for them, and maximize their purpose.
Additionally, an affiliate tracking software also helps businesses determine how much is due to be paid to affiliates – based on the amount of traffic generated, or conversions made.
Wrapping Up – What Is The Best ClickMagick Alternative?
Determining the best ClickMagick alternative would not be straightforward. However, to reach this conclusion, you have to compare the alternatives that have been discussed earlier.
More importantly, you have to look inwards. This implies that you need to make the decision with your business in mind. First, what are the tracking features that your business needs?
Second, what is the highest possible amount that your business is willing to spare on a monthly basis. This is necessary since most of the ClickMagick alternatives are also based on monthly paid subscriptions.
Once this has been determined, you can then proceed to make a choice based on the features offered and the price plan.
Ultimately, do not forget to utilize their trial period. That way, you would be able to determine which software interface you find most easy to use, and which is most informative in terms of its visual communications.
Ultimately, it is advisable to put your business first.
