Quick answer
Yes — Reflink is a one-time-purchase alternative to Tapfiliate. It costs $39 once, while Tapfiliate runs $89/mo — about $1,068 per year, every year. Self-hosted affiliate tracking with attribution, commissions, approvals and payout CSV export. It is for people who want the job done on their own hardware without a renewal date — not for teams that live inside Tapfiliate's ecosystem.
The verdict
Switch to Reflink if you are an individual or small team paying Tapfiliate $89/mo for work your own machine can do. Pays for itself in the first two weeks of a Tapfiliate subscription, then keeps running for free.
Stay with Tapfiliate if your workflow depends on its integrations, you need enterprise features (SSO, admin controls, SLAs), or your team is large enough that per-seat collaboration tooling is worth the bill. Reflink does not try to replicate those.
Head to head
| Reflink | Tapfiliate | |
|---|---|---|
| Price | $39 once | $89/mo |
| Cost after 1 year | $39 | $1,068 |
| Data ownership | Your server, your SQLite file | Their cloud |
| Affiliates | Unlimited | Tiered limits |
| Clicks / conversions | Unlimited | Plan-capped |
| Affiliate portal | Yes | Yes |
| Payout CSV export | Yes | Yes |
| MLM tiers / integrations marketplace | No | Yes |
| 5-year cost | $39 | $5,340 |
Where Tapfiliate still wins
- Ecosystem and integrations. Established tools accumulate years of third-party integrations, templates and add-ons. If your workflow is wired into Tapfiliate's ecosystem, switching means rebuilding that plumbing — a real cost.
- Team and enterprise features. Shared workspaces, granular permissions, SSO, audit logs and a vendor to call when something breaks — that is what the higher subscription tiers actually buy, and a pay-once app does not come with it.
- Familiarity and hiring. Tapfiliate is the name people already know. Onboarding a team onto a tool nobody has used before takes time the subscription never charges for.
Where Reflink wins
- Price, permanently. $39 once versus $1,068/yr for as long as you use it. There is no renewal, no seat count and no tier gate.
- Tracking links. A short link records the click and 302-redirects to your landing page with a ref code appended for client-side pickup.
- Cookie-based attribution. A configurable window of 30, 60 or 90 days is your call.
- Conversion tracking two ways. A server-to-server postback from your checkout webhook, or a JS pixel with a convert call.
The math
Pays for itself in the first two weeks of a Tapfiliate subscription, then keeps running for free.
- After 1 year: Reflink has cost you $39 total — Tapfiliate has cost $1,068.
- After 3 years: Reflink is still $39 — the subscription is at $3,204.
- After 5 years: Reflink is still $39 — the subscription is at $5,340.
Common questions
Is it really free on GitHub?
Yes — the source is MIT and always will be at github.com/bensblueprints/affiliate-tracker-mvp. The $39 buys a packaged Windows installer with updates; building from source is free.
Where does my affiliate data live?
On your server. Reflink is one Node process and one SQLite file that you own, and visitor IPs are stored only as salted hashes, never raw.
Does it replace Tapfiliate entirely?
No, on purpose. If you need multi-level marketing trees and 40 native integrations, buy Tapfiliate. If you need who sent this sale and what do I owe them, that's Reflink.
Try Reflink — $39, one time
Or get Reflink plus every other app in the suite: the OneTimeSuite bundle is currently $97, one time.