[HN Gopher] Show HN: Reflio - Open-source affiliate program crea...
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Show HN: Reflio - Open-source affiliate program creator for SaaS
Author : mcilroy
Score : 99 points
Date : 2022-09-16 15:46 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (reflio.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (reflio.com)
| vinibrito wrote:
| Thanks, I was looking for something like this earlier this year
| but could not find, I will give it a go, hopefully I will finally
| be able to boost sales.
| mcilroy wrote:
| Amazing! :) feel free to message on live chat or send an email
| whenever you like if you need help
| mchusma wrote:
| I like where you are going with this. Is there any way to set a
| different "conversion" event, instead of signup? Just move the
| tracking event to later in the funnel I guess? I think at a
| minimum, you should explain this usecase in your docs, as I
| expect many people don't pay for "sign ups" rather for
| "purchases".
| mcilroy wrote:
| Hey thank you for your feedback! I 100% agree, the docs are my
| next priority after the next two features go live.
|
| You can see what's on the roadmap here: https://reflio.canny.io
|
| Custom events will be possible in the upcoming analytics update
| :)
| everlearner wrote:
| ahulak wrote:
| What exactly makes this privacy first?
| mcilroy wrote:
| You can enable "privacy mode" in your Reflio script, where it
| will automatically request that users based in the EU confirm
| that they accept the use of cookies (it'll show a small popup
| banner asking the user to confirm consent).
|
| All data is processed in the EU, and our company is registered
| in the UK.
| s1k3s wrote:
| Your license is very sketchy considering this product is aimed at
| businesses. You have parts of the app licensed under a
| proprietary license called "ENTERPRISE" and other parts licensed
| under GPL. I suggest you either separate those into specific
| repos or stop calling it "open source".
| mcilroy wrote:
| We've taken our commercial open-source licensing from other
| larger commercial open-source products.
|
| I think it's fair. The licensing states that you're allowed to
| use Reflio 100% for free, as long as you keep the codebase in a
| public repository. Otherwise, if you want to use Reflio in a
| closed repo, you have to obtain a commercial license.
| ensignavenger wrote:
| Can you clarify, is everything in your repo
| (https://github.com/Reflio-com/reflio) AGPL like it says in
| the readme, or are there parts of the repo under a different
| license, as this file seems to imply-
| https://github.com/Reflio-
| com/reflio/blob/main/apps/reflio/L...? I don't see any
| license header or anything else that would indicate that some
| files are under a different license?
|
| Second, what license is the Reflio referral tracking script
| under? It appears that this script should be integrated into
| the SaaS product itself? Having that script AGPL would be a
| poison pill that no sane non-AGPL SaaS would swallow.
| mcilroy wrote:
| Hey thank you for your comment. I took the idea of Reflio's
| licensing from other larger commercial open-source
| products, but I understand now that it's a bit confusing.
|
| The idea was that Reflio is 100% free to self-host in your
| own public repo. If you wish to make the code private, then
| you need to purchase a commercial license. That's how I
| plan to set up the licensing. I'll be changing the
| licensing file and README shortly to reflect this.
| ensignavenger wrote:
| Looking at cal.com, which I noticed you said is what you
| are basing this on, it appears they are 100% AGPL... the
| other license file in your repo seems to imply that some
| of your code is not AGPL... but it isn't clear what that
| might be.
|
| The AGPL on everything should accomplish that, and you
| can just note that commercial licenses are available for
| those wanting to keep their fork private.
|
| But I suggest you license any javascript or client side
| libraries under a more permissive license, probably MIT
| or similiar-- because your SaaS customers probably don't
| want to make their entire SaaS app AGPL (Unless you only
| want to serve AGPL licensed SaaS customers). I think you
| use Sentry- look at the way they have their server under
| a NOT open source-available license, but the client
| libraries are under a permissive open source license- you
| can have the server under the AGPL, while using a more
| permissive library on the client libraries.
|
| Beyond that, you should consider that there are many
| successful open source companies that use more permissive
| Open Source licenses and many companies that refuse to
| even consider AGPL licenses software. Personally not a
| huge fan of the AGPL due to to many uncertainties
| involved with it.
|
| It is your project and you can license it however you
| want, and I appreciate that you have chosen an Open
| Source license, even if it is the AGPL. I just want to
| help you be more clear about the licensing and maybe put
| some consideration into if the AGPL is really the right
| license, rather than just following others :)
|
| Also, consider that you can state your intent in the
| readme and that is great- you should- but it is the
| license that companies look to to decide if they want to
| use it or not, and generally to determine what they can
| and can't do
| ensignavenger wrote:
| One other thing to consider is a CLA- if you plan to
| accept contributions from outsiders, and you stick with
| AGPL+Commercial, you will want any contributors to sign a
| CLA that grants you the right to sell their contributions
| under the commercial license. This would be a hard stop
| for me, and others like me, to contributing to the
| code... but is necessary if you want to accept outside
| contributions while offering a commercial license option.
| (Another good reason not to use the AGPL, if you want to
| encourage community development- many commercial open
| source products simply forbid outside contributions of
| code, though, or don't care about outside contributors).
| s1k3s wrote:
| > This software and associated documentation files (the
| "Software") may only be used in production, if you (and any
| entity that you represent) have agreed to, and are in
| compliance with, the Reflio Subscription Terms available at
| https://reflio.com/terms (the "EE Terms") ...
|
| If I don't agree with your enterprise edition terms I have to
| manually remove that part of the code from my installation.
| Why don't you just separate them instead?
| mcilroy wrote:
| I'll update the terms to be a bit clearer and not exclude
| any parts of the codebase. I figured since other much
| larger products have the same terms, then it must be a well
| practised license type in commercial open-source. I guess
| not.
| matt-p wrote:
| yeah, very sketchy
| mcilroy wrote:
| Curious, how's that sketchy? It's a commercial open-source
| product. Look at Cal.com's licensing - that's what we based
| Reflio's licensing on. I think it's more than fair.
| matt-p wrote:
| I regret the wording, apologies if it comes across
| negatively, but sometimes you can surprise people if you
| market as open source and then when reading the licence
| people find out it's actually more "opensource-ish".
|
| As far as I can see it's not AGPL, like Cal.com. It's
| actually AGPL + Commercial. That's to say if you clone the
| repo into a private repo but don't make any changes then
| you have to pay for some magical "licence", AGPL doesn't
| require that.
|
| I'm not sure what achieves beyond AGPL.. but like others
| mentioned think about MIT licensing the client, and come up
| with contributor agreements if you're selling the code
| commercially.
| matt-p wrote:
| so does this only work if i use stripe ?
| mcilroy wrote:
| Right now, however, we're currently in the process of adding
| support for Paddle :)
| cateye wrote:
| Is 9% fee per successful referral not crazy expensive? Or am I
| missing something here?
| mcilroy wrote:
| I don't think so. The idea of the 9% fee is to allow you to try
| out the platform with no upfront commitment. You only pay per
| successful referral. So once you start to see referrals come
| through, you could then upgrade to a plan that has 0% fees.
|
| I'll add a fee cap though of maybe ~$50 or so though to account
| for higher ticket conversions.
| cateye wrote:
| This explains a lot and a cap sounds great!
| knubie wrote:
| I tried an affiliate service called LeadDyno recently for my
| SaaS. A lot of the companies I looked at all have very similar
| pricing (starting around ~$50/mo), but not all of them worked
| with Stripe promo codes, which I needed for my app. I ended up
| cancelling my account when I found out that affiliates were only
| getting attributed for the first purchase, and not subsequent
| charges on the subscription.
|
| Now I use a custom query on Stripe Sigma, which is actually
| cheaper, but probably won't scale as well.
|
| Anyway, glad to see an open source option in this space.
| Hopefully my anecdote will be interesting to you. Would love to
| see support for promo codes in the future.
| mfkp wrote:
| FYI I use leaddyno as well, and there's an option in the
| commission settings to pay on first purchase only, or
| recurring.
|
| I've got my app using the custom API, and it works just fine
| (although lately a lot of ad blockers have started blocking
| leaddyno js, but that's a whole different can of worms)
| mcilroy wrote:
| Hey thank you for your comment! Ah yeah that's annoying about
| the attribution problem. With Reflio, you can define how you
| long you want your affiliate to keep receiving commission for
| on subscription payments. Default is 12 months. So for each
| payment taken in the subscription, your affiliate will continue
| to be paid out :)
|
| We do support promo codes right now but it's manual, however, a
| direct sync with your available Stripe coupons in the future
| would be cool. I'll get it added to the roadmap!
| simfree wrote:
| Any chance Reflio integrates with InvoiceNinja?
|
| Curious if SaaS could use this for managing commission payments
| to internal and external sales teams and agents...
| cercatrova wrote:
| If I self-host, who is getting the 9%? I don't think the site is
| clear on this, as I'm wondering what the point of self hosting is
| if the app somehow still transfers the fee to your company.
| mcilroy wrote:
| If you self host then you don't pay a 9% fee since you're
| hosting your own Reflio instance. I'll make the site more clear
| to reflect this :)
|
| There's a lack of docs right now since it's still so new,
| working on this as a priority.
| staticautomatic wrote:
| Since you work in this space, would you happen to know if there's
| something like this on the other side of the marketplace for the
| affiliate content publishers? I started building out a site but
| the closest thing I can find to a platform entails hacking a
| Wordpress e-comm CMS to manage outbound links as if they were
| purchasable products.
| kundi wrote:
| I'm sorry guys, but you will need to work out the pricing. The
| existing solutions offer much better functionality and being
| managed-hosted for the same price.
| mcilroy wrote:
| Hey thank you for your feedback - I agree, it's still early
| days, but in terms of being the same price I don't think that's
| quite right. We're about 30-60% cheaper than other solutions
| right now. Our solution is also managed, so you get your own
| affiliate signup page and affiliate dashboard etc.
|
| Our landing and pricing page isn't as clear as it needs to be
| right now, I will be updating it soon with all of the different
| functionality we offer that's also unique.
| Terretta wrote:
| Instead of denying the truth of the feedback, you could have
| asked, "Thanks I'd love to know which competitors so we can
| understand if and how to adjust."
|
| Then you'd learn something, or not. But by pushing back "no"
| you'll definitely not.
| mcilroy wrote:
| I appreciate that, thank you. You're definitely right I
| could have worded it better.
|
| Just from my point of view, I've done a lot of research in
| this market so I'd be very surprised to learn that there's
| competitors offering affiliate marketing program
| creation/management for the same pricing as us or better.
|
| Our nearest competitor seems to start from $29/month, but
| that's with an additional 9% fee for each referral. And
| they don't allow you to upload your own logo to your
| campaign invite page...
|
| I do appreciate I should have worded my response better
| though, it's been a long day
| combyn8tor wrote:
| Can I use promo codes instead of website tracking? Most of my new
| customers come from a Discord channel and never visit my website.
| mcilroy wrote:
| That's actually a good point :) how would you see this working?
| Your affiliate gets a unique promo code for your checkout, then
| if a sale is completed with that promo code, it attributes the
| referral to that particular affiliate?
| throwaway2016a wrote:
| Interesting project but I've always half-consciously avoided
| self-hosted affiliate programs because of one simple reason:
| trust.
|
| My (possibly misguided) thought is that when dealing with self-
| hosted referral tracking the affiliate needs to trust that their
| commission is being tracked properly. But when the SaaS controls
| the database themselves the affiliate is putting a huge amount of
| trust in them that tracking is working. And if it isn't working,
| it seems suspicious at best and fraudulent at worst.
|
| With third party tracking you have external "proof" if presented
| with compliance or legal needs.
|
| With that said, I see they do offer a hosted option, which is
| interesting too.
| drusepth wrote:
| Looks interesting. Will there be an option to skip the digital
| hop across the pond and just use US infrastructure for those that
| don't serve the EU?
| singpolyma3 wrote:
| What is the benefit of this over just rolling referral
| attribution into your billing system?
| mcilroy wrote:
| So with Reflio you just need to connect your Stripe, add the JS
| tracking script to your site and then your good to go. You can
| manage multiple different types of affiliate campaigns from one
| dashboard, and manage all of your affiliates in one place. Your
| affiliates also get access to their own dashboard so they can
| monitor their own referrals and commissions.
|
| It just saves you all of the leg work in setting up these
| systems basically :)
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