Switching
Moving from FirstPromoter to AffiliateRail
Published 1 September 2026. Every price and technical claim on this page was checked against its live source on that date.
The short version
A built-in importer reads your FirstPromoter account through their admin API and brings over your promoters, referrals and commission history. Your affiliates' existing links keep converting through the switch, because our tracker reads every link format FirstPromoter programs commonly use, nine parameters in all. Plan an afternoon end to end, and if you would rather not do any of it yourself, we will run the whole migration with you.
Your existing affiliate links keep working
FirstPromoter is unusual in how many link formats it supports, which means a program that has been running for a while has links in the wild in several shapes. A migration that only handles the default format quietly drops every referral arriving on the others, and nobody notices until an affiliate asks where their commission went.
The AffiliateRail tracker reads all of them. On the day you switch, links carrying any of these parameters keep attributing: fpr, fp_ref, via, ref, aff, _from, _by, _go, _get and deal. A click on an old link lands on your site, our script picks up whichever parameter it carries, and the referral is attributed to the same affiliate in AffiliateRail. No affiliate has to update anything.
This is verifiable, not asserted: the parameter list ships in the tracker script itself, and you can read it in the script your own site would serve.
What comes over, and how
The importer connects to FirstPromoter's admin API with your API key and account id, and pulls:
- Promoters, so every affiliate exists in AffiliateRail with the same identity from day one.
- Referrals, with their promoter attribution, so renewals keep crediting the affiliate who earned them.
- Commissions, so balances and history do not restart at zero.
The importer was built against FirstPromoter's published API documentation, paces its requests conservatively, and can be re-run safely: records are matched, not duplicated. If your account uses a configuration their API represents unusually, we will see it during the import and handle it with you rather than around you.
The switch, step by step
- Create your AffiliateRail program and connect Stripe. The connection is read-only: we read subscription events to attribute sales, and we cannot write to your Stripe account.
- Run the FirstPromoter import with your API key and account id. Check the counts against your FirstPromoter dashboard.
- Add the tracking script to your site. Old links attribute from this moment, in any of the nine formats above.
- Invite your promoters to the new portal. Their email, their links and their balance are already there when they arrive.
- Remove the FirstPromoter script and close the account once you have watched a few referrals land. Running both trackers for a day or two costs nothing and lets you compare.
Most merchants can do this in an afternoon. If you would rather hand it over, we run migrations white-glove: you give us a screen-share and an hour, and we do the rest. Email support@affiliaterail.com.
What does not carry over
- Portal passwords. Your affiliates set a new password from their invite to the new portal. Their identity, links and balance are waiting for them; their old login is not.
- Raw click logs. We import people and money, not historical click-by-click traffic records. Click counting starts fresh on our side.
- Cookies already set on visitors' devices. A visitor referred last week carries FirstPromoter's attribution, not ours. The moment they click any affiliate link again, we attribute them. No vendor can transfer another vendor's cookies.
- Email templates and automations. FirstPromoter's email automation setups do not map one-to-one onto ours. Our transactional notifications cover the same moments; anything bespoke needs rebuilding, and we will tell you honestly which parts do.
What the same program costs on each
The two products band pricing differently, so the honest comparison is by the revenue your affiliates actually generate. Checked against FirstPromoter's pricing page on 1 September 2026: their Starter is $49 up to $5,000 a month of affiliate revenue with a 1,000-affiliate limit, Business is $99 up to $15,000, and Enterprise starts at $149 above that.
| Monthly revenue from affiliates | FirstPromoter | AffiliateRail founding | AffiliateRail list |
|---|---|---|---|
| $5,000 | $49 (Starter) | $29 (Launch) | $59 |
| $10,000 | $99 (Business) | $29 (Launch) | $59 |
| $20,000 | $149+ (Enterprise) | $59 (Grow) | $89 |
| $50,000 | $149+ (Enterprise) | $99 (Scale) | $179 |
Affiliate limits do not appear in that table because AffiliateRail has none on any plan: unlimited affiliates and unlimited referrals, metered only by what your program earns. On payouts, FirstPromoter's pricing page places its managed auto payouts on the Enterprise tier; AffiliateRail includes auto payouts from the $59 Grow plan at 0% of the payout, running through your own PayPal or Wise account. Why that number is structural rather than promotional is the subject of the custody page, and you can run the totals at your own volume.
All product names, logos, and brands are property of their respective owners. Comparisons are based on publicly available information as of 1 September 2026. If a linked source has changed since, tell us at support@affiliaterail.com and we will correct this page.