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Switching

Moving from Impact.com to AffiliateRail

This guide starts with the hard part. Impact links redirect through their tracking and land on your site with a click id, not an affiliate identity, so no script can keep them working. Every partner gets a new link from the portal. The people and the history move by CSV. Impact's reports download as CSV or Excel, or through the API, and the importer does a practice run first. The money changes too. Your funding account stops. You start paying from your own PayPal or Wise, and the 20% stops with it. Plan a month of both running. Or hand it to us.

Published 6 September 2026. Every price and technical claim checked against its live source on 6 September 2026. Written by Jimi Barkway, who built AffiliateRail. Jimi has run affiliate programs from both sides of the link. Corrections go to support@affiliaterail.com.

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Moving from Impact.com in four stagesThe four stages of moving a program from Impact.com: links keep working, export and import, run both for a month, then switch payouts.1Links keepworking2Export andimport3Run bothfor a month4Switch payoutsAAn afternoon of your time, or an hour of oursNothing your affiliates published has to change.

01 Stage 1

Your existing affiliate links need re-issuing

Not this time, and this page says so. Impact tracking links redirect through their service and land on your site with irclickid, a click id, appended to the URL (their ITP compliance article, checked 6 September 2026). A click id names a click in Impact's database, not a partner, so no script on your site can credit the right person from it.

So every partner gets a new link from the AffiliateRail portal. Stage 3 is the month that makes the swap painless.

Said plainly

  • Impact tracking links redirect through their service and reach your site carrying a click id, irclickid.

  • A click id names a click in Impact's system, not a partner. Nothing on your site can credit from it.

  • Each partner gets a new link from the AffiliateRail portal. Stage 3 is the month that makes the swap painless.

  • The day a tracker could read an Impact link, this guide will say so.

02 Stage 2

What comes over, and how

There is no Impact importer, so the move runs on CSV. Impact's help centre says most reports can be downloaded as PDF, Excel or CSV, or pulled through the API (their reporting introduction, checked 6 September 2026). Pull the partner, customer and action reports into a spreadsheet. The importer takes three files:

  • Partners: email required. Their Impact id can go in the referral token column, for your records. It will not keep old links working.
  • Customers: one per referred customer, with their partner.
  • Transactions: one per payment, with the amount and date.
A practice run first, every time. Run it again and records are matched, not duplicated. One click rolls it back.

03 Stage 3

Run both for a month

Run both for a month. Compare sales, not clicks. The two scripts will never agree on clicks, and that gap is not a fault.

This month matters more here than on most switches, because the links change. Send each partner their new link at the start. Impact deducts commissions from your funding account when actions lock, so let the last locked actions clear before you stop the card. Close the old account once one full payout run has finished on the new side.

Run both for a monthA four-week timeline. The old tracker stays on for three weeks while rail.js reads both sets of links; once the two dashboards agree, the old one is switched off.week 1week 2week 3week 4their tracker, still onoffrail.js, reading both sets of linksACompare the two dashboards. When they agree, switch the old one off.

04 Stage 4

How do payouts change after the switch?

This part changes most.

On Impact, you funded an account by card. Impact topped it up whenever it fell below what you owed, plus a buffer, and paid partners from it. On Essentials, $2,500 of payouts a month were included and everything above cost 20%.

On AffiliateRail you connect your own PayPal or Wise. AffiliateRail logs in on your schedule and pays from there. The money goes from you to your partner and never through us, so the fee is 0%. Your partners enter their payout details again, because those belong to whoever pays them.

Funded an account on Impact before? Now the money leaves your own account, and the fee is 0%. The custody page has both models side by side.

In their words

What Impact.com's own terms say

The system charges your credit card automatically when your funding account balance falls 30 units below the total you owe, plus a mandatory 50 currency unit buffer.

Impact.com help centre, Essentials Edition Billing Explained, checked 6 September 2026

This is the custody model in one sentence. Your money sits with Impact before your partners see it, and the 20% past the allowance is the price of running that account.

Step by step

The switch, step by step

Three words first, because the steps use them. A dry run is a practice import that writes nothing. It tells you what it would have created. A referral token is the bit inside an affiliate link that names the partner. Keeping each partner's old one is why published links carry on working. Attribution is the job of deciding which partner gets credited for a sale. Most merchants do this in an afternoon. If you would rather hand it over, we run migrations white-glove. A screen-share and an hour, and we do the rest. We finish inside two working days of getting your details. Email support@affiliaterail.com.

  1. Create your program

    Connect Stripe or Paddle. The link is read-only. We read billing events to credit sales. We cannot write to your account.

  2. Export from Impact

    Partners, customers and actions, as CSV from the reports or through the API. Keep the partner ids for your own records.

  3. Practice-run the import

    Map the columns. Read the counts. Check them against your Impact reports. Only run it for real when they match.

  4. Install the script and re-issue links

    Every partner gets a new link from the portal. Send it with the invite. Old links keep paying through Impact until you close it.

  5. Overlap, then close

    Run both for a month. Let the last actions lock and clear your funding account. Then close Impact.

Start your affiliate programAsk us to run it, inside two working days

14 days free, no card. A month of both running is stage 3.

Said plainly

What does not carry over

A migration page that lists only the good news is an advert. These do not come across.

  • The links themselves

    Impact links redirect through their domain with a click id. Every partner gets a new link from the new portal, and stage 3 is the month that makes the swap painless.

  • Portal passwords

    Your partners set a new one from their invite. Their identity, links and balance are waiting. Their old login is not.

  • The marketplace

    Impact's marketplace is theirs. Partners you found there stay yours. The listing does not come with you, and AffiliateRail has no equal.

  • Creators, publishers and agencies

    If you ran influencer or publisher partnerships on Impact alongside affiliates, AffiliateRail has no equivalent. It runs affiliate programs.

  • Raw click logs

    People and money move. Click-by-click traffic does not. Click counting starts fresh.

  • Payout details and tax forms

    Bank details belong to whoever pays, and that is about to be you. Collect fresh W-9 and W-8BEN forms too. The payer has changed.

Cost

What the same program costs on each

Impact's Essentials edition is $500 a month with $2,500 of payouts inside it, then 20% of every dollar above. So its column is flat until the allowance runs out, then climbs. Ours does not. This table assumes you pay a 25% commission. Earn $20,000 from affiliates and you pay out $5,000. Checked against Impact's billing article on 6 September 2026.

Monthly revenue from affiliatesImpact EssentialsAffiliateRail foundingAffiliateRail list
$5,000$500 ($1,250 of payouts, inside the allowance)$29 (Launch)$59
$10,000$500 ($2,500 of payouts, inside the allowance)$29 (Launch)$59
$20,000$1,000 ($500 + 20% of the $2,500 above it)$59 (Grow)$89
$40,000$2,000 ($500 + 20% of the $7,500 above it)$99 (Scale)$179

Impact's plan price never moves in that table. The bill still quadruples once payouts pass the allowance. That is the whole difference, and it is arithmetic. What the table cannot show is Impact's marketplace, its partner types and its reporting API. AffiliateRail has none of them. If those are why you are on Impact, the bigger bill is the right one.

Questions

Common questions

Will my affiliates' Impact links keep working?

No. An Impact link redirects through their service and lands with a click id, not a partner identity. No script can credit the right person from it. Every partner gets a new link from the portal. Send it with the invite.

When does the 20% stop?

When your funding account stops being charged. Anything still paid through Impact carries their fee. Let the last actions lock, watch one payout run finish on AffiliateRail, then close the account.

What about the marketplace?

It stays with Impact, and AffiliateRail has nothing like it. Partners you found there stay your partners and come across in the import. You will not get new ones that way. It is the clearest reason to stay.

Do partners have to do anything?

Three things. Set a password from their invite. Swap their old link for the new one. Enter their payout details, because those belong to whoever pays them, and that becomes you. Their customers and balance are already there. One email covers it.

All product names, logos, and brands are property of their respective owners. Comparisons are based on publicly available information as of 6 September 2026. If a linked source has changed since, tell us at support@affiliaterail.com. We will correct this page.

Sources

Where these facts come from

Every claim about another product here was read off their own pages. The date shown is the day it was read. Prices change, and then this page is wrong until we fix it. Email support@affiliaterail.com and we will correct it and move the date.

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