10 Best PRM Software Reviewed

Partner relationship management (PRM) offers businesses the tools to streamline operations with sales partners and affiliates. It helps sales managers to optimize their relationship with channel sales partners and eliminate redundant tasks from their workflow. The best PRM software should include partner portals, access management features, collaboration tools for vendors/partners, and a dashboard with partner performance management.

Also, you can get the most out of a PRM platform by integrating with other solutions that track partner pipeline progression and engagement. Here’s a list of top partner relationship management software currently active.

1. PartnerStack

Best for B2B SaaS companies

Designed explicitly for B2B SaaS companies, PartnerStack is an excellent platform for building a partnership channel. With this solution, B2B companies can recruit partners of all types and grow their partnership channel in different directions. PartnerStack is one of the best PRM software for agencies, resellers, influencers, affiliates, etc.

What’s more? It has a straightforward, easy-to-use interface and some of the most appealing product designs you would come across.

Key Features

• Custom Onboarding for every partner. Thanks to PartnerStack’s custom onboarding feature, you can set every partner of yours up for success.
• Automated Partner Recruitment. PartnerStack allows businesses to automate recruitment fully. Your partners will also get rewards automatically when they make a conversion.
• Exact Payout Timings. PartnerStack also features automatic payouts depending on your partner’s performance. It eliminates the need to remember dates and timings. PartnerStack does all the work for you.

Pros

• The integration procedure is straightforward.
• Partnerstack is a reliable solution that is trusted by many top affiliates
• The interface is simplistic and easily navigable

Cons

• Pricing is on the upper end in the PRM software market.
• Although the platform has a substantial network of partnerships, the platform does not allow you to contact potential marketplace partners directly.
• Within the dashboard reporting, you may be unable to study precise SaaS metrics.

2. Referral Rock

Best for businesses of all sizes, both B2B and B2C; all types of channel partnership management

Referral Rock is a flexible PRM platform that allows users to manage different types of referral and partner programs. Businesses can develop an incentive-based program capable of driving online and offline leads and sales. It is ideal for affiliate programs, channel partner programs, influencer programs, brand ambassador programs, employee programs, and customer referrals.

If you’re looking for the best PRM software to issue rewards automatically, consider using Referral Rock. The software automates the entire process, giving you enough time to measure your partnership program’s success. It makes scaling a lot easier, and Referral Rock’s support team is always available to help if you require assistance with the platform.

Positive ratings published on review sites show that Referral Rock is one of the best PRM software in a product, pricing, and customer service.

Key Features

• Track and manage leads and partners. Referral Rock features seamless tracking and capturing of referrals from form completions, trials, demos, e-commerce purchases, or subscriptions. Its platform has a simple dashboard that allows you and your partners to monitor key performance indicators.
• Exceptional support. There are success managers for every plan to provide support. They know everything from your partner program and marketing plan to your goals.
• Mobile app and API integration. Integrate seamlessly with marketing tools such as Salesforce, Zapier, HubSpot, and many others. Referral Rock also features a mobile app and API integration.
• Identify and enroll individual partners. Referral Rock allows you to create and personalize your partnership programs.

Pros

• The product is simple, and the admin dashboards can generate reports.  
• A great support system that makes for easy setup.
• Integrates with HubSpot and can serve as a CRM.

Cons

• Inability to change a referrer’s contact information.
• The price difference between the basic to the middle plan is huge.

3. Impact

 Best for affiliate marketing platforms

Established in 2008, Impact is a PRM solution for managing your media and partner relationships. It allows advertisers to improve their affiliate marketing platform by automating many important processes, such as tracking and engaging with customers. Impact offers seamless integration with marketing tools to help you scale your business.

Key Features

• Fraud Protection. Thanks to Impact’s unique fraud detection technology, you have protection against fraudulent behavior from partners.
• Automated Reminder. Impact sends automatic reminders to partners allowing them to perform specific tasks at certain times.
• Solid Migration Assistance. Transfer of information from one affiliate program to another is convenient and effective with Impact. The transition will not affect your conversions, and the same goes for your affiliate account.

Pros

• A large diversity of businesses use the platform.
• Supports CRM migration and integration services when required.
• Possesses CRM capabilities.

Cons

• If you don’t have a developer on staff, creating a custom integration can take some time.
• The influencer network features require some improvement.

4. Everflow 

Best for B2C businesses of all sizes

Everflow is PRM software for companies looking to manage their performance marketing relationships. It lets you stay on top of your media buying, influencers, affiliates, and in-app publishers. Everflow enables businesses to operate efficiently and scale rapidly by automating many key processes.

The software focuses on customer success through onboarding training, in-platform chat, and ongoing support.

Key Features

• Attributes unlimited events. Everflow allows you to track every engagement that provides value from your campaigns.  
• Tracks every channel. With Everflow, tracking starts when users visit your website, allowing you to consolidate your performance reporting for influencers, affiliates, referrals, and media buying. 

Pros

• Monitors all channels and offers unrestricted partner control.
• Powerful CRM, shopping cart, and full access API integrations.
• Facilitates viewing and performance optimization at the placement level.

Cons

• The vast array of available options can be daunting.
• Does not offer affiliates a sizable market.
• Email campaigns lack the sturdiness.

5. Affise

Best for B2B businesses of any size, affiliate management

Affise is a marketing platform for businesses that want to improve their ad campaign management. It allows you to track ad campaigns, connect and engage with affiliates, and build new partnerships. Affise offers 50+ data breakdown statistics, BI analytics, and AI-driven features with which you can optimize your entire partner program management.

Key Features

• Flexibility in customization. Affise is customizable. There are many ways to make it feel like an in-house platform. You can customize the platform layouts, apply your brand design, implement more modules in statistics, or add new integrations.
• Performance-based pricing plan. Affise offers the best pricing as you only spend on clicks that result in conversions. You can test different advertising hypotheses to discover what works best without wasting your money.
• Advanced targeting. Traffic management within your network will be more effective thanks to Affise’s advanced targeting. You can implement different targeting settings on general and personal levels.

Pros

• Does not impose a traffic fee.
• Incredibly user-friendly interface.
• Costs, limitations, and other targeting options with flexibility.

Cons

• Statistics reports tend to be brief.
• Low feed frequency.
• Lacksbug support.

6. Channeltivity

Best for large to enterprise-level businesses, channel partner programs

Channeltivity is one of the best PRM software for finding, training, and engaging new and existing partners. This highly intuitive platform enables businesses to gain leads, register deals, and do much more. It offers specialized options that integrate seamlessly with Salesforce and HubSpot.

With Channeltivity, you have many helpful features for managing your partners. MDF management training modules, lead distribution, and co-branding features are also available at an additional fee.

Key Features

• Real-time email reminders. Channeltivity enables you to engage partners with real-time email reminders. You won’t worry about remembering your partners’ priorities, as the software covers everything.
• Automated flow. Thanks to integrations with HubSpot and Salesforce, you can automate partner data flow between PRM and CRM.
• Tracking and Support. Channeltivity also offers MDF tracking and support, allowing you to track partner funding in real-time. This way, you can prioritize partners that require the most support.
• Automated assignments. Channel lead management allows you to assign leads to partners, monitor their progress, and provide support to leads as they move down the sales funnel.

Pros

• Quick team responsiveness.
• Highly cost-effective.
• Allows integration with other programs such as salesforce.

Cons

• Inability to handle sophisticated programs.
• Integration with other programs takes time.

7. Allbound

Best for co-selling with your partners

Allbound offers many features that allow businesses to manage and scale their partner programs. Managers that choose this tool should expect total control over their partnership program, from onboarding to training and engagement. Partners can log into Allbound’s customizable portal and access what they require to promote the company’s products or services.

They can also register for an event, learn about your company, access sales tools such as view recordings of webinars, datasheets, case studies, and presentations, share articles, get social sharing functionality for promoting your content on Twitter and LinkedIn, and more. Allbound has a self-service portal and marketing dashboard for partners to track their partner program performance and monitor ROI.

Key Features

• Partner Onboarding.  Allbound allows you to onboard new partners. It has a dashboard that lets you track your partners’ progress through different process stages and notifies you when they require your attention.
• Sales Enablement Playbooks. Users can sell their services with actionable playbooks.
• Partner Co-Selling and Deal Management. You will find some of the best features for co-selling with your channel partners in the Allbound PRM software.

Pros

• You can swiftly scale up your partner marketing across hundreds, if not thousands, of your various partnerships.
• Allbound PRM’s partner co-marketing is available for everything, including content management tools, co-branding, and more.
• You can quickly onboard your high-value partners since the partner onboarding process is quite seamless.

Cons

• More customization options for the dashboard display for administrators and partner users should be available.
• For their pipeline analytics, they require more filtering options.
• You’ll need to employ a separate third-party system if you wish to run an affiliate program besides your partnership program.

8. IBM Sterling Partner Engagement Manager

Best for B2Bs that use other IBM Sterling products

IBM’s partner management software is perfect for those looking to track and manage partner data. It comes with many features that help you move deals down the pipeline. The platform integrates seamlessly with other IBM applications to provide seamless data transfer.

IBM Sterling Partner Engagement Manager helps you automate repetitive tasks.

Key Features

• Campaign management grouping. With IBM’s PRM software, you can add partners to campaigns and provide them with relevant information depending on tagged attributes or groupings.
• Hybrid deployment option. Depending on how you set up your data security and IT setup, IBM’s software takes advantage of RESTful APIs to offer public, private, local cloud, on-premises software, or a combination of cloud options.
• Portal creation. IBM’s solution allows you to create self-service portals for onboarding partners, partner maintenance frameworks, customizing onboarding, and setting the dates for partner campaigns.

Pros

• User-friendly interface.
• The software is intuitive.
• Supports multiple protocols.
• Partner onboarding is simple.

Cons

• Users have experienced minor lags.
• The API still has room for improvement.
• Inadequate customer education.

9. Partnerize

Best for mid-sized to enterprise businesses, both B2C and B2B, all types of partnerships

Partnerize is one of the best PRM software with an easy-to-use interface. It makes partnership management easier by automating your hectic tasks. Established in 2010, Partnerize strives to simplify partners’ tracking, calculation, and payment.

This SaaS-based automated platform provides real-time tools to help grow your business.

Key Features

• Easy To Track Growth. Tracking your growth with Partnerize makes it easy to track your partner’s growth.
• On-board Guiding. Thanks to Partnerize’s guided partner onboarding, you can onboard new partners into your program without any hassle
• Customized Plans. The partnership programs are customizable, so everyone can find something to suit their needs.

Pros

• An intuitive user interface and a simple partner experience.
• Dashboard elements and interactions are simple to use and can be easily customized.
• The management of countless forms of partnerships using cutting-edge automation.

Cons

• Getting in touch with new partners takes some time.
• You can’t easily find new partners because they don’t have a strong partner marketplace.
• The management dashboard can occasionally be cumbersome and overwhelming.

10. Tune

Best for Advertisers, partner network builders for all sizes of businesses

Tune is an excellent partner marketing management platform that helps businesses activate high-value business partners. It streamlines recruitment and onboarding and is trusted by numerous top brands, including Shopify, Nord VPN, and Groupon. The software offers a customized partner experience that partners provide for their customers.

Tune enables you to work smarter and develop trust with your revenue-driving partnerships.

Key Features

• Partner Management Tools. Tune PRM makes finding the best partners for your business easy by providing you with the required tools for building an effective outreach strategy.
• Tracking Solutions. Tune features some of the most accurate solutions for tracking. It allows you to track, evaluate and improve your partners’ performance in a few clicks.
• Partners Program Customization. Tune offers different types of partner programs to meet your requirements.

Pros

• Simple tracking procedure for customer relationship management.
• An open API for integrating with your tech stack which is crucial for efficient partner management.
• Excellent fraud prevention technology.

Cons

• Lack of access to a strong affiliate network should you wish to scale out an affiliate channel.
• Your scale plan is not supported by the customer success manager.

Questions to Consider When Choosing the Ideal PRM software

Despite loads of PRM companies available, it can still be frustrating to select the right PRM system. Here are a few things to consider when choosing a PRM system:

Is it user-friendly?

Your PRM software should be easy to use. It is an important quality as your staff and partners will regularly use the software. You want a solution that doesn’t take long to reboot or require IT approval before you perform certain tasks.

Registering new deals, adding incentives, and uploading marketing materials should be fast and seamless. Also, partners should have easy access to sales or marketing.

How Simple is the Installation Process?

As crucial as an easy-to-use system, your PRM software should be even easier to install. An excellent PRM tool doesn’t need IT assistance or extra installation expenses. The ideal PRM software must come with guidelines, demos, and other required paperwork. Their customer care service should be able to help your team, and partners get up to speed.

How Much Time Does the Installation Take?

You need to note the amount of time required for installation. Things to note include the time required for data transfer and time to set up partner programs. When installation takes too long, you risk losing out on important sales chances. Your PRM system should make your partner program simpler and better.

Is the Program Maintenance Simple?

Most software requires updates or patches to make it work effectively. For your PRM software, the changes or updates must be quick and straightforward. The process must be quick, whether it’s altering your incentives, revising your marketing collateral, or including information in your partner accounts. You need a PRM tool that enables real-time editing and updating without requiring you to submit requests.

Does it Provide the Functionality That You Need?

A PRM software can’t satisfy all partners and programs. Before choosing PRM software, you should first list your objectives and desired outcomes. However, you can go around those restrictions by choosing a PRM program that is simple to configure, adaptable, and customizable.

How Simple is the Integration With Your Current Systems?

You must ensure your software seamlessly integrates ERP (Enterprise Resource Planner) and CRM (Customer Relationship Management) software. The syncing of these tools ensures that all your programs are current and useful. Integration of these tools ensures that the data used by your team and partners is accurate.

How Responsive is the Company’s Support Team?

This is perhaps the most important question before installing the software. Upon installation of your system, does the PRM firm provide support? Do they go out of their way to make sure you have a good experience? Do they give you their time to talk about your worries and provide answers?

The top PRM firms will value your input and seek to improve the system. They take their time to assist you in any way they can to ensure your success. You might encounter delays in responses from larger PRM companies or perhaps speak to robots rather than real people. Once you have the software functioning, take some time to investigate the support options.

Is the Software Scalable or Are There Growth Limitations?

When you set up your software, your company might get the opportunity to expand and add more partners. Companies that expand can also wish to hire more salespeople to handle more accounts. Finding out you’ve reached your account limit can be rather frustrating. Find out in advance what your account restrictions are and whether you have the opportunity to add users or partners.

Will There Be Improvements or Updates?

Choosing a PRM provider willing to develop with you is crucial as both you and the partner management industry expand. You need to choose a PRM company that spends time with users and solicits feedback from them. A PRM company that consistently strives to improve will help you accomplish your goals much faster.

What is the Cost, and When Can You Expect a Return on Investment?

The total cost is not just the price spent on the software program. You should think about the time and resources needed before implementation when evaluating cost as a whole. The future expenses on the software are also a part of cost evaluation.

Your personnel may concentrate on the tasks and objectives that are most important by spending less time on data administration. You give your staff and partners more room to grow by making your programs simpler for them to administer. This ensures your company sees a quicker ROI than with programs without PRM tools.

By using a PRM system, you may also prioritize successful initiatives and concentrate on those that will yield a higher return.

FAQ

Wrap Up

With technological advancements and the growing influence of tech in all sectors, there is a need to keep up with current trends. The PRM market has grown massively in the last couple of years. Some of the best PRM software to meet your partner relationship management needs include Partnerstack, Impact, and Referral Rock.

The above-listed tools can help you keep track of inventory, pricing, and discounts. Companies that prioritize partner relationships enjoy the benefits of effective company operation streamlining.