Pepperjam Ascend (discontinued) vs. Rakuten Advertising

For our business, affiliate marketing is by far the lowest ROI marketing channel. If you're looking to get products, brands, and offers listed on coupon sites, Pepperjam Ascend is a great tool. If you're looking to engage with influencers or drive sales without giving away margin, Pepperjam Ascend is likely not for you.

Incentivized

Great company, clear communications, fast quarterly distributions and a fun way to get paid for shopping that you are already doing. I highly recommend this service. Why would you pass up the opportunity for free money? And the Chrome extension is a wonderful add-on! Great way to remind yourself when you are on a site that Rakuten honors.

Incentivized

• Lots of coupon sites.
• Enables different tiers of commissions.
• Can blast out newsletters to your network.

Incentivized

• Setup is also very easy. on-time payments and responsive support
• They make sure to offer means to the difficulties of each entrepreneur.

• The dashboard/platform is the furthest thing from user-friendly. It looks like a high school student with zero experience designed it in excel and hoped for the best with the results.
• Reports are hit and miss. They may load, they may not! It's ridiculous, in my opinion.
• No mobile options whatsoever, everything has to be desktop. It's 2022, they need to catch up!

• Analytics could be more graphical instead of just a bunch on tables with numbers.
• After sale services can be improved to take detailed customer feedback.
• More options to customize currently available marketing solutions.

Incentivized

Pepperjam Ascend's user interface is way behind these other platforms. It's not intuitive nor is it easy to create custom reports and engage with your publishers. We have been stuck with Pepperjam and many other affiliate networks have a very similar layout without much upside.

Incentivized

Rakuten has more features and when it comes to pricing, Rakuten Advertising is really worth its price because of its functionality and also the customer/client support is superb!

Incentivized

• I was hitting anywhere from $130 - $450 per month in commission payout before Pepperjam Ascend. Now with Pepperjam Ascend, I maybe get $40! I am still waiting on payouts from January.

• Reliable tools to facilitate its promotion and optimize conversion, for the promotion of products through your websites, it is the most recommended
• If a product has a good approval, it will give you more chances to get sales through the system