13 Web Hosting Affiliate Programs in 2024

The first website went online in August 1991.

Now barely three decades later, there are 1.72 billion active websites, with more added every single day.

Each of them is sitting on a web host somewhere.

All are part of an industry worth a projected $115.3 billion within the next 5 years. 

But as the ship sailed for affiliate marketers who want to get into the web hosting niche?

It’s a little further away from shore but within swimming distance.

There are numerous examples of sites that have parlayed a free tool, or content marketing, into 5-figure commission checks every month.

All that’s stopping you from emulating that same level of success is:

1. Effort
2. The right affiliate programs

So, in true Authority Hacker style, we pulled out all the stops and took a deep dive into the highest-paying web hosting affiliate programs for you.

Here’s what we found.

Web Hosting Affiliate Programs

1. Kinsta
2. WP Engine
3. Cloudways
4. SiteGround
5. iPage
6. A2 Hosting
7. Scala Hosting
8. WebHostingPad
9. Hostgator
10. Bluehost
11. GoDaddy
12. Liquid Web
13. WPX

1Kinsta

Kinsta stands out in a sea of cookie-cutter web hosts for a number of reasons.

Firstly, they offer actual managed WordPress hosting – they’re not just paying lip service to that concept. Secondly, we use them here at Authority Hacker. We’ve tested many web hosts over the years, and Kinsta is our favorite by far.

And finally, Kinsta is deeply involved in the web hosting and development industry to the point where they’ve even developed their own plugins to help you optimize any WordPress install.

Kinsta, however, is not cheap. Prices start at $30 each month for a single website, so this type of service is aimed at pro affiliate marketers. We know we’re gushing a bit here, but we really like these guys.

The Kinsta Hosting affiliate program is run in-house because they got tired of dealing with affiliate networks. It also gives them a little more financial leverage with which to reward their affiliates, to the tune of up to $500 per referred sale.

That’s a shitload of affiliate commission, even for this niche. So that makes this the most lucrative web hosting affiliate program in this roundup. Plus they have a very low churn rate, so refunds are minimal. 

• URL: Kinsta affiliate program
• Commission: Up to $500 per sale
• Cookie duration: 60 days

2WP Engine

WP Engine has been around since 2010, and in that time, they’ve gone from being relatively unknown to powering 500,000 WordPress sites for customers in 120 different countries.

WP Engine is also the company behind StudioPress themes and the Genesis Framework for WordPress. So your visitors will not only get access to some of the best web hosting out there if they sign up for WP Engine, but they’ll also receive access to both StudioPress and Genesis as a bonus.

This type of managed WordPress hosting isn’t cheap, with monthly prices starting at $30 each month, but you can get a pretty deep discount by paying a year or two in advance.

We know some people will balk at the idea of paying thirty bucks each month to keep their website online, but you really do get what you pay for when it comes to this stuff.

WP Engine’s listed affiliate commission structure is a little bit confusing, especially the “200%” part. Basically, you’ll make an average of $140.53 for every affiliate referral you send their way. Plus, you have 180 days for your lead to convert to a sale.

There’s an additional bonus structure available, so if you refer more than 5 customers each month to WP Engine, you get an extra $100 in commission (total), all the way up to a $1,500 bonus for 60 customers referred each month.

It’s one of the few programs here that offers a direct bonus program at this level, so you can look forward to discussing it with your dedicated affiliate manager.

• URL: WP Engine affiliate program
• Commission:  Up to 200%
• EPC:  $100.42
• Cookie duration: 180 days

3Cloudways

Cloud hosting isn’t exactly new. But what Cloudways offers its customers is that you can choose from five different cloud providers to act as the backbone for your account.

So, unlike other hosts where you’re stuck with their choice of service infrastructure, with Cloudways, you can choose to use Digital Ocean, Linode, Vultr, AWS, or Google Cloud hosting instead. All of these options are SSD-based, and for an added speed boost, each account is also connected to the CloudWays CDN.

And the final scrape of icing on this cake is your visitors also get 24/7/365 support, with response times as low as 30 minutes when using their premium support option.

At face value, $50 per referral in affiliate commissions might sound pretty good. But that’s just their base commission rate for an affiliate making 1 – 5 sales.

If you can refer more than 45 customers each month, your commission rate can lead right up to $125 per sale. There’s obviously also a sliding scale for anyone referring 6 – 20 and 21 – 45 new customers each month.

An additional perk is being able to work directly with your own affiliate manager. 

• URL: Cloudways affiliate program
• Commission:  $50 per sale
• EPC: $57.49
• Cookie duration: 90 days

4SiteGround

Choosing a web host for your first affiliate website(s) can be daunting. But our TASS students know that we’ve gone out of our way to find a web host they’d find easy to set up and use.

And that web host is SiteGround, which also just happens to offer an affiliate program.

You can get SiteGround WordPress hosting for as little as $3.95 each month, but that doesn’t mean they cut any corners when it comes to serving customers or sites.

Your website will run on SSD hardware, and they even throw in an SSL certificate.

Their WordPress plans start at just $9.95 each month, and you get quite a lot for that money. That includes 10GB of storage space, free WordPress installation, free CDN, and even a free SSL certificate to get you that HTTPS love from Google.

SiteGround has also impressed us in the past with the quality of their technical and customer support.

Here we have another web host that manages its own affiliate program.

So what do they offer their affiliates?

Well, you get paid up to $75 for each new customer that signs up with them through your affiliate link. But that rate is only paid for 20+ referrals each month – their base affiliate commission rate is $40 per sale.

• URL: SiteGround affiliate program
• Commission:  Up to $75 per sale
• Cookie duration: 60 days

5iPage

Many of the hosting companies featured in this roundup have been in business for a decade or so. iPage is a host that I remember back from my earliest days online in 1998. And from memory, they were running an affiliate program from day one.

Your visitors can get web hosting with this company for as little as $2.99 each month, but you’ll have to sign up for 36 months to get pricing at the level.

So what will your audience get for their money? A web hosting account with a free domain name, free SSL cert, 24/7 support, a site builder, and even free domain transfer.

iPage is also an interesting product for “green” affiliates to promote. Why? Well, because their servers operate on wind power, so iPage customers can display a badge on their site showing that it’s environmentally friendly. That’s a pretty sweet piece of leverage to have.

iPage offers its affiliates $85 in commission for each new WordPress and VPS hosting account they sign up.

The landing page for their affiliate program does say they pay up to $150 commission for dedicated hosting accounts, but that’s not reflected on Commission Junction. 

• URL: iPage affiliate program
• Commission:  $85 per sale
• EPC: $68.11
• Cookie duration: 120 days

6A2 Hosting

A2 Hosting is all about speed. In fact, they claim to be up to 20x faster than their competitors, boasting that their customer sites have 1-second page load times. They also offer everything from shared to dedicated hosting solutions, catering for everything from small hobby sites to full corporate or e-commerce platforms.

WordPress ‘Lite’ shared hosting starts at $3.60 per month for a single site, all the way up to their professional WordPress hosting options costing $35 per month for unlimited websites. And all new accounts get a free SSL cert, a commitment to 99.9% uptime for your sites, and expert customer and technical support.

So how do they treat their affiliates?

Pretty damn good – you can earn up to $125 per sale if you’re able to refer more than 31 new customers each month. But even at the lower end of the scale, they still pay a very respectable $55 per referral.

So this can be a very lucrative program for any affiliate willing to make the effort.

• URL: A2 Hosting affiliate program
• Commission: Up to $125 for every sale
• Cookie duration: 90 days

7Scala Hosting

You’ve never heard of Scala Hosting before? They’ve been in the business of hosting websites since 2007, so they’ve been around a whole lot longer than most of their competitors.

Your visitors can get shared, WordPress, or managed cloud hosting with Scala, so they tick all the boxes there. Their USP is they claim to have the cheapest managed VPS hosting plans in the world, starting at just $12 per month.

And they’re obviously doing something right because they have over 50,000 customers and host over 700,000 websites. So this could be an ideal program if your audience needs slightly more technical hosting solutions.

First, you’ll need an account with Rakuten Linkshare to promote the Scala Hosting affiliate program. In terms of how much you can earn, they pay a base affiliate commission of $35 per referral for standard shared hosting, but they pay a flat rate of $120 per sale for VPS hosting.  They also prefer their affiliates to either publish content on IT subjects or review IT products and services.

So that’s worth bearing in mind when you apply to this program i.e., create some content that proves you meet their requirements.

• URL: Scala Hosting affiliate program
• Commission:  Up to $200 for every sale
• EPC:  TBC
• Cookie duration: 30 days

8WebHostingPad

WebHostingPad doesn’t pull any punches when it comes to its basic marketing pitch, “…quality hosting but at affordable prices”.

This is why they offer shared hosting packages for just $1.99 each month and $2.99 each month for WordPress solutions. But they also offer faster VPS hosting, although most of their hosting packages benefit from using SSD-powered servers.

Web Hosting Pad has been around for 15 years, so they’re a hosting industry veteran.

WebHostingPad might not have the profile of, say, Kinsta, but they still pay their affiliates $70 per referral. But that would seem to only apply to VPS hosting packages because their average affiliate payment is $27.22 per transaction.

This still isn’t bad, but it’s at the lower level of what you’d expect from a hosting affiliate program.

• URL: Web Hosting Pad affiliate program
• Commission: $70 per signup
• EPC: $45.54
• Cookie duration: 30 days

9Hostgator

It’s almost impossible to put together a roundup of hosting affiliate programs without mentioning one of their granddaddies – Hostgator. There was a time when most affiliate sites were powered by Hostgator simply because they offered very reliable and affordable hosting. I had a reseller account with them for about 12 years until they were acquired by EIG, and we had a serious falling out.

Anyways, HostGator is still an extremely popular web host and is still offering ultra-cheap hosting with prices starting at just $2.75 each month. Your visitors can also rely on them for fast WordPress hosting or even high-end VPS or dedicated web hosting for more demanding sites or applications.

Any affiliate promoting this offer will earn a flat $75 commission rate for each referral.

But HostGator is willing to reward top performers with a higher commission rate. For example, if you can refer more than 20 sales each month, they’ll up your affiliate commission rate to $125 per signup.

• URL: HostGator affiliate program
• Commission: Up to $125 per referral
• EPC: $19.99
• Cookie duration: 60 days

10BlueHost

Yes, we know that every one of the “best website hosts” articles you find online features BlueHost. However, we are not here to review their actual services – the focus is on the BlueHost affiliate program.

But in general terms, BlueHost is another EIG company that offers its customers shared, WordPress, VPS, and dedicated web hosting.

Their prices are also very competitive, with shared and WordPress hosting starting at just $3.58 each month for a single website. But you do need to sign up for their 36-month plan to get this sizable discount, so that’s something to consider. And each of these entry-level plans covers a free domain name and SSL cert for your first year with the service.

First off, the BlueHost affiliate program has a generous 120-day cookie to work with – this is way above industry standards. You’ll also earn $65 for every successful referral you make through an affiliate link.

And this is from a company that paid its affiliates over US$5 million in commissions last year alone. So if you can find a unique and ethical way to promote this affiliate program, it can be very much worth the effort. 

• URL: BlueHost affiliate program
• Commission:  $65 per referral
• EPC: $35.09
• Cookie duration: 120 days

11GoDaddy

GoDaddy is another of the huge domain registration and web hosting companies, with more than 20 million customers and over 84 million domains on its books. But being a big name doesn’t guarantee that you also run one of the best hosting affiliate programs on the market.

Fortunately, GoDaddy’s web hosting affiliate program is pretty good. For starters, it’s run by one of our favorite affiliate networks, CJ Affiliate — which means reliable payments, quality tracking, and all that other important back-end stuff. (N.B. to learn more about the affiliate network, check out our CJ Affiliate review.)

It also pays a solid 10% revenue share on every sale you refer, whether to new or existing customers. And you get a 45-day cookie window to play with, which is better than some of its big rivals.

To help drive those all-important sales, GoDaddy offers a wealth of promotional materials, including more than 100 banner ads and text links that can be placed anywhere on your website.

As this affiliate program is on CJ Affiliate, you get a choice of three payment methods: check, direct deposit, and Payoneer. Commissions are paid on a NET 30 basis.

• URL: GoDaddy affiliate program
• Commission: 10% revenue share
• EPC: $57.31
• Cookie duration: 45 days

12Liquid Web

Liquid Web promises to deliver enterprise-class hosting for small and medium businesses. It’s clearly an attractive message, because the company has signed up more than 45,000 customers and manages over 500,000 websites.

The Liquid Web affiliate program is available via Impact Radius, so you’ll need to sign up for the affiliate network before applying to join. Provided you get accepted to the program, you’ll earn 150% of the monthly hosting cost for every sale you refer, with a minimum commission of $150. 

That means if you refer a customer to a $29 per month package, you’ll still bag a $150 commission. And with a 50% bonus for pre-paid plans, you could earn as much as $7,000 from a single sale. Just as impressively, you also get a generous 90-day cookie window, which should give you plenty of opportunity to close the deal.

Impact Radius pays via direct transfer, BACS, and PayPal in whatever currency you choose. Liquid Web also offers web hosting credits as a payment option.

• URL: Liquid Web affiliate program
• Commission: $150+
• EPC: $3.97
• Cookie duration: 90 days

13WPX

WPX offers the fastest global speed average of any hosting provider, according to independent analysis from data science supernerd Kevin Ohashi. So it’s good at web hosting. But how about its affiliate program?

As you’ll see from the affiliate landing page, WPX promises to do “ethical” affiliate marketing. In practice, that means it offers a sliding commission scale, as follows:

• 1 – 25 sales = $70 per sale
• 26 – 100 sales = $85 per sale
• 101+ sales = $100 per sale

Impressively, those are lifetime sales, not monthly. So whether it takes you a week, a month, or a year to hit the 100-sale mark, you’ll earn $100 for every subsequent sale, forever (or at least until WPX changes its commission rates). The company also offers a 60-day cookie window.

For sales of annual plans, all commissions are paid 35 days later, between the 15th and 30th of each month. However, if your referred customer chooses a monthly plan instead, you’ll only be eligible to receive a commission after four successive months of payment. And if they used a coupon code to cover the first month, the payment period will be extended by a further month.

WPX is big on support. To that end, affiliate marketers can reach the company’s affiliate manager via email and Skype at any time. You’ll also find a bunch of banners and information about upcoming promotions within the affiliate hub.

• URL: WPX affiliate program
• Commission: $70 – $100 per referral
• Cookie duration: 60 days

Why Should You Start Web Hosting Affiliate Marketing?

Affiliate marketing is ultimately about making money. And in our experience, web hosting is consistently one of the highest-paying affiliate niches (that’s why so many of the names on our roundup of high-paying affiliate programs are hosting providers).

But that isn’t the only reason to start web hosting affiliate marketing. If you think about it, while it’s theoretically possible to make money as an affiliate marketer without a website, most affiliates eventually bite the bullet and build their own site. In the process, they need to choose a hosting provider. That means they have first-hand experience of using web hosting services. 

Not only that, but they understand the buyer’s journey and the pain points facing a new customer. That means they’re well placed to write engaging, helpful content that helps users find the right hosting provider for their needs.

We always recommend “niche-ing down” as an affiliate marketer. For that reason, hosting affiliate programs are most relevant to affiliates who write about topics like:

• SEO
• Digital marketing
• Entrepreneurship
• Web design

But whatever niche you choose, you can still promote your favorite web hosting affiliate program(s), simply by saying: “I use this service myself.” That’s a pretty powerful sell. So while web hosting is a highly attractive niche in its own right, it can also be a fantastic way to supplement your earnings in a different niche.

Conclusion

So there you have 10 great web hosting affiliate programs for you to start earning money from.

One question you might have is how can these affiliate marketing programs afford to pay out $125 per signup…if they’re only charging $10 each month for their services?

Customer retention – they’ll do everything they can to keep new clients, and people typically stay with a service unless it becomes so awful they have no choice but to bail on it.

And remember, our focus here was on discussing the most profitable affiliate programs – not the best hosting companies.

But we think we struck a pretty good balance with the affiliate programs listed above.

And balance is everything, isn’t it?

Like having the balance in your life and your income that you feel just isn’t there right now.

Which sucks.

So if you feel like you’re in a financial or career rut, why not take a few minutes of your day and check out our free training on affiliate marketing?

There are lots to learn and nothing to buy.

Promise.

All we need to know is where to send your invite.