Affiliate Partner Program

A founder-curated channel for tools we’d use anyway.

StackSwap runs a tight affiliate program as its own revenue stream. We hand-pick partners, write our own reviews, and route decision-stage traffic from the Knowledge Base, blog, and recommendation pages. Below: how the money flows, who’s in, and how to apply.

How we keep affiliate revenue out of swap decisions

Three rules we hold ourselves to. The whole site falls apart if we don't.

Rule 1
StackScan output is independent.

Our scoring engine doesn't know which vendors we partner with. Affiliate status carries zero weight in swap recommendations, scores, or rankings inside StackScan. The methodology is the same for partner tools and non-partner tools.

Rule 2
We only earn from blog & KB pages.

Affiliate revenue comes from explicit recommendation pages — blog posts, Knowledge Base entries, /recommends/* deep dives — where the affiliate disclosure sits above the fold. Never from StackScan results, /benchmarks, or any pricing/scoring surface.

Rule 3
We use what we recommend.

We only join an affiliate program for a tool we use ourselves or have rigorously validated through our methodology. If we wouldn't recommend it to a peer founder for free, we don't take a commission for it.

Who’s already in

Every tool we earn a commission on, in one place. Click through for the full review with FTC disclosure and the affiliate link.

Outbound / cold email
Instantly

Multi-mailbox cold email infrastructure with built-in warmup. Lead-volume pricing, not per-seat — what we use to run our own outbound.

Read the review →
Sales intelligence + outbound
Apollo

275M+ contacts bundled with sequencing in one contract. Free tier is real, not a trial — verify data quality on your actual ICP before paying.

Read the review →
Workflow automation
n8n

Open-source workflow automation. Self-host for free or use n8n cloud. Replaces Zapier and Make at a fraction of the cost at scale.

Read the review →
Sales intelligence + outbound
Apollo

275M+ contacts bundled with sequencing in one contract. Real free tier — verify data quality on your ICP before paying. ~$28K/yr at 25 reps vs $130K+/yr for the ZoomInfo + Outreach equivalent.

Read the review →

What partners get

We're not a coupon site. The traffic you get from a StackSwap partnership is decision-stage operators evaluating their stack — not impulse clicks.

A long-form review page

Not a banner. Each partner gets a /recommends/* deep dive: pricing math vs competitors, where the tool wins, where it doesn't, and FAQ — all written by us, with the affiliate link above the fold.

Knowledge Base distribution

We cross-link partner reviews from the relevant KB entries, category pages, and head-to-head comparisons that already rank. Your review inherits that surface area.

Decision-stage intent

Our readers arrive on queries like 'are you wasting money on Outreach' and 'best Zapier alternative.' They're mid-evaluation — comparing tools right before a buying call — not impulse-browsing.

Founder voice, not press release

We write reviews the way an operator would talk to a peer. We name what your product isn't built for. That candor is what makes the recommendation convert — soft sells don't.

Apply to partner with StackSwap

We hear ~10 pitches a week and accept very few. The bar: we'd use it ourselves, our readers actually need it, and the pricing model isn't structurally broken. Tell us what you're building — we read every submission and reply within two business days if it's a fit.

We only use this to improve the product.
No follow-ups unless you ask.

Editorial standards: /methodology · Disclosure rules: /ethos