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Winnersofts, an iGaming team, ran its affiliate program on a standard tool and hit a ceiling plenty of teams will recognise: growing further meant hiring people to cover the ops. The team did the maths and decided it was easier to change the tool. They moved the program to Alanbase, an affiliate program builder that keeps partners, offers, analytics and payouts in one place.
We asked the team what things looked like before the move, what worried them ahead of the migration, and what changed in the very first reporting period.
Hours a day on work a system should be doing
Before the move, everything looked fine on paper. Partners connected, stats coming in, payouts going out. The question was whose hands were doing it.
“Over time, too many processes had to be handled manually: analytics, reports, payouts. All of it ate into time we wanted to spend on growth. Every day we lost several hours to operational tasks alone, and several people were tied up in them. Even though this is work a system should have been doing long ago, not the people we hired to grow the affiliate program.”
And this wasn’t an end-of-month scramble, it was the daily norm. Exports, summaries, checking accruals, replying to a partner whose numbers don’t match yours.
From there the story went the usual way: a second brand, new GEOs, hybrid deals, custom terms for individual affiliates. Every addition brought more manual work with it.
“At some point we realised that scaling was limited by our operations, not by traffic. If growth means constantly adding headcount, it’s time to change the tool. We tried solving it ourselves: automated separate processes, built on top of our internal tools. It helped in spots, but it didn’t fix the problem as a whole. We had no direct losses, but we did have delays, and in the affiliate industry speed matters enormously. Those moments are always felt.”
We asked about losses directly, and the answer was honest: no direct ones. Except delays in this business are never free. A partner waiting on numbers or a payout is usually sizing up someone else’s program at the same time.
What tipped the decision
“We liked that the platform was built from the start with iGaming in mind. You could see that a lot of the work had already been thought through and didn’t need extra development. RevShare and NGR are calculated by the platform itself, not by the one person who remembers how the master spreadsheet is wired. Hybrid deals sit comfortably alongside CPA in the same project. There are IP whitelists for postbacks and access controls so a manager only sees their own brand. For casino and betting that’s table stakes rather than advanced functionality, and you usually pay for it in months of development.”
That’s essentially where the comparison ended. A generic platform would have had to be built out for iGaming, and that kind of work is billed in months.
The migration
Migration is the most interesting thing to ask about in these conversations. In our experience, fear of moving keeps teams on awkward platforms far longer than any competitor’s discount.
“Our biggest worry was the migration itself and keeping the data intact. That’s the main fear: partners, history, payouts, integrations, all of it already works, and the cost of an error during the switch looks higher than another month on the old tool. The Alanbase team walked us through the process in detail and stayed with us at every stage. The move went quickly, step by step, without putting the team under stress. In practice it turned out calmer than it looked in theory.”
Setup and data transfer from the previous platform are free at Alanbase, part of the standard launch. And here’s the part that matters most to anyone worried about downtime:
“The switch went practically unnoticed by our affiliates and our running campaigns. We didn’t stop traffic or pause campaigns for the migration. For the most part, partners simply carried on working.”
One caveat, so we don’t promise more than we can: that’s how a standard migration goes, and a typical launch fits within a day. Complex moves are scoped separately.
The first reporting period
The real test came at the end of the period.
“Honestly, we didn’t think much of the analytics and reporting at first. Now it’s the main working tool: one dashboard, automated reports. A day of working with traffic always starts with the analytics dashboard and the results on it. And only once we were on the platform did we see how many routine manual steps simply aren’t needed anymore.”
While reconciliation happens every day, it counts as work. That it was a cost only becomes visible later.
Transparent approvals retain affiliates better than a higher rate
Shaving, arbitrary approvals with no explanation: this is what makes affiliates leave without a word. We asked how it stands now.
“We have more control: we understand what’s happening with the traffic and react quickly, instead of unpicking a source a month later during reconciliation. The process became far more transparent both for us and for our partners, and that had a positive effect on scaling. An affiliate who can see their own numbers and understands where a payout came from scales volume more confidently and is far less likely to suspect you of shaving.”
Payouts follow the same logic.
“Payouts became faster and more predictable. Partners always notice changes like that, and they notice predictability even before speed. When an affiliate knows exactly when the money arrives and what it’s made up of, they have fewer reasons to look for a backup program.”
Fraud is cheaper to block at the door
Winnersofts use IP whitelists for postbacks exactly as intended:
“It’s one of the tools that helps cut off suspicious activity in advance, so we don’t spend time dealing with the fallout.”
No platform will promise that fraud disappears for good, and we won’t either. The difference is elsewhere: a suspicious source blocked at the door costs less than the same source found a month later in a report.
Beyond that, the team singles out access separation between brands: “A very convenient feature, especially when you work with several contractors at once.” A manager sees their own product and doesn’t look into the one next door. Winnersofts are still testing the built-in TDS: “We test everything that can improve performance. We judge a solution by its results.” We won’t rush them. We’ll only add that clients who moved routing inside the platform, instead of running Keitaro plus a cloaker, report conversion gains of 30–64%.
Who needs this move, and who doesn’t yet
“Alanbase suits teams that have outgrown manual management and want to scale an affiliate program without constantly increasing the operational load. Going forward, we’re continuing to automate processes, develop analytics and scale our campaigns.”
Plans start at $350 a month, current terms at alanbase.com. It’s worth comparing that figure against everything the platform replaces: a tracker, a cloaker, separate billing, an external TDS and the hours your team spends on reconciliation.
You don’t need to walk through every section on a demo. Take the one process eating the most manual hours right now: closing the period, RevShare across several GEOs, separating manager access between brands, or migrating history from an old platform.
Winnersofts summed up the move in a single line, and we have nothing to add to it:
“When you stop fighting the system, you find the time to grow the business.”
Book a demo call: we’ll gather your requirements, set up a dashboard preset for your vertical, and open full access for 14 days with no card required. Setup and migration are free, so you can test the platform on your own case before the first payment.
Winnersofts are open to new partners: terms of cooperation and more about the team are on their website.
