CloakPilot – Affiliate Control Platform: Link Manager, Link Cloaking & Click Tracking

CloakPilot is the Affiliate Control Platform for WordPress. It keeps every affiliate link you earn from in one place, inside your own site.

Each link gets a short, readable address on your own domain, such as example.com/go/your-tool. When a program changes its URL, you edit it once in CloakPilot and every post, page and menu that uses the link follows. Every click is counted on your own server and stays in your WordPress database.

It is built for content sites, review blogs and agencies that earn from other companies’ affiliate programs.

Why publishers use CloakPilot

• Fix a link once. A changed or expired affiliate URL is one edit, not a hunt through hundreds of posts.
• See what gets clicked. Reports show which links, vendors and posts get clicks, from which countries and on which devices.
• Your data stays on your site. Links and clicks live in your own WordPress database. No outside dashboard, and no IP address is stored with a click.
• Switch without breaking posts. Import from ThirstyAffiliates, Pretty Links, Lasso or a CSV file with a preview first. The old addresses keep working.

Everything in the free version

• Short /go/ links. A clean address under a prefix you choose (default go), with a 301, 302 or 307 redirect and rel="sponsored nofollow" per link. Redirects are answered from a cached map.
• Click tracking. Each click is recorded with the source post, the visitor’s country (from your host’s or CDN’s country header) and the device type. Known bots are not recorded, and no third-party tracking service is involved.
• Auto-linking. Give a link one or more keywords and CloakPilot turns the first mention in a post into the tracked link. It skips headings, existing links, images, quotes and code, and respects a per-post limit.
• Vendors and categories. Links are grouped by the company that pays you and by your own categories, with notes and the vendor’s dashboard address one click away.
• Where each link appears. CloakPilot scans your published content and shows, for every link, the pages that contain it.
• Reports. Clicks by day, by link, by source post, by vendor, by country and by device, for any date range, plus a dashboard widget.
• Import and export. Bring links in from ThirstyAffiliates, Pretty Links, Lasso or a CSV file, with a preview before anything is written. Export all links to a CSV file, edit them in a spreadsheet and import them back.
• GA4 events (optional). Send a server-side affiliate_click event to your own Google Analytics 4 property when you enter its Measurement ID and API secret.
• REST API. Links, categories, vendors, click statistics and settings under cloakpilot/v1, authenticated with standard WordPress Application Passwords.
• Light and dark interface. One button in the top bar switches the CloakPilot screens between light and dark.
• Translation-ready, right-to-left included. The interface works in Hebrew and Arabic as well as left-to-right languages, and its own language setting can differ from the site’s. Translations come from translate.wordpress.org.

All of this is free, with no account, no card and no time limit.

Moving from another link plugin

The Import screen finds the links of ThirstyAffiliates, Pretty Links and Lasso on your site and brings in their links, addresses and categories. Click history stays in the old plugin. Step-by-step guides: https://cloakpilot.net/migrate-from-pretty-links, https://cloakpilot.net/migrate-from-thirstyaffiliates and https://cloakpilot.net/migrate-from-lasso

Full version

The full version of CloakPilot is a separate download from https://cloakpilot.net/download, and downloading it is free. Register it for free with your email address to get one AI agent, three products, one campaign and 14 days of everything, no card.

Paid plans add:

• Products: one address that sends each reader to the right vendor by country, or splits traffic between vendors.
• Link health: every link is checked every week.
• Revenue: earnings typed in or pulled from Impact, Post Affiliate Pro and PartnerStack, with earnings per click and conversions.
• Money on the table: the posts that mention a product you have a link for but do not link it.
• Campaigns (beta) and blocks: deal cards you design once and place in posts, and four editor blocks.
• AI agents: as many as you need, each with its own key, only the permissions you choose and an activity log.

Every paid plan starts with a 14-day trial, no card. Plans and prices: https://cloakpilot.net/pricing

None of that code is included in this plugin. To switch, upload the full version under Plugins > Add New Plugin > Upload Plugin and choose “Replace current with uploaded”; Settings > License in this plugin shows each step. Your links, clicks and settings stay as they are.

External services

CloakPilot works without any external service. It can connect to the following services, each only in the situation described.

Freemius (licensing and the optional usage opt-in). CloakPilot uses the Freemius SDK to offer the optional opt-in, the free trial and paid plans. On first activation Freemius shows its own screen asking whether you agree to share basic information. Only if you click “Allow & Continue”, the details listed on that screen are sent to Freemius (api.freemius.com): your name and email address, the site address and title, the WordPress, PHP and plugin versions, the site language and, where the screen lists it, the names and versions of your plugins and themes. Freemius uses them to manage your account, send license and security notices and, if you start a trial or buy a plan, deliver the paid version. You can opt out later from the Plugins screen. If you skip, nothing is sent and every feature of this plugin keeps working. Terms: https://freemius.com/terms/ – Privacy policy: https://freemius.com/privacy/

cloakpilot.net (only when you send feedback). The “Send feedback” button on CloakPilot screens opens a form. Nothing is sent until you click Send. Then your server sends the type of feedback, your message and the reply email if you enter one to https://cloakpilot.net/api/feedback, so we can read and answer it. Your site address, the CloakPilot, WordPress and PHP versions, the current CloakPilot screen and the interface and site languages are added only if you tick “Also send these technical details” in the form; the box is off by default and the form lists exactly what it adds. No link, click or license data is ever sent. Terms: https://cloakpilot.net/legal-terms – Privacy policy: https://cloakpilot.net/legal-privacy

Google Analytics 4 (only if you turn it on). If you enter a GA4 Measurement ID and API secret under Settings > GA4, each click on a short link (bots excluded) sends an affiliate_click event from your server to Google’s Measurement Protocol at https://www.google-analytics.com/mp/collect. The event carries the link’s slug and ID, a click identifier, the visitor’s country code (from your host’s country header), the referring page and a client identifier that is a one-way checksum of the visitor’s IP address and browser string; the IP address itself is not sent. The “Test connection” button sends one test event to Google’s validation endpoint. Terms: https://marketingplatform.google.com/about/analytics/terms/us/ – Privacy policy: https://policies.google.com/privacy

Nothing else leaves your site: CloakPilot makes no request of its own when it is activated or when you open its screens. The font used for the product name in the admin header (Bricolage Grotesque, SIL Open Font License 1.1) is bundled with the plugin and loaded from your own site.