ProductReview vs Pretty Links: Which One Do You Actually Need?

ProductReview and Pretty Links get compared a lot, but they are built for different jobs, and that is the most useful thing to know before you choose. Pretty Links is a link manager: it cloaks, organizes, and tracks affiliate URLs. ProductReview is a display plugin: it builds the product boxes, comparison tables, and star ratings that turn a reader into a click, then reports what each one earns. Many publishers end up running both. This comparison shows which job you actually need first, and where the two overlap.

The short answer: if your problem is messy, uncloaked affiliate links, start with Pretty Links. If your problem is that your links do not look like product displays and you cannot tell which ones make money, start with ProductReview. Both have paths to cover a little of the other’s job, but neither replaces the other outright.

The Core Difference

Everything else follows from this. Pretty Links belongs to the link-management category. Its reason to exist is turning long, ugly affiliate URLs into branded, trackable links, keeping them organized, and inserting them across your content automatically. It does that job well, and its free version is on a huge number of sites for exactly that reason.

ProductReview belongs to the product-display category. Its reason to exist is building the visual blocks that sell: product boxes with images and buy buttons, comparison tables, pros and cons blocks, star ratings with schema, and top-pick boxes, all kept current with live Amazon prices and stock. A link manager never builds those. A display plugin never becomes your central link database. That is why the honest framing is not which one wins, but which job is your bottleneck today.

ProductReview and Pretty Links at a Glance

Who Pretty Links Is Best For

Pretty Links fits the publisher whose links are the mess. If you promote across several affiliate networks, share links in emails and social bios as well as posts, and want every one of them branded and swappable from one place, a link manager is the right tool and Pretty Links is one of the two best. Its automatic keyword linking, which turns chosen phrases into affiliate links across your whole site, is the feature people upgrade for, and it saves real hours on a large content library.

The free version alone covers cloaking, redirects, and basic tracking, which is why so many sites run it without ever paying. If cloaking and organizing is your bottleneck, start there.

Who ProductReview Is Best For

ProductReview fits the publisher whose displays are the bottleneck. If your reviews are carrying bare text links or plain images and you want them to look like polished product boxes and comparison tables, that is a display job, and a link manager cannot do it. ProductReview builds those blocks, keeps their Amazon prices and stock current on their own, and tells you which box or table actually earns, so you can write more of what works.

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It also fits new Amazon associates, because it builds working boxes with no API keys through a no-key image path, and anyone who dislikes the renewal-price model, since its pricing does not jump after the first year.

Where the Two Overlap

Three areas blur the line, and it is worth being precise about each.

Link tracking and health. Pretty Links tracks clicks per link, which is its native strength. ProductReview tracks clicks and revenue per display and runs a daily link-health scan that flags broken and untagged links. If you want click data on every cloaked URL, Pretty Links owns that. If you want to know which display earns and catch dead product links, ProductReview does. Its free Link and Tag Checker also audits any page for missing affiliate tags without a plugin at all.

Product displays. Pretty Links added product displays on its $499 Super Affiliate tier, so there is technical overlap. But displays are a secondary feature there, without the live Amazon data, geotargeting, and earnings tracking ProductReview centers on. If displays are why you are considering the top Pretty Links tier, price out ProductReview first, since it does that job at a lower entry cost.

Pricing model. This is a real difference, not just a number. Pretty Links uses introductory pricing that renews higher, reaching $249 to $499 a year. ProductReview charges the same at renewal as at signup. Over a few years that gap compounds, so factor the renewal, not the intro, into any comparison. Our Pretty Links pricing breakdown lays out the renewal math.

Can You Run Both

Yes, and for many Amazon publishers that is the right answer. A link manager and a display plugin cover different halves of the workflow: one keeps your URLs branded, organized, and swappable, the other turns them into displays that convert and report earnings. Running Pretty Links for link hygiene and ProductReview for displays is a clean, common stack with no real conflict. The only reason not to is budget, and if budget is tight, decide which bottleneck is costing you more right now and solve that one first.

How to Choose

Answer these with your own site in mind.

• What is actually slowing you down? Messy, uncloaked links across networks point to Pretty Links. Plain-looking reviews with no earnings data point to ProductReview.
• Do you need to know what each placement earns? If yes, ProductReview is the one that reports revenue per display; Pretty Links reports clicks only.
• Is most of your income from Amazon? Amazon-heavy sites get more from ProductReview’s live data and geotargeting. Multi-network link sprawl gets more from Pretty Links.
• Does the renewal price bother you? ProductReview holds its price; Pretty Links jumps after year one.
• Could you use both? If the budget allows, the stack beats either alone for a serious Amazon review site.

How We Compared

Full disclosure: we build ProductReview, so read our verdicts as a vendor’s argument and check them. This comparison is deliberately framed around jobs rather than a forced head-to-head, because the two tools sit in different categories and pretending otherwise would mislead you. Pretty Links pricing, tiers, and refund terms come from prettylinks.com read the day this was written, using renewal figures rather than introductory ones for any long-term math. ProductReview facts come from our own product and price list. Where the tools genuinely overlap, on link tracking, displays, and pricing model, we said which one leads and why, including the click-tracking depth where Pretty Links leads.

Final Verdict

This is not a case where one tool beats the other, because they are not the same tool. Pretty Links is an excellent link manager, especially in its free version, and the right first buy if cloaking and organizing links is your problem. ProductReview is a display plugin that builds the boxes and tables that convert and shows you what they earn, and the right first buy if your displays and your earnings visibility are the problem, at $44 a year with no renewal jump.

If you can only choose one, choose by bottleneck. If you can run both, you get link hygiene and high-converting displays at once, which is what most successful Amazon review sites end up doing.

Frequently Asked Questions