CloakPilot

CloakPilot is an affiliate control platform that runs inside WordPress. Every affiliate link on your site gets a short, readable address such as example.com/go/your-tool. When a destination changes, you edit it once in CloakPilot and every post that uses the link follows. Clicks are counted on your own server, so the numbers stay in your WordPress database.

It is built for content sites, review blogs and agencies that earn from other companies’ affiliate programmes and want their links organised, measurable and easy to automate.

What CloakPilot does

• Short /go/ links. Every affiliate destination gets a clean address under a prefix you choose (default go). Redirects are answered from a cached map, with 301, 302 or 307 and rel="sponsored nofollow" per link.
• Click tracking. Clicks are recorded with bot filtering, the source post, the visitor’s country (from your host’s or CDN’s country header) and device type. 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. Group links 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. Bring your links in from ThirstyAffiliates or from a CSV file, with a dry run before anything is written. A CSV template is included.
• 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 are available under cloakpilot/v1, authenticated with standard WordPress Application Passwords.

• Translation-ready, right-to-left included. The interface is built for Hebrew and Arabic as well as left-to-right languages, and its own language setting can differ from the site’s. Translations are delivered through translate.wordpress.org.

Everything listed above is part of this free version, with no account and no time limit.

Full version

The full version of CloakPilot is a separate download from https://cloakpilot.net/download, and downloading it is free. Registering it for free (with an email address or an activation code) gives you one AI agent, which works with your links through a built-in MCP server with its own key, permissions and activity log. A 14-day free trial or a paid plan adds unlimited AI agents, products that route one address to different vendors by country or as a split test, a deals module with an editor block, scheduled link health checks, revenue tracking with earnings per click, network connections, a “money on the table” report and four editor blocks. None of that code is included in this plugin; starting a trial or buying a plan downloads the full version from the licensing service, Freemius.

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.