Using my revenue operations experience, I’ve put together a list of the best sales commission software. These tools will be useful for any organization that pays out commission — either in-house or for freelancers.
Best Sales Commission Software Shortlist
Below, you’ll find a list of the sales commission tools that are my top choices, along with a summary of each tool’s main features and what they do best:
- Everstage - Best for aligning sales team behavior with revenue goals
- ElevateHQ - Best for automated and transparent payout tracking
- Qobra - Best for assessing and improving your sales compensation plan offerings
- Spiff - Best for scaling to any complexity and volume
- Palette - Best for small teams who need automatic, rules-based payouts
- Xoxoday Compass - Best for making selling fun while ensuring teams stay focused on goals
- SmartWinnr - Best for mobile-first salespeople
- Visdum - Best compensation management software built specifically for SaaS businesses
- Varicent - Best sales commission software for resolving mid-market commission problems
- QuotaPath - Best free compensation management for individuals or small teams
- Performio - Best enterprise-grade compensation management software that’s easy to use
- Commissionly - Best sales commission software for quick and easy setup
As companies are transformed into digital and data-driven entities, payroll, finance, and human resource management platforms become essential tools to manage and track employee pay and resources. In industries where commission-based compensation is the rule, this type of management can be a little more complex.
To help you track payouts, motivate employees, and efficiently manage all your commission information, you need powerful sales commission software with useful features that address your specific needs. Find answers in my guide of the best options, which I curated using specific selection criteria. You’ll also discover answers to common questions below that may guide your search.
What Is Sales Commission Software?
Sales commission software provides you with a series of tools to help organize and manage every aspect of sales commission calculations and payments. Most often, this software can enable you to calculate commission based on varying criteria, like KPIs and sales targets, as well as track sales performance and automate commission payouts.
Overviews of the 12 Best Sales Commission Software
Read on to learn more about the best sales commission software, including a summary of their key features, what caught my eye about the tool, information about pricing and trials, and a screenshot that shows a little bit of the inner workings of the software.
1. Everstage - Best for aligning sales team behavior with revenue goals
This cloud-based commission automation platform is designed to help you manage compensation calculations, as well as track payouts, quotas, and commission plans in one unified portal. As a no-code platform, Everstage enables your team to create custom commission plans with defined incentive criteria that align with your mission. Run simulations of plans and commissions before pushing them live to analyze payment structures and forecast results.
Why I picked Everstage: Everstage provides reps with more control over and visibility of the deal structure for each sale they’re making. When your team understands how modifying discounts or contract lengths affects their payouts, your company goals are helping them dictate the best outcomes for their future and yours.
Everstage Standout Features and Integrations
Standout features from Everstage are comprehensive and versatile, making it an efficient management, tracking, and payout tool. You can approach commissions through team and quota management for better process automation or design a customizable incentive plan to ensure better sales rep motivation. Other tools that can enhance your operations include dispute resolution, future payout forecasting, and collaboration tools.
Integrations include Amazon Redshift, Chargebee, Freshsales, HubSpot CRM, Microsoft Excel, MySQL, Pipedrive, PostgreSQL, Slack, and QuickBooks Online. These are 10 of over 30 native integrations Everstage currently offers.
Pricing One-Liner: Pricing available upon request
Free Trial One-Liner: Free trial + free demo available
Pros
- Flexible, modern user navigation
- Quick implementation and onboarding
- Forecasting and earning potential tools
Cons
- Slow ticket resolution times
- Not as many gamification features
2. ElevateHQ - Best for automated and transparent payout tracking
ElevateHQ is a sales commission software that provides budget control tools that streamline compensation and maximize representative satisfaction. Their goal is to boost engagement and sales activities through transparency, accurate payouts, and end-to-end process visibility. With ElevateHQ, managers can automate any commission plan and agents can track progress on a personalized dashboard.
Why I picked ElevateHQ: One of the reasons that I chose ElevateHQ is the way they automate compensation management. You can configure the team hierarchy at any time during the commission period, reconcile invoices and inward payments with the tracking tool, and split deals or change commission payouts while leaving an audit trail that logs every change.
ElevateHQ Standout Features and Integrations
Standout features that help ElevateHQ stand out include their easy-to-use commission plan designer, which can accommodate custom fields in your CRM, as well as complex workflows, and auto recommendations and simulations that help managers test incentive plans to ensure data-based decision-making.
Integrations include hundreds of native integrations for CRM, data warehouse, database, communication, and invoice needs. Some of the top integrations include ActiveCampaign, Chargebee, HubSpot, Microsoft Teams, NetSuite, Outreach, Pipedrive, Salesforce, SalesLoft, and Slack.
Pricing One-Liner: From $25/user/month
Free Trial One-Liner: Free demo available
Pros
- Efficient and accurate commission tracking
- Notifications for commission or plan changes
- Simple and easy to use
Cons
- No gamification features
- Software can lag with large file loads
3. Qobra - Best for assessing and improving your sales compensation plan offerings
Qobra believes that a sales compensation plan is the most powerful tool the head of any sales department has in their arsenal, and they plan on helping every organization drive their sales strategy with better compensation and commission management through synced data sources, accurate and automated calculation, and quick validation of commissions.
Why I picked Qobra: What caught my eye about Qobra was their claim that they could help sales managers assess and improve the effectiveness of their compensation plan. Their ROI assessment tool takes a look at your go-to-market strategy, compares it to market best practices, and makes recommendations to better align incentive compensation plans for optimized sales behavior.
Qobra Standout Features and Integrations
Standout features include a commission calculator and compensation statements for more visibility for sales reps, flexible design modeling to change compensation plans as needed, and communication tools that provide an open line between reps and managers for more comprehensive sales performance management.
Integrations include native and seamless integrations with existing tools so you can skip out on the spreadsheets for import-export .csv files. Some integrations include HubSpot, Salesforce, and PostgreSQL.
Pricing One-Liner: From $31/user/year
Free Trial One-Liner: Free trial + free demo available
Pros
- Rated as very easy to use
- Great customer service
- Top value for money
Cons
- Validation of commission process is a little slow
- Not quick to set up, but you get a lot of guidance
4. Spiff - Best for scaling to any complexity and volume
This commission management solution is designed to facilitate automated reconciliations for businesses of all sizes through core features that include personalized performance dashboards, real-time commission portal, event tracking, and automated recommendations. They also pay special attention to scalability, accommodating as many commissioned employees as you have with data ready in real-time and auto updated sales plan structures.
Why I picked Spiff: One of the reasons this sales commission software stands out to me is because they use machine learning to streamline the sales process by matching records in the database to provide detailed insights into commission, cost, and revenue using real-time data. The search module helps you find deals using filters and sorting rules with accessibility via Android and iOS devices.
Spiff Standout Features and Integrations
Standout features include scalability tools that offer enhanced plan recommendations that leverage current data for real-time visibility, as well as ASC606 & IFRS15 expense reporting that allows you to fold the compensation process into reports with other expenses.
Integrations include an open data API that connects with third-party systems to allow your ERP, payroll, and payment processing tools to share data. Common integrations include Domo, Excel, HubSpot, Looker, Oracle Netsuite, Salesforce, Snowflake, and SQL.
Pricing One-Liner: Custom pricing available
Free Trial One-Liner: Free demo available
Pros
- Accessible on desktop, iOS, and Android
- Knowledgeable customer support
- Reps can personalize their profiles
Cons
- A bit of a learning curve
- Logging in requires extra clicks
5. Palette - Best for small teams who need automatic, rules-based payouts
As an automated sales commission platform, Palette provides a simple, straightforward tool to prevent errors, save time through automation, provide more transparency with real-time tracking, and build and manage commission plans of varying complexity that work best for small businesses.
Why I picked Palette: One of the reasons I chose Palette for this list of commission payment platforms was due to its comprehensive rules-based auto-payouts. You can pay agents based on product usage thresholds, customer payments, or on a regular schedule.
Palette Standout Features and Integrations
Standout features include automated commission planning and payouts based on your rules and guidelines, sales motivation tools that focus on traceability and transparency, and customizable control over plan designs with templates, overwriting, commenting, and comparisons.
Integrations include over 20 native data integration connectors for ERPs, CRM, Billing, and Databases. Popular integrations include Chargebee, Excel, HubSpot, Netsuite, Pennylane, Pipedrive, QuickBooks, SaasOptics, Salesforce, and Xero.
Pricing One-Liner: From $30/seat/month with a minimum of 15 seats
Free Trial One-Liner: Free demo available
Pros
- Highly customizable
- Great customer support
- Quick implementation
Cons
- A bit of a learning curve
- No free trial
6. Xoxoday Compass - Best for making selling fun while ensuring teams stay focused on goals
As a comprehensive sales management and commissions payment platform, Xoxoday Compass strives to help revenue operations teams design, publish, streamline, and automate all types of complex commission structures using a robust calculation engine for payouts, analytics, communication, and gamification.
Why I picked Xoxoday Compass: It’s no secret that people love the endorphin rush of beating a game or winning against friends. I chose Xoxoday Compass because this platform leverages game templates, leaderboards, and scorecards to create healthy competition and drive performance for your incentive program.
Xoxoday Compass Standout Features and Integrations
Standout features include commission design planner with no coding required, automation for sales calculations and disbursements, on-demand insights with micro and macro visualizations, and gamification tools that ensures reps are focused on business goals.
Integrations include Azure Data Lake, Dynamics 365, Freshsales, Google Sheets, HubSpot, Leadsquared, Salesforce, Slack, Zoho Books, and Zoho CRM.
Pricing One-Liner: Customized pricing available
Free Trial One-Liner: Free demo available
Pros
- Support is available 24/7
- Intuitive user experience
- Plans are completely customizable
Cons
- Onboarding for complex organizations may take several weeks
- No free trial
7. SmartWinnr - Best for mobile-first salespeople
This web-based sales management platform helps organizations keep teams up to date about product knowledge, guarantee uniform messaging during every customer interaction, and improves team performance by keeping reps focused and engaged. SmartWinnr also uses AI-driven quizzes and reinforcement to enhance knowledge and provide continuous coaching.
Why I picked SmartWinnr: I chose this sales commission software because their focus is on your most important resource — your sales reps. This platform strives to keep them happy with a mobile-first approach that increases accessibility and engagement. Team members get training and gamification to improve performance and drive engagement.
SmartWinnr Standout Features and Integrations
Standout features include training and quiz modules to ensure your team is informed about new regulations and changes to customer relationship management, contests and leaderboards that enhance participation, and targeted learning for onboarding new hires.
Integrations include HubSpot CRM, Microsoft Dynamics 365, and Salesforce. Smartwinnr also has an API for custom integrations.
Pricing One-Liner: Customized pricing available upon request
Free Trial One-Liner: Free demo available
Pros
- Mobile-focused approach
- Multi-language availability
- Responsive and fast support
Cons
- Not a commission payout system
- No free trial
8. Visdum - Best compensation management software built specifically for SaaS businesses
Because they’re specifically designed for SaaS businesses, Visdum focuses on providing solutions for RevOps, Sales, and Finance teams to make designing and automating compensation plans quick and easy. You can build plans that cater to your unique workflow and organization needs, including Kickers, Bonuses, and SPIFFs.
Why I picked Visdum: I chose this platform for their detailed “What If'' Pipeline Estimator. You can use their powerful calculation engine to run commission estimates across any plan, rep, or pay period in real time, using this data to resolve queries and disputes as they occur.
Visdum Standout Features and Integrations
Standout features include crafting a compensation plan that best aligns with your business needs with built-in e-sign features, making adjustments and overrides at any point during the pay period, and ensuring compliance with ASC 606 and IFR15 builds.
Integrations include DocuSign, Google Big Query, GSO, HubSpot, Microsoft Teams, Netsuite, QuickBooks, Salesforce, and Slack. Visdum integrates with nearly any other digital tool and allows you to schedule syncs in real time or on a custom schedule.
Pricing One-Liner: Pricing available upon request
Free Trial One-Liner: Free demo available
Pros
- Easy to use
- Quick setup and implementation
- High-quality support
Cons
- Limited gamification
- Bland UI
9. Varicent - Best sales commission software for resolving mid-market commission problems
This sales performance and commission scheduling management solution is designed to help mid-market organizations create territory plans, pay sellers, and identify missed pipeline opportunities during the sales process. Varicent’s incentive compensation management solution is about more than just automating commissions — they also strive to renew focus, remove roadblocks, and motivate sellers.
Why I picked Varicent: The main reason I picked this tool is because of its comprehensive, rep-facing dashboard and tools. With Varicent, you can provide agents with on-demand, real-time data revolving around performance metrics and quota attainment, AI-predicted sales forecasts, interactive compensation statements, and error submission and tracking.
Varicent Standout Features and Integrations
Standout features include incentive plan building with pre-built components that provide custom plans without time-consuming coding or design, workflows that replace emails and other communications with document routing and acknowledgment, and direct access to visualized performance insights for better coaching, compensation changes, and future planning.
Integrations include AgentSync, Amazon Aurora, Excel, Google Ads, Google Analytics, HubSpot, MySQL, Oracle, Rest API, and Salesforce. Varicent offers a growing library of pre-built integrations and publicly available APIs.
Pricing One-Liner: From $0.10/month
Free Trial One-Liner: Free demo available
Pros
- Intuitive, multi-faceted system
- Territory management functionality
- Highly configurable
Cons
- Steep learning curve
- No free trial
10. QuotaPath - Best free compensation management for individuals or small teams
QuotaPath offers a compensation management platform for automated calculation, tracking, and payment of sales commissions — no matter how complex the plan. Design performance-driven plans that are completely compliant for everything you need in one place.
Why I picked QuotaPath: The reason I picked this platform is because of their free offerings. In addition to promising not to charge additional fees or stipulate minimum user requirements, QuotaPath also has a completely free plan that includes basic builds, personal earning tracking, forecast earning, personal goals, and integrations.
QuotaPath Standout Features and Integrations
Standout features include sales compensation for building, distributing, and managing commission plans, commission tracking for automated and transparent rep motivation, and sales commission payments for reconciliation and scheduling.
Integrations include native integrations with Close, Copper, HubSpot, Maxio, Salesforce, Stripe, SugarCRM, and Zoho CRM. You can also build custom integrations with the open API functionality.
Pricing One-Liner: From $30/month (billed annually)
Free Trial One-Liner: 30-day free trial + free plan available
Pros
- Comprehensive free trial
- Free forever plan
- Dedicated account manager
Cons
- Feels like a finance tool
- Limited user-friendly visuals
11. Performio - Best enterprise-grade compensation management software that’s easy to use
This comprehensive commission and incentive management solution offers you more than just in-depth insights that drive strong sales performance. Performio is also designed to automate your commission process and help you make informed decisions based on real-time analytics.
Why I picked Performio: I chose Performio because it’s designed for enterprise organizations with fast implementation, white-glove service, and highly configurable dashboards, plan building, and workflows.
Performio Standout Features and Integrations
Standout features include data import from any source, in any format for seamless uploads, data management with pre-built transformations that eliminate the need for pre-processing, and enterprise-grade functionality to manage up to 30,000 commission-based agents.
Integrations include DocuSign, NetSuite, REST API, Salesforce, SFTP, and Source Data.
Pricing One-Liner: Custom pricing with a 30-user minimum
Free Trial One-Liner: Free demo available
Pros
- Easy and intuitive to use
- Fast to implement
- White-glove services
Cons
- Enterprise focused
- Limited flexibility in user reports
12. Commissionly - Best sales commission software for quick and easy setup
Commissionly is a sales commission and compensation solution with a cloud-based platform catering toward ISOs, FMOs, merchant service companies, and financial services. This platform can calculate commission on both initial contracts and residual payments, as well as manage clawbacks and adjustments, multi-stage commissions, and varied commissions.
Why I picked Commissionly: Commissionly caught my eye because they purport to provide setup and full functionality for most organizations in just five minutes. You get a purpose-built solution with full commission functionality in the most efficient way possible.
Commissionly Standout Features and Integrations
Standout features include a simple wizard for complex commission creation for flat or tiered, revenue, profit, and product based models; multiple commission payment methods from monthly to paid when paid; and delayed commission payment tracking to keep you on track.
Integrations include Agile, Bexio, Close, Excel, Google Sheets, Magento, PayPal, Recurly, Stripe, and WooCommerce. More integrations are available through Zapier.
Pricing One-Liner: From $499/month for up to 15 users
Free Trial One-Liner: 30-day free trial available
Pros
- Robust reporting functionality
- Easy to learn and use
- Unlimited number of currency types
Cons
- No gamification
- Higher priced platform
Other Options
While the list above is already pretty comprehensive, there are always a few runner-up selections that didn’t quite make the cut. A few of these alternative options that may be worth checking out include:
- Iconixx Sales - Best for automating commission, bonus, and merit programs to lower administrative costs
- SAP Commissions - Best cloud-based compensation and incentive management platform for shaping selling behavior
- QCommission - Best commission software for GDPR, ASC 606, ISO, and SOC 1 and SOC 2 compliance
- SparkPlug - Best sales incentive software for frontline employees in retail and restaurant industries
- Xactly Incent - Best sales commission software with a focus on sales agent retention, training, and support
- Sales Cookie - Best commission platform with incentive planning, designing, and tracking tools
- Forma.ai - Best software for unlocking the science behind human motivation for targeted incentive planning
- CaptivateIQ - Best sales commission tool for flexible, variable workflows and inevitable adjustments
Selection Criteria For Sales Commission Software
If you’re wondering how I chose the final options for this list, the simple answer is that I was able to draw on years of previous experience in revenue operations and employee management to add expertise to my assessment. The longer answer includes the specifics of concrete selection criteria that helped me better compare software selections.
Here’s a short summary of the main selection and evaluation criteria I used to develop my list of the best sales commission software for this article.
Core Functionality
My first task was evaluating the most popular sales commission software through a lens of their most basic functionalities. These are the most important features every commission platform should have:
- Automated calculation and tracking of commissions
- Transparent tracking for sales reps or agents
- Incentive or gamification tools for agent engagement
- Reporting and analytics tools for sale KPIs
Key Features
If the software I was looking at wanted to deliver the functionality I’ve outlined above, these are some of the key features they needed:
- AI and business intelligence tools that can automate calculations for accuracy and sync information with your integrations to match source data and make changes to compensation plans in real time.
- Personalized agent dashboards with on-demand visibility that show sales representatives what they can expect from their monthly commissions and how they can improve payouts with better quota attainment.
- Customize incentives for your organization and the needs of your sales team through no-code configurations, templates, and flexible design platforms. Or, select from pre-built gamification designs to encourage friendly competition.
- Real-time metric tracking to provide actionable insights that help you react to trends and modify your sales strategy as needed. This tool can also help track agent performance and provide ongoing personalized training.
- Testing capabilities using real data that will allow you to see exactly how changes to your sales strategy, incentive plans, administration costs, and commission plans will affect your organization.
Usability
A positive user experience and simple implementation were a priority for me with each tool I evaluated. While there’s almost always a learning curve with new software, your sales managers and agents shouldn’t be wasting weeks to integrate a new system into their workflow.
The platforms I chose have clean, simple user interfaces that are designed for easy use and intuitive organization. Agents and managers should find the functionalities they need without too much guidance. I also looked for tools that offered robust training and community support.
Pricing
Many sales commission tools offer subscription plans that are based on the number of agents that fall under your commission-based payment, as well as implementation fees or support fees. While base costs and per person pricing varies, I tried to choose those plans that were scalable, transparent, and flexible with their structure to accommodate as many industries and business sizes as possible.
There is quite a swing in pricing among commission software and you can expect to see one-time payments between $300 - $1,000 or monthly subscriptions between $10-100 per user, per month. Costs vary based on peripheral features and integration options.
Integrations
This list includes software that easily integrates with other essential tools, such as HR software solutions and CRM platforms. I’ve also noted the key integrations for each system, as well as Zapier and OpenAPI designations if applicable.
People Also Ask
If you still have questions about sales commission software, here are some more answers to the most frequently asked questions.
What are the benefits of sales commission software?
What is the best way to track sales commissions?
How do you set up a sales commission plan?
Other Revenue Operations Software
If you’re looking for other revenue operations software, here are some more reviews from The RevOps Team that you might enjoy:
- Lead Intelligence Software
- Revenue Operations Software
- Types Of Data Visualization (And When To Use Them)
- CPQ Software
- Free CRM Software
- Marketing Automation Software
- Sales Automation Software
Final Thoughts
With more digital tools entering the business management sphere, you have the opportunity to simplify a number of administrative tasks, including sales commission management. As you explore these software solutions, decide whether you just need a streamlined, simplified tool to manage payouts or a more complex system that helps with motivation, sales strategy, and workforce management.
I hope my detailed breakdown of your sales commission software options help you find the right fit. If you’re looking for other software reviews in the world of revops, subscribe to the newsletter for weekly topical insights from experts in the field.