Referral Factory vs PartnerStack
Referral Factory is a European alternative to PartnerStack: same crm & marketing use case, headquartered in Netherlands and governed by EU GDPR, while PartnerStack (AppDirect) is based in the United States.
By the EU Alternatives team Last updated
Complete referral marketing software suite with drag-and-drop builder, automated tracking, flexible rewards, and 50+ integrations for all business types.
- Jurisdiction
- EU / EEA
- Primary privacy law
- EU GDPR
- US CLOUD Act exposure
- No
- Open source
- No
- Free tier
- No
Affiliate and reseller programmes run end to end here, and the real draw is the marketplace of B2B partners you can recruit from rather than the tracking itself. Nothing is priced publicly: every plan is quoted after a demo, with no free tier at all. Built in Toronto, it passed into US ownership when AppDirect of San Francisco bought it in April 2026.
- Jurisdiction
- United States
- GDPR by default
- Requires DPA + TIA
- US CLOUD Act exposure
- Yes
Referral Factory vs PartnerStack at a glance
| Referral Factory | PartnerStack | |
|---|---|---|
| Headquarters | Netherlands | United States |
| Data jurisdiction | EU / EEA | United States |
| Primary privacy law | EU GDPR | Requires DPA + transfer assessment |
| US CLOUD Act exposure | No | Yes |
| Best for | Teams that need crm & marketing built for European data-protection requirements | Teams already invested in the AppDirect ecosystem |
Choose Referral Factory if…
- You want a provider governed by a European privacy regime
- GDPR or public-sector data-protection requirements apply to you
- You'd rather back the European tech ecosystem
Stick with PartnerStack if…
- You depend on integrations only available in the AppDirect ecosystem
- Your organisation has no EU data-residency constraints
- Migration costs outweigh the jurisdiction benefits for now
Why choose Referral Factory over PartnerStack?
The decisive argument is data jurisdiction. PartnerStack is headquartered in the United States, which means personal data processed through it can be subject to non-EU legal regimes: the US CLOUD Act, FISA 702, or similar laws depending on the provider. After the 2020 Schrems II ruling, EU organisations must carry out a transfer impact assessment for every such data flow.
Referral Factory removes that overhead. As a Netherlands-based provider, it operates under EU GDPR, and data stays inside the EU/EEA by default. For regulated sectors such as health, public administration, and finance, that's not a nice-to-have but a requirement. For everyone else, it's concentration-risk insurance: you avoid depending on a single jurisdiction that can change the rules without warning.