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BigDog,
There are many difference between MPA and NATS. We have made the switch from MPA to NATS now. (Thanks Duke!!)
Let me start off by saying that the guys at MPA are good guys, I like Oystein, Garry Peter and the rest of the crew there.
The main difference between MPA and NATS is not a technical one, it's ALL about credibility. We have been in this business for almost 7 years now, and we have alot of very good, loyal affiliates. And anyone that knows us, would never question our honesty and credibility. But many new affiliates and even a couple of older ones were very concerned with us running MPA. I received SEVERAL emails stating that they would love to promote our sites, but would not unless we got rid of MPA or allowed them to use CCBill or another viable alternative. So based on us using MPA I saw our #'s starting to slip from less traffic from affiliates.
As far as technical differences, there are many.
The main ones to me is the ability to do many different cascades per site, and the cascades in NATS are MUCH more configurable. The setup of the cascades in NATS is much simpler. You can Geo-Target your cascades, and even change your cascades based on many built in features.
All pages in NATS are templated, so I can customize the entire affiliate program. This was very difficult in MPA. I had to sent my changes to MPA and they had to do it for me.
Any affiliate who had ever used NATS and MPA know that any site running NATS has a easy to use interface for TGP's to download the list of hosted galleries for easy importing into their software. This was a feature that was asked for by MANY affiliates while I was using MPA, that is a standard feature in NATS.
The entire process for ad tools in NATS is much much easier, it is all web-based and very simple. In MPA the hosted galleries was a cumbersome process, and they didn't have any built in ability for banners, content, FPA/HPA or anything like that. The interface from NATS is very simple and I can setup levels of users in NATS to give one of our guys the ability to handle all the ad tools without any access to the rest of the program.
The stats and reports in NATS are much more indepth and actually work. I never was able to get my reports in MPA to work properly. You can break down the stats in many different ways in NATS, based on the site, program, campaign, etc.
NATS has a nice cross sales admin that make working with them much simpler.
NATS has a Exit console and popup utility that is AWESOME. You can base you exits and popups by the affiliates program, per affiliates, and may other features. It's very simple to use and all of it is done from a nice admin interface.
The mailer admin in NATS is really nice as well. There are many options you can set. Such as if an affiliate hasn't sent any traffic after X amount of days you can send him and auto email asking why or if he needs any assistance with anything. It's really customizable. I asked for a feature like this in MPA, but was told I would have to pay for the mods.
There are many subtle features in NATS that are really nice that aren't really noticed until you get in there and play around, such as the ability to add a sale to an affiliate, the trial to member upgrades for billers that don't support it, the ability to have multiple tours per site, the ability to create hidden programs and add affiliates to it manually, the ability to search for a affiliate by username or link code, and several others that you would never think that you needed until you see it in the program, and think -- damn, that's pretty cool, and they you use it all the time.
** Thinks I like about MPA that aren't in NATS
MPA has Galleries of the Day, and Picture of the Day.
MPA has a link that will automatically take you inside the admin of any billing company you have setup in MPA.
MPA has a quick list for your top 10 affiliates
Like I said up top. It was mainly a choice of business credibility. I know the guys at Mansion are trying to move towards shaking that rep, but I can't let the business suffer during that time. There's alot more importants things to spend you energy and time on than having to justify your program and credibility to affiliates.
The new features in NATS are REALLY nice, and it's by far a superior program to MPA in my opinion, but I don't think the new features alone would have been enough to have me switch my entire affiliate program to NATS. Now that I have them I don't know what I would do with out them!
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