Shopify Affiliate App or Collabs: Which Fits Your Store

Three Things Called Shopify Affiliate

Search for a Shopify affiliate tool and three different things come up under nearly the same words. Only one of them, Shopify Collabs, is a way to pay bloggers, creators and partners for the sales they bring you. Shopify's help center says Collabs helps businesses and creators connect using a marketplace-style app.

If what you want is for Shopify to pay you for sending it new merchants, that is the Shopify Affiliate Program, and nothing below applies to it; our section on how Shopify's affiliate program pays covers its terms.

A collaborator account is unrelated too: it lets an agency or freelancer who is a Shopify Partner into your admin, with the permissions you grant. Whether such a partner can see money pages is answered in can a Shopify collaborator see your payouts.

And if you mean customers recommending your store to friends for a reward, that is a referral program, a different lever from paying creators; our loyalty guide's section on referral programs explains how it differs.

Collabs, an Affiliate App or Discount Codes: The Three Routes

Every route attributes a sale to a partner; they differ in who calculates and pays the commission, and in what that costs. The verdict above answers by your situation; this table answers by attribute, so you can see what you give up with each route.

How Shopify Collabs Works for a Merchant

In Shopify's own list of marketing tools, Collabs connects you with creators and influencers for affiliate and creator-led marketing. You decide what a creator earns and what discount their followers get; the creator shares a link or a code; Collabs ties each sale to the creator who referred it.

Attribution runs through two things Collabs makes for each creator: affiliate links and discount codes, created and tracked through Shopify Collabs. A personalized link, such as mystore.com/sammy, applies the creator's discount code during checkout on its own. On a custom storefront, the custom storefronts page notes that Collabs uses the same tracking data as the Shopify admin, so the storefront has to send Shopify analytics.

Shopify's own short clip below shows the brand side of Collabs: finding creators and working with them. It dates from 2022 and may not show today's limits, so treat it as a picture of the mechanics; the current state is in the next two sections.

Gate one: can your store use Collabs?

Two conditions decide whether Collabs can run on your store at all. The first is your plan: Shopify Collabs is available on all Shopify plans except for the Starter and Retail plans, as of October 16, 2026. On those two plans, look at the other two routes, per-partner discount codes and third-party affiliate apps.

In Shopify admin

1. Settings
2. Customer privacy

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Gate two: which creators can you still reach?

Being able to install Collabs is not the same as being able to recruit through it. The main Collabs help page carries a note, current as of October 16, 2026, that changes who can join:

The same note says merchants can continue to send direct invites to creators, and that creator applications can still be accepted. Shopify's creator setup page spells out what that means for a partner with no Collabs account yet: “You can currently create a Collabs account only if you're directly invited by a brand, or by submitting an application to work with a brand.” So a new partner can still join through your direct invite or your online store page, and an application has to be approved before they can work with you.

There is no date attached. As of October 16, 2026, none of the pages we read, the Collabs help pages and the changelog feeds of changelog.shopify.com and shopify.dev, names a date for the freeze, for its end, or for any other change to Collabs; the most recent Collabs post on Shopify's changelog is dated November 1, 2023.

Geography matters for one program type. In an open access program, any creator on Collabs can share your affiliate links immediately, without your approval, but as of October 16, 2026, only creators from the United States, the United Kingdom and Canada are eligible.

Three ways to bring creators in

Shopify's merchants page lists the three routes in one sentence: direct invites, instant commission offers through an open access program, and an online store page that accepts affiliate applications. For invites, you can reach up to 100 creators in any 7-day period.

Open access trades control for reach, but the Collabs community guidelines set consequences: an open access creator who breaks them is flagged as high risk, their commission automatically reduces to 0%, all their pending payouts are canceled, and you can choose to pause your connection, which invalidates their affiliate links and discount codes.

Programs, commission rates and gifts

Collabs organizes creators into programs, of two kinds: open access programs and invite programs. The programs carry the money terms, so most of your decisions happen there:

• One program per creator. A creator can be part of only one of your programs at a time, but you can move them between programs as their commission and incentives change.
• Moving keeps the link. Their affiliate link and discount code stay the same; the new program's commission rate and customer discount apply from then on.
• Rates by product or collection. In the program form we opened on October 16, 2026, commission can be set for all products, for a collection, or for a specific product; Shopify's help center describes collection-level rates in its open access steps. Per-collection rates let a low-margin collection pay less than a high-margin one.
• New or returning buyers. A May 2023 changelog post says merchants can pay higher commissions for sales from new buyers and decide whether affiliate discounts apply to new customers only or to new and returning ones.
• Three gift types. For creator connections, you can offer a free product, a percentage discount code, or a fixed amount discount code.

In Shopify admin

1. Apps
2. Collabs
3. Programs
4. Create invite program

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If you're eligible to use Shopify Flow, Collabs connects to it. Shopify's Collabs and Flow page gives the example of a workflow that tags all orders attributed to Collabs, or all redeemed Collabs gifts, so your fulfillment team treats them with care.

Who Pays the Creator, and When

With Collabs you never send a creator money yourself. Commissions to creators are processed through your Shopify bill automatically, using Collabs automatic payments, and every commission goes through the same four steps:

After the holding period, the commission is added to your upcoming Shopify bill, or sooner if you've reached your billing threshold. On the creator's side, every creator you work with needs to activate auto-payouts to get paid.

What Collabs costs you

The Collabs listing on the Shopify App Store says free to install, additional charges may apply, and sums up the model as getting set up for free and paying only when sales are driven. Shopify's payments page names a 2.9% processing fee applied to every automatic commission payment, reflected in your Shopify bill.

Shopify App Store listing for Shopify Collabs, Pricing section

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The fee is charged on the commission, not on the order, so it grows with the rate you pay creators. Automatic payments are handled in USD and charged to you in the currency of your Shopify bill. If your Shopify bill is in a currency other than USD, local currency conversion fees might apply. How that compares with an app that takes a share of the sale is worked through once, in the commission example below.

Refunds and the holding period

The holding period is your protection against paying for sales that don't stick. It is 30 days by default, and you change it in the Collabs app under Payments, then Settings, in the Payment holding period section. Shopify's payments page says you can enter 1 to 90 days, but the Collabs settings screen we opened on October 16, 2026 asked for between 7 and 90 days.

In Shopify admin

1. Apps
2. Collabs
3. Payments
4. Settings

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The same payments page states what happens inside the hold:

If a commission in the holding period looks suspicious, you can open a payment dispute with the creator before it is paid. Once the period is over, the commission goes on your bill.

What the documentation leaves open is the rest. As of October 16, 2026, none of the pages we read, the Collabs payments, managing creators, programs and uninstall pages for merchants, the creator payments page and two Collabs changelog posts, describes what happens to a commission after a partial refund, or after a refund that comes once the holding period has ended. Write your own rule for both cases into your partner terms, and set the hold to at least your return window.

Two dated details for context. When automatic payments launched, an April 2023 changelog post said full refunds were tracked up to 30 days after a creator referred a sale; today the hold is 30 days by default, adjustable up to 90 days, and your own Collabs settings are what apply. And manual payments are gone: as of January 8, 2024, no new commissions earned by creators on Collabs are tracked using manual payments.

Taxes and US paperwork

Collabs pays creators for you, but it doesn't take over your tax obligations: Shopify's payments page says merchants and creators in all cases remain responsible for their own, though on automatic payments Shopify collects and files taxes related to the sale of creators' services in certain jurisdictions. For a business based in the United States, it documents three specifics:

• W9 collection. Merchants based in the United States can activate W9 form collection from US creators.
• A cap without the form. If a creator doesn't submit a requested W9, their payouts are limited to $599.99 USD per year.
• Form 1099. A merchant who makes payments to creators during the year might be required to issue them a Form 1099.

When Discount Codes Alone Are Enough

Before Collabs and before any app, Shopify's own discounts already do the attribution part. A code per partner tells you who sold what; how codes behave, stack and expire is covered in our guide to Shopify discounts. Four native tools carry the load:

The caps live where you create the code: you can limit discount codes usage in the Maximum discount uses section on the Create discount page. The Sales by discount codes report counts only the line items the code discounted, so a partner's total can read lower than the orders they brought in.

In Shopify adminOpen in your store

1. Discounts
2. Create discount

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In Shopify adminOpen in your store

1. Analytics
2. Reports

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A partner can also share a link instead of a code. A shareable link or QR code carries a single discount, and the limit of 5 discount codes per order counts those from shareable links too. How the link behaves is answered in how shareable discount links work on Shopify.

In Shopify adminOpen in your store

1. Discounts
2. WELCOME10
3. Promote
4. Get a shareable discount code

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To see a partner's traffic as well as their sales, attach the link to a campaign: traffic that arrives with utm_campaign parameters is attributed to marketing. Building those tags is covered in how to add UTM parameters to a Shopify link.

Where this route stops is everything after the sale. The report gives you sales per code; it doesn't calculate commission. Waiting until returns settle, working out each partner's amount and sending the money are yours to do, which is fine for three partners and a chore for thirty.

Third-Party Affiliate Apps: What They Add

The Shopify App Store's Affiliate programs category counted 284 apps on October 16, 2026. The four below are a snapshot of listings we read that day, chosen because they show the different pricing shapes, not a ranking and not every app that exists.

If you'd rather watch an app being set up, the tutorial below from the How To Shopify channel walks through installing UpPromote, building the affiliate registration form and adding it to a store. It is one practitioner's walkthrough, uploaded in 2024: screens may differ today, and every price and limit on this page comes from the listings and Shopify's pages, not from the video.

Read the fee base before the price

Monthly prices compare easily; the percentages need a closer read, because each listing names its own base (UpPromote: successful referral sales; Refersion: affiliate generated sales; Snowball: affiliate revenue), and none of it replaces the commission itself. UpPromote's own documentation is plain about it:

How the payout itself happens differs by app and plan. On UpPromote, PayPal auto-payout is available on the Professional plan and above.

Refersion lets you pay affiliate commissions from Refersion, or record payments made outside the platform; its Unified Payments, with automated payments and tax management, is for US-based businesses whose commissions are in USD; and its help center notes that some payout options may be unavailable on your plan. Its listing also warns that external charges may be billed separately from your Shopify invoice.

Setting a Commission Rate Your Margin Can Carry

A referred order pays for up to three things before it pays you, and all of them come out of the same margin:

1. The commission you promise the partner, as a share of the order.
2. The customer discount on the partner's link or code, if you give one.
3. The tool's fee: 2.9% of each commission on Collabs, an app's plan and share of referral sales, or nothing on discount codes alone.

Here is one order run through that list. The $100 order and the 10% rate are illustrative inputs, not a benchmark — pick your own rate from your margin; only the two fees come from the sources named in the table. Shopify's payments page uses the same $100 order and 10% commission to show its 29-cent fee.

The two fees behave differently as you change the inputs. Collabs takes its share of the commission, so a lower rate shrinks the fee too; UpPromote Growth takes its share of the sale, so the fee stays the same whatever you pay the partner, and the monthly plan is due even in a month with no referred sales. Any customer discount on the partner's code comes off the same order on top of all this.

The test for any rate is one line: commission + customer discount + tool fee has to stay below your margin on the order. Run your own order value and margin through the table above before you promise a rate.

Which Route Fits Your Store?

The verdict at the top answers by one situation at a time. This quiz crosses five of them at once, your plan, where your partners are, how many you expect, what the tool should do and your Network Intelligence setting, and returns a route with a short setup plan.

Launch Checklist

Steps one and three to seven apply to every route. Step two is for Collabs only, and on the discount-code route step four is a payout rule you keep yourself rather than a setting. Do step one before anything else: the rate you can afford decides which partners are worth inviting.

The Bottom Line

All three routes attribute sales; they differ in who holds, calculates and pays the commission. Collabs does all of that through your Shopify bill, and as of October 16, 2026, new creators can join it only through a brand's direct invite or an application to work with a brand; codes leave it to you, and an app does it for a monthly plan and, often, a percentage fee on a base each listing names in its own words.

Frequently Asked Questions