FAQ: What are the differences between your plans?

Choosing the right plan for your affiliate program depends on your current scale and the specific tools you need to motivate your partners. Simple Affiliate offers four tiers—Starter, Basic, Pro, and Premium—designed to support you from your first referral to high-volume scaling.

This guide breaks down the key differences in features, limits, and processing fees across each plan.

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Comparison of Plan Features and Limits

Key Feature Highlights

• Starter Plan: Ideal for testing the waters. It focuses on basic link tracking for a small team of up to 10 partners.

• Basic Plan: Merchants looking for a complete influencer marketing program, without the need for discount code tracking. It removes the Starter limits and adds the Klaviyo integration.

• Pro Plan: Built for growth. It unlocks Discount Code Tracking (essential for Instagram/TikTok influencers), including single-use discount codes, and Custom Links (e.g., store.com/ALICE). It also allows for Product-Specific Commissions, letting you offer higher rewards for high-margin items. Pro also adds a Custom Signup Form for your storefront and Linked Stores, which copy affiliates from a main store to your other Shopify stores.

• Premium Plan: Designed for high-volume sellers. It includes everything in Pro plus Group Automation, Product Attribution, and the ability to process Manual Payments, lets you use Autopay, PayPal, and store credit at the same time, and offers the lowest possible transaction fees for autopay.

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Auto-pay and Transaction Fees

The higher tiers significantly reduce the overhead costs of paying out to your affiliates. If you are processing a high volume of commissions, the savings in fees often cover the monthly subscription cost.

Autopay Fees (Bank account)

• Starter: 3.9%

• Basic: 3.9%

• Pro: 3.9%

• Premium: 2.9%

Autopay Fees (Card, credit or debit)

• Starter: 8.9%

• Basic: 8.9%

• Pro: 8.9%

• Premium: 6.9%

Autopay Low Volume Fee

On all plans, from November 1, 2026, Autopay adds a low volume fee of 2 USD to each affiliate payout under 25 USD, in your store currency (for example 2 EUR for each payout under 20 EUR). A payout threshold at or above that limit in Settings > Payout avoids it on monthly payouts.

PayPal and Store Credit Payouts

• All plans (Starter, Basic, Pro, Premium): 0% fee. PayPal and store credit payouts have no Simple Affiliate processing fee.

• Starter/Basic/Pro: Use one payout method at a time: Autopay, PayPal, or store credit. Upgrade to Premium to use more than one together.

Manual Payments

• Starter/Basic/Pro: Not available. Pay affiliates with Autopay, PayPal, or store credit instead.

• Premium: Enabled (0% fee). This allows you to pay affiliates outside the app (e.g., via bank transfer) and simply mark them as paid in the system.

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Important Rules to Remember

• Plan Availability: Features like Custom Links, Permanent Customer Connection, the Custom Signup Form, and Linked Stores are exclusive to Pro and Premium users, while Group Automation and Product Attribution are exclusive to Premium users.

• Downgrading: If you downgrade from Pro to Starter, ensure you have 10 or fewer affiliates, as the Starter plan will not support an unlimited list.

• Permanent Connection: This Pro/Premium feature ensures that once an affiliate refers a customer, that customer is "linked" to them for all future purchases, even if they don't use a referral link the next time they shop.

• Custom Signup Form: This Pro/Premium feature replaces the default affiliate signup form with a form on your storefront. It requires Shopify New customer accounts.

• Linked Stores: Every linked store, the main store and each store that receives affiliates, needs the Pro plan or higher. If one of them moves below Pro, the link is kept, but copying pauses until that store upgrades.

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What Happens Next?

You can upgrade or downgrade your plan at any time by navigating to Settings > Billing. Changes are reflected in your Shopify billing cycle immediately.

Related articles

• Auto-pay Overview & Processing Fees
• How to Connect PayPal Payouts
• How to Enable Store Credit Payouts
• How to Set Up Manual Payments (Premium plan)
• How to Set Up a Custom Affiliate Signup Form (Pro plan)