What is Simple Affiliate?

Simple Affiliate is a Shopify app that runs your affiliate, influencer, and referral program inside your own store. Customers, creators, and influencers join with your store's customer accounts, share their referral links or discount codes, and earn commission on the orders they bring in. There's no third-party network in the middle, so affiliate access, referral tracking, commissions, and payouts all live in your Shopify Admin.

Where affiliates sign in

Affiliates use the same customer account they shop with, so there's no separate affiliate login. On new customer accounts, the affiliate dashboard is the Affiliate page of Shopify's customer-account area. On classic customer accounts, it's a branded page on your theme. In both setups, your affiliate dashboard URL (/pages/affiliate unless you change it in Settings > Dashboard) opens the dashboard, where affiliates see their links, referrals, and earnings.

How orders get credited

Referral links carry a tracking code (sacode), with optional UTM parameters for campaigns. On Pro and Premium, unique discount codes can identify referred orders too, and a customer can stay connected to the referring affiliate after a first referred purchase when you turn that feature on.

Simple Affiliate credits an order automatically when it matches one of these referral methods and your program rules. You can also add a referral by hand in Referrals > Add referral.

What you decide

You decide who your affiliates are, which group each one is in, which referral methods they get, and the commission of each group, within the features of your plan. Write down your commission and payout terms and share them with your affiliates.

Paying affiliates

Pay affiliates with Autopay, PayPal, or Shopify store credit. Manual payments are on Premium and on stores whose currency Autopay doesn't support. Autopay can pay on a monthly schedule that you turn on in Settings > Payout, or whenever you click Pay now, and by default you confirm each monthly payment first. Autopay needs a store currency that it supports, and its setup needs a paid Shopify plan and a store that is at least 3 days old. For eligible U.S. affiliates paid with Autopay, Simple Affiliate facilitates 1099 forms.

Affiliates always get the full commission. If you use Autopay, its fees go on your bill on top of the commission and never come out of the payout.

AI connection and pricing

On every plan, you can connect Claude or ChatGPT to review your results and prepare setup changes, and nothing changes until you confirm it. Plans start with the free Starter plan, and the paid plans are a flat monthly price with no cut of your sales. See How much does Simple Affiliate cost?