UpPromote is the Shopify affiliate app with the most installs, a free plan that's actually usable, and a pricing ladder that only makes sense once you do the arithmetic. I've done the arithmetic below, because the plan you'd pick from the pricing page is the wrong one for most stores past $12,000 a month in affiliate sales.
I haven't used UpPromote. This is a research listing, from UpPromote's docs (pricing, fee and refund pages), the Shopify App Store, Capterra, and the changelog. Third-party claims are marked.
A line on the company. UpPromote is made by Secomapp, a Shopify app studio in Hanoi, which launched it on the App Store in May 2019. Vietnam has become one of the biggest sources of Shopify apps in the world, mostly on a model of low entry price and high volume, and UpPromote is that model applied to affiliate tracking: free to start, a percentage of sales as you grow, and a marketplace to keep you in. It shipped an MCP server in September 2026, which puts it in the small group of tools here you can drive from an AI assistant.
Who it's for
Shopify stores. Only Shopify stores; there's no WooCommerce, no Stripe, no anything else. If you're on Shopify and you want affiliates, coupon tracking, a marketplace listing and fraud checks on day one for $0, this is the obvious first install alongside GoAffPro.
Stores that will grow into the paid tiers and want the things the free tier doesn't do: customer referral programs, store-credit rewards, automatic PayPal payouts, tiered commissions, multi-level, and a 1099 generator.
Who should skip it
Anyone not on Shopify. Full stop.
Anyone who hates paying a percentage of sales on top of a subscription. Every paid tier adds 1% to 2% of approved referral sales, and that fee is non-refundable even when the order is refunded. More below.
Anyone whose program is small and will stay small. If you've got a dozen affiliates and no plans to recruit, GoAffPro's free plan does the same job without a referral cap pushing you toward an upgrade.
Pricing, decoded
Four tiers. The subscription goes up and the percentage goes down, which is the part that catches people.
- Free, $0. Unlimited affiliates, 200 referral approvals a month, link and coupon tracking, marketplace listing, fraud protection, 0% fee.
- Growth, $29.99 a month plus 2% of approved referral sales. 300 approvals a month, customer referral program, store credit. $299.90 a year on annual.
- Professional, $89.99 plus 1.5%. 600 approvals, PayPal auto-pay, auto-tier commissions, multi-level, 1099 generator.
- Enterprise, $199.99 plus 1%. Unlimited approvals, multi-store.
Creator Discovery, the influencer-finding add-on, is another $39 or $79 a month on top of any plan.
Now the arithmetic. Because the percentage falls as the subscription rises, each tier has a crossover point where the next one up is cheaper:
- Growth beats Professional until $12,000 a month in affiliate sales. Above that, Professional is cheaper.
- Professional beats Enterprise until $22,000 a month. Above that, Enterprise is cheaper.
Worked example at $30,000 a month: Growth is $29.99 plus $600, so $630. Professional is $89.99 plus $450, so $540. Enterprise is $199.99 plus $300, so $500. The "cheapest" plan on the pricing page is the most expensive one at that volume, by $130 a month. Pick by your sales number, not the sticker.
Two things on the fee. It's charged on approved referral sales and it's non-refundable, including when the customer returns the order and the commission is reversed. UpPromote's refund policy allows refunds only within the first two days of a billing cycle for "valid issues." So a bad month of returns costs you the percentage twice. And the approval caps on Free and Growth (200 and 300 a month) are the upgrade mechanism: a program that works will hit them, and the only way past is the next tier.
What it does well
The free tier is real. Unlimited affiliates, coupon tracking, fraud protection and a marketplace listing for nothing is a better free plan than most paid plans in this directory offered five years ago. For a store testing whether affiliates are a channel at all, it's the right place to find out.
The Shopify integration is deep because it's the only one: Klaviyo, Mailchimp, Omnisend, Recharge, Appstle, PageFly, Hydrogen. Subscription stores get recurring-order tracking through Recharge and Appstle, which the generic tools handle badly.
Multi-level and auto-tier commissions on Professional. If you want affiliates recruiting affiliates, this is one of the few Shopify-native tools that does it, and the 1099 generator at the same tier means the tax side is handled for US stores.
Lock-in: 3 out of 5
What gets you out: affiliates export to CSV (confirmed), the MLM network exports (added September 2025), no contract, cancelling drops you to Free rather than deleting your account.
What keeps you in: Shopify only, so leaving Shopify means leaving UpPromote. Referral and payment history export is undocumented; I couldn't confirm you can take it. The marketplace affiliates are UpPromote's community and don't follow you. And every percentage fee you've paid is gone whether or not the sales stuck.
Three. The export of affiliates is real; the history is the question.
Gotchas
- Performance fee is non-refundable. Refunded orders don't refund the 1% to 2%. Refund window is two days into a billing cycle.
- Approval caps are the upgrade lever. 200 a month on Free, 300 on Growth. A working program hits them.
- The cheapest plan isn't the cheapest. Growth costs more than Professional above $12K a month and more than Enterprise above $22K.
- Shopify only. No WooCommerce, no Stripe, no migration path off Shopify.
- No per-product commission from the dashboard, per a September 2026 Shopify review (one to two stars). Custom rules are a repeat complaint (Capterra, April 2026).
- Marketplace affiliates can be unresponsive (Capterra, 2022). The marketplace is a listing, not a recruiting service.
- Creator Discovery is an extra $39 to $79. The influencer finder isn't in the plan price.
- Referral and payment history export unverified. Ask support before you need it.
- MLM depth unpublished. If you're building a multi-level structure, confirm the levels first.
Integrations
Shopify, Klaviyo, Mailchimp, Omnisend, Recharge, Appstle, PageFly, Hydrogen. MCP server since September 2026.
Not supported: WooCommerce, Stripe, BigCommerce, any SaaS billing, any course platform.
If you're leaving
Export your affiliates as CSV and, if you've built a multi-level program, the MLM network export. Ask support for referral and payment history in writing, because it isn't documented. Cancel the paid plan rather than uninstalling, so your account drops to Free and the data stays while you migrate. Expect marketplace affiliates not to follow. If you're leaving Shopify entirely, this is a full rebuild on the new platform's tool.
Verdict
My opinion, labelled as such: UpPromote is the right first affiliate app for a Shopify store that wants to find out whether affiliates work, because the free plan is good enough to find out with. The problems start when it does work: the approval caps push you up, the percentage follows you, and the plan the pricing page nudges you toward is the wrong one past $12,000 a month.
Against GoAffPro, which is free with no referral cap, UpPromote wins on polish, integrations and the marketplace, and loses on cost once you're paying. Against Refersion at $39 plus 3%, UpPromote is cheaper at every volume and has the better free tier. Against Social Snowball at $249, UpPromote is the budget option and Social Snowball is the one that turns customers into affiliates at checkout. And if you've hit the point where you're comparing Enterprise at $199.99 plus 1% to a network, read the DTC networks guide first, because at $20,000 a month in affiliate sales, impact.com Starter at $30 plus 2.5% starts to look like a different conversation.
Last verified November 2, 2026. Pricing, fee and refund terms from docs.uppromote.com. Payout and MLM details from the UpPromote help centre. MCP server and export changes from the UpPromote changelog. Company details from the Shopify App Store listing. Reviews referenced from the Shopify App Store and Capterra, 2022 to 2026. The author has not used UpPromote. Some links on this page are affiliate links.
