3 Top Referral & Affiliate Apps for Shopify Stores: Expand Your Product Reach
Key Takeaways
- The best platform depends on your products, audience, and growth strategy.
- Affiliate apps help automate referrals, commissions, and partner management.
- Impact is a strong option for Shopify stores that want affiliate and influencer partnerships.
- PartnerStack works best for subscriptions, and digital products.
- Loox focuses on reviews, referrals, and social proof.
- Traditional eCommerce, dropshipping, and print-on-demand stores can all benefit from partnership marketing.
What could be better than making more money by getting other people to promote your stuff, and driving more traffic to your Shopify store? Affiliate marketing can help you grow your Shopify store without relying entirely on paid ads.
Instead of paying for clicks that may or may not convert, you can partner with creators, influencers, bloggers, publishers, and existing customers who promote your products in exchange for a commission or referral reward.
The challenge is choosing the right platform.
Some Shopify apps focus on affiliate partnerships. Others help you recruit influencers, manage partner relationships, or encourage customer referrals. The best option depends on your business model, budget, and growth goals.
In this guide, we’ll compare three popular platforms Shopify sellers use to promote their products:
This is what’s in store:
Table of Contents
What is an Affiliate App?
An affiliate app helps you create and manage partnerships with people who promote your products.
Most affiliate platforms allow you to:
- Create affiliate programs
- Track referrals and sales
- Manage commissions
- Process payouts
- Recruit new partners
- Monitor performance
Instead of manually tracking referrals through spreadsheets or coupon codes, the software handles the process automatically.
Affiliate programs can work for many business models, including traditional eCommerce, dropshipping and print-on-demand, and digital products. The right platform depends on how you sell and who you want to promote your products.
3 Best Referral & Affiliate Apps for Shopify
Let’s take a closer look at Impact, PartnerStack, and Loox, to see how they might be able to help you promote your online store.
1. Impact
Impact is one of the largest partnership management platforms available today.
Rather than focusing only on affiliates, Impact helps businesses manage relationships with influencers, publishers, content creators, ambassadors, and referral partners through a single platform.
For Shopify sellers that want to scale their partnership marketing efforts, Impact offers a wide range of tools that go beyond a basic affiliate program.
The key features of Impact include:
- Affiliate program management
- Influencer partnerships
- Partner recruitment marketplace
- Automated commission tracking
- Advanced attribution reporting
- Fraud monitoring tools
- Cross-channel partnership management
Impact Pricing
Impact’s Shopify app starts at $30 per month, with the Starter plan priced at the greater of $30 or 2.5% of monthly revenue. Higher plans start at $500 and $2,500 per month.
You’ll also need to decide what you want to offer the creators and affiliates who promote your products. For physical products, a commission of 5% to 15% per sale is a common starting range. You could also offer creators free products, discount codes for their audiences, or a combination of a flat content fee and sales commission.
For example, if you sell a $50 product and offer a 10% commission, a creator earns $5 for each attributed sale. You can adjust your rate based on your profit margin, product price, and the amount of work you expect from the creator.
Impact is Best For
- Established Shopify brands
- Growing eCommerce businesses
- Influencer partnerships
- Publisher relationships
- Businesses with dedicated marketing teams
Business Models Supported by Impact
| Business Model | Supported |
|---|---|
| Traditional eCommerce | Yes |
| Dropshipping | Yes |
| Print-on-Demand | Yes |
Potential Drawbacks of Impact
Impact offers a robust feature set, but smaller stores may find the platform more advanced than they need when first launching an affiliate program.
3. PartnerStack
PartnerStack is a partnership platform designed primarily for software companies, subscription businesses, and digital products.
Many SaaS companies use PartnerStack to recruit affiliates, referral partners, agencies, consultants, and strategic partners.
While Shopify merchants can use PartnerStack, it tends to work best when a business sells subscriptions, memberships, software, or other recurring products.
Some of the key features of PartnerStack include
- Partner recruitment marketplace
- Affiliate management
- Referral programs
- Automated payouts
- Partner onboarding tools
- CRM integrations
- Performance reporting
PartnerStack Pricing
PartnerStack does not publish a standard price for businesses that use its platform. You’ll need to contact PartnerStack for a quote.
The bigger consideration is what you plan to pay your partners. PartnerStack’s own guidance describes common revenue-share models that range from 20% to 30%, with some SaaS programs offering higher rates for a limited period. Those rates make more sense for software and subscription businesses than most physical-product Shopify stores.
If you sell physical products through Shopify, you could instead use a lower percentage that fits your margins. If you sell subscriptions or digital products, you may have more room for a larger commission or recurring payments.
PartnerStack is Best For
- SaaS businesses
- Membership sites
- Digital products
- Subscription services
Business Models Supported by PartnerStack
| Business Model | Supported |
|---|---|
| Traditional eCommerce | Limited |
| Dropshipping | Limited |
| Print-on-Demand | Limited |
| Digital Products | Yes |
Potential Drawbacks of PartnerStack
Most Shopify stores that sell physical products may not need the advanced partnership infrastructure that PartnerStack provides.
2. Loox
Loox takes a different approach to growth.
Loox Referrals lets Shopify merchants turn customers into brand advocates. You can give the referred friend a discount and give the existing customer a reward for a successful referral. Customers can get referral links after a purchase, after they leave a review, or through referral widgets on your store.
The important distinction is that Loox’s referral program is primarily customer-to-customer, rather than a traditional affiliate program where you recruit influencers or content creators. So for your article, I’d describe Loox as a Shopify reviews and customer referral app, not as a conventional affiliate platform.
For many online stores, customer referrals can become an important source of new sales. Loox supports two-sided rewards where both the advocate (referrer) and the referred friend receive a discount.
Some other features of Look include:
- Photo reviews
- Video reviews
- Customer referral programs
- Review request automation
- User-generated content collection
- Social proof widgets
- Google Shopping integrations
Loox Pricing
Loox starts at $0 per month on its Beginner plan. Its Convert plan includes product referrals and starts at $49.99 per month, while the Unlimited plan starts at $299.99 per month. Loox Referrals are available on the Convert plan and above.
Loox works a little differently from a traditional affiliate platform. You can reward existing customers when they refer friends instead of paying outside creators a percentage of every sale. For example, you could give the new customer a discount and give the referring customer a reward toward a future purchase.
If you want creators to make content about your products, you could also send them free products and offer a separate affiliate commission. That gives you a way to combine product seeding, customer referrals, and social proof rather than treating Loox as a traditional affiliate network.
Loox is Best For
- Product-focused Shopify brands
- Fashion stores
- Home decor brands
- Lifestyle businesses
- Print-on-demand sellers
Business Models Supported by Loox
| Business Model | Supported |
|---|---|
| Traditional eCommerce | Yes |
| Dropshipping | Yes |
| Print-on-Demand | Yes |
Potential Drawbacks of Loox
Loox focuses on reviews and referrals rather than full affiliate management. Businesses that want a large affiliate network may need a dedicated affiliate platform.
Which Affiliate App is Best for Shopify?
The best affiliate app for Shopify depends on your business model and growth strategy.
If you want to build relationships with influencers, publishers, and affiliate partners at scale, Impact offers one of the most comprehensive partnership platforms available.
If your business sells software, memberships, subscriptions, or digital products, PartnerStack may provide a better fit.
If your goal is to encourage customer referrals while building trust through reviews and user-generated content, Loox can help support both objectives.
Before you choose a platform, think about how customers discover your products and what type of partnerships make the most sense for your business. Shopify users can use all three, but they serve different purposes.
Impact supports affiliate and influencer partnerships, Loox focuses on reviews, social proof, and customer referrals, while PartnerStack is geared more toward SaaS, B2B, and broader partner programs. A typical physical-product Shopify store could use Impact and Loox together, while PartnerStack makes more sense for a store that also sells software, subscriptions, or digital products.
Final Thoughts
Affiliate marketing can help Shopify sellers reach new customers through trusted recommendations and partnerships.
However, not every platform serves the same purpose.
Impact focuses on affiliate, influencer, and publisher partnerships. PartnerStack specializes in partner programs for software and subscription businesses. Loox helps stores turn customer reviews and referrals into additional sales opportunities.
The best choice depends on your business model, budget, and growth goals.
To build out your eCommerce marketing plan and help prepare your Shopify store for a profitable launch, claim your free Aurajinn launch dashboard today.
Chad is a Freelance Copywriter & the Founder of Jensen Copy. He's an expert in SaaS, technology, and travel (he's also done data center network maintenance, underwater repair, and CDL driving professionally). He's best known for providing a humorous, knowledgeable, no-B.S. view to everything he writes. Plus, he's fun to drink with -- Maybe he'll buy you a beer sometime and tell you some stories that should probably never be printed.
Ashley Kimler is the founder of Aurajinn and a freelance content strategist with over 15 years of experience across B2B SaaS, fintech, and digital marketing. She built the Aurajinn Business Launchpad after spending years starting (and occasionally failing at) her own online businesses, and getting tired of plans that looked impressive on paper but never told her what to actually do next. Aurajinn now exists to give solopreneurs, freelancers, and first-time founders a free, step-by-step roadmap instead of another blank template.
