UpPromote Review 2026: Pricing, Fees and Real Complaints

What Is UpPromote?

UpPromote is an app that lets a Shopify store run an affiliate, referral or ambassador program. You set commission rates, creators and affiliates sign up through a registration page or the app’s marketplace, sales are tracked by link, coupon code or customer email, and you approve each referral and pay out commission. If you want to see what other brands offer affiliates, our list of top affiliate programs shows typical terms. It launched on the Shopify App Store on 15 May 2019 and is built by UpPromote Technology Joint Stock Company in Hanoi, Vietnam. The app’s old developer name, Secomapp, still shows in its App Store address and in some app emails.

UpPromote’s own pages are not careful with numbers. The home page says 4.9 from 3,300+ reviews and 250,000+ customers, another page says 4,000 reviews and 90,000+ brands, and the docs say 3,200+ reviews. The live App Store figure is 3,934. No customer count can be checked, so we use only what the App Store prints.

Who it suits

• A single Shopify store that wants a standard program: links, codes, approvals, payouts.
• Stores that want a marketplace where affiliates can find the brand, though reviewers report spam there.
• Stores that will use store credit or PayPal payouts and can afford the $89.99 plan if they want them automatic.

Who it does not suit

• Stores with several storefronts on one program: multi-store sync is Enterprise only.
• Stores on tight margins that cannot absorb a fee that grows with sales.
• Sellers who are not on Shopify: the product is built for Shopify, and a reviewer on the listing complains of no multi-platform support.

UpPromote Pricing in 2026

Plans and prices below are read from UpPromote’s pricing page and matched against its docs and the Shopify listing on 8 November 2026. Everything is billed in US dollars through Shopify. If you are still comparing tools, our list of affiliate management software tools puts them side by side.

Shopify Plus stores get no printed price and are told to talk to a success manager. Every paid plan has a 14 day free trial that starts when you approve the charge, and no performance fee is charged on referrals created during it. UpPromote prints a 17% saving for yearly billing. A separate add-on, Creator Discovery, costs $39 or $79 a month and is covered below.

How the performance fee works

The fee is a percentage of sales from referrals you have approved, charged monthly. Referrals you deny or never review do not count. If an approved referral is later refunded or cancelled, the docs say its fee is not refunded: a negative fee is stored and netted against the next positive one, or refunded manually if you ask. The rate used is the plan you were on when the referral was recorded, and changing plan later does not change it. If your usage hits the Shopify app spending limit, performance fees stop being charged until the balance resets. UpPromote prints no payout or transaction fee of its own and says it takes no cut of the payout itself. Fees charged by PayPal, Wise or another processor are theirs and are not described on the pages we read.

What UpPromote costs at your sales volume

The subscription is small next to the fee once an affiliate program grows. This table adds the base price and the fee for four levels of monthly sales through approved referrals. The arithmetic is ours, on monthly billing, and assumes every referral is approved.

The plans cross over at round numbers. Professional costs less than Growth from $12,000 a month in approved referral sales, Enterprise costs less than Professional from $22,000, and Enterprise costs less than Growth from $17,000. Below $12,000 the Growth plan is the cheapest paid option. This leaves out annual discounts, the Creator Discovery add-on and the commission you pay your affiliates, which is the real cost of the program.

The Free plan limit depends on when you installed

UpPromote’s docs give three different referral review limits, depending on the install date, so two merchants can read different numbers on the web and both be right.

Over the limit, referrals are still tracked, but approving or denying them is locked until you upgrade. The pricing page and the Shopify listing still print 300 and 600 for Growth and Professional, which the docs say is the older policy. Several review articles print the 200 order Free limit, which is out of date for new installs.

UpPromote Features in Depth

The list below is what the docs and pricing matrix show, with the plan each feature needs. We read these pages and did not run a store through the app, so treat anything about how well a feature works as reviewer reports, not our test.

Tracking and attribution

UpPromote tracks by affiliate link, coupon code and customer email address, and each can be turned on or off. The cookie window is set under Settings and can differ by program, up to 3,652 days. The customer must use the same device and browser, and the window restarts if they click the link again. The docs do not state a default number of days. A cookie window of 0 turns off link tracking, and coupon tracking still works.

When more than one signal is present the docs give a priority: a connected customer first, then a coupon, then a connected product, then the affiliate link. If the link and the coupon belong to different affiliates, the coupon owner is paid. A single order goes to two affiliates only when the link affiliate and a connected product affiliate differ. The referral is created when the Shopify order is marked paid, and you approve or deny each one. Our guide to the affiliate KPIs worth tracking shows which numbers to watch once a program is running.

Commissions

Commission can be a percentage of the sale, a flat rate per order or a flat rate per item. Product tax, shipping and tips can be excluded. Free and Growth allow two commission levels by order value and 15 products with their own rate. Professional and above add unlimited levels, auto-tier commission, lifetime commission, subscription order commission, new customer commission and excluding products or collections. Commissioning by coupon code is Enterprise only.

Payouts

In app payouts go through PayPal, Wise or store credit. Store credit payouts start on Growth, and PayPal, Wise and scheduled automatic payouts start on Professional. Manual payouts work on every plan with any method you use outside the app, such as PayPal, Venmo, Cash App or a bank transfer. Invoice export, tax on paid commissions and 1099-NEC forms are Professional and above. Reviewers on the listing say the automatic options on the $89.99 plan are what leave Growth users paying by hand.

Recruiting affiliates and the marketplace

Every plan has a registration form and links. Growth and above add a marketplace listing, in-app chat with affiliates, premium registration templates, customer referral and a way to convert customers into affiliates. Creator Discovery, launched on 14 July 2026, is a creator search across Instagram, TikTok and YouTube that UpPromote says covers 380M+ creators. It is a separate Shopify charge on any plan: Starter at $39 a month with 35 report views per 30 day cycle, Pro at $79 with 75, unused views do not carry over, and without a subscription you get 5 free searches per cycle.

Fraud and abuse tools

Fraud detection for spam sign-ups and suspected referrals is on every plan. Professional and above add an auto-generated, anti-leak discount, which UpPromote added on 22 September 2025 and extended on 30 October 2026 with combinations and a one use per customer option. There are block lists, a docs page on excluding self-referrals, and since 2 October 2026 a social identity check with a bio code for Instagram and TikTok.

Integrations and AI

Klaviyo, Omnisend and Mailchimp, the subscription apps Recharge, Bold, Appstle, Seal and Recurpay, customer account sync and the API start on Professional. The Shopify listing also names Hydrogen headless, PageFly and EComposer. UpPromote added an MCP server for AI assistants on 10 September 2026, which masks personal and payment data, and a read-only Shopify Sidekick extension on 23 September 2026.

Billing, Trials and Refunds: What the Docs Say

Charges and refunds are the most argued topic in the reviews, so the rules are worth knowing before you install.

• Billing runs through Shopify. Recurring and usage charges are billed every 30 days in US dollars. UpPromote’s own charge cycle is different from Shopify’s invoice cycle, which is why some merchants see two charges in one calendar month.
• The trial. 14 days on every paid plan, starting when you approve the charge.
• Monthly plans. Refundable only if you cancel or uninstall within the first 2 days of the subscription cycle and request within those 2 days. Usage is not accepted as a reason. Review takes up to 5 business days.
• Yearly plans. The refund is the yearly price minus the months used at the monthly rate, and only if the subscription is under 11 months old. The docs give an example of $359.96 back on a Professional yearly plan cancelled after 6 months.
• After cancelling, the store goes back to the Free plan.
• Performance fees. Not refunded when a referral is undone, but netted later, as described above.

The trial exempts you from the performance fee, but not from a refund dispute if you forget to cancel. Put a reminder in your calendar, and note the date of the first charge.

What Real Users Say About UpPromote

The numbers below are published by the platforms named, read on 8 November 2026, and are not our measurement. G2, Capterra and Software Advice returned a block page to our fetch, so we have no figures from them and we did not try to get around it.

Recent praise reads like replies to a support chat. Of the 28 newest four and five star reviews, dated 25 October to 8 November 2026, 25 praise support speed and 19 name an individual agent. We cannot say whether the app prompts for a review after a chat. That is a two week window, not a sample of the 3,934, and Trustpilot itself notes the company has not invited customers recently.

What the Negative Reviews Say

We read every one star review on the Shopify listing (50), every two star review (13) and the first ten of the 21 three star reviews, which is 73 reviews rated one to three stars. The theme counts are our own hand tags on those reviews, and one review can carry more than one theme. UpPromote replied to 54 of the 73, and many replies dispute the complaint, for example by explaining Shopify’s 30 day billing cycle or that the store was on the Free plan. We report the complaint and note that a reply exists. Neither side is proven.

Of the 63 one and two star reviews, 33 are dated 2025 or 2026, so the recent complaints are a large share of the one star total. Shopify does not publish counts by month, so we cannot give a rate. One review in the set is about a different app from the same developer and is not counted.

UpPromote Pros and Cons

Is UpPromote Right for Your Store?

For other Shopify options, our UpPromote alternatives guide compares the main competitors, and the review of Refersion pricing and features and the review of GoAffPro pricing and features cover two of them in depth. If you are unsure whether you need an app at all, our guide to a Shopify affiliate program with influencers shows what Shopify gives you for free, and the comparison of affiliate software for Shopify stores and the guide to Shopify Collabs alternatives list the choices. Our own platform is described on our page for Shopify merchants.

Our Verdict on UpPromote

UpPromote is a solid, well rated Shopify app, and the Free plan is a real way to start. Its 4.9 rating is high, and the one star reviews are a small share, but they are not old history: 28 of the 50 are dated 2025 or 2026, and the same themes run through them, support, charges and marketplace quality. The performance fee is the part to price carefully, because it grows with your sales and is not refunded when a referral is undone.

Our advice: install on Free, place a test order through each tracking signal, and move up a plan only when you need a feature that sits behind it. Keep a calendar note for the end of any trial and do not rely on the marketplace to find good affiliates. We have not run a store through UpPromote ourselves, so everything here comes from its own pages and from the reviews we read.

UpPromote FAQ