UpPromote Affiliate Marketing

The app, unfortunately, isn't working as it should. When affiliates create a link and share it on Instagram, the Instagram browser strips out the affiliate slug at the end, leaving only the raw URL. As a result, the sales go through, but the app fails to attribute them to the correct affiliate. This leads to affiliates approaching me with concerns like, "Hey, I don’t see the sale my friend made." They then have to provide proof of purchase, which is frustrating for everyone involved.

When I reached out to support about this issue, instead of escalating it to their developers, they suggested a workaround—making every affiliate a "forever affiliate." This isn’t a solution for us. "Forever affiliate" means that once a customer buys a product through an affiliate, all future orders from that customer will always be attributed to that affiliate. This approach doesn't address the core issue, which is the app's failure to handle URL attribution properly.

Furthermore, the app doesn't allow for a straightforward payout process unless I set up PayPal in developer mode, which is more complicated than it sounds. It requires creating a business PayPal account, entering developer mode, and configuring several risky settings. It’s far from a plug-and-play experience.

The affiliate portal itself is also very basic and lacks a professional look. Given the app's $99/month price, this is quite disappointing. At most, it seems worth around $15/month. I've found a competitor app that is far more reasonably priced and doesn’t have the Instagram issue. With this app, affiliates can share custom links via Instagram DM or in their bio without the link being auto-converted.

To be honest, just because an app has lots of high-star reviews doesn't necessarily mean it's the best option. Often, those with fewer 5-star reviews perform better because they are more motivated to improve.

After my conversation with the support representative ended without a resolution and no escalation to higher support, they sent me a dancing cat GIF, which felt unprofessional and mocking. When dealing with customer service, if you can’t help a customer, sending a GIF like that is not appropriate. Management should monitor these interactions to ensure a higher quality of customer service.

They show fake referral sales/orders, Our team raised complaint with them but not received any response.

Does not work and there is no access to customer service. It has been a year. No one has contacted me. My affiliates are selling things but getting no credit so they abandoned it. We lost a lot of business pursuing affiliates who then thought we were just not paying them for links they could SEE from their end. No response ever from customer service.

Seems like a very difficult app to use so far. Some of the top features (gifting, custom affiliate links, custom domain, shorten links, and integration with email) is only available on the professional plan..

BEWARE! I signed up for the $89.99 Professional plan with a two week free trial. Unfortunately, it took more than two weeks to find all the flaws with this app, such as the coupon automation not working for all the "outreach" programs and, most importantly, the "Post Purchase" outreach is not linked to purchases in any way. It's linked to acquiring new email addresses. Therefore, if you are asking customers to sign up for email marketing when they enter your store, they'll receive a "post purchase" ambassadorship email - even without purchasing your product.

When I realized all the flaws with their software and canceled, unsubscribed, and deleted the app, we were halfway through the first billing cycle. When I asked them to refund the prorated amount for the second half of the billing cycle, they refused. Therefore, they essentially STOLE half a month worth of my money when I wasn't even subscribed to or using their app.

Stay away! There are other cheaper apps that do not have flaws and have better customer service in which they do not steal from their customers.

MISLEADING APP DESCRIPTION
After being assured that UpPromote included a referral feature I installed the app and started setting it up.
After 25 years as an online marketing consultant to companies in 40+ countries, I understand the clear distinction between an AFFILIATE and a REFERRAL APP:
A referral app provides once-off rewards to existing customers for introducing new customers - if the new customer places an order then a reward or commission is granted to both parties ON THE FIRST ORDER ONLY.
An affiliate app may provide a once-off reward new customers introduced by the affiliate, but the affiliate continues to earn rewards (normally a commission) on all that new customer's purchases for a fixed period or indefinitely.

Because Referral Rewards are only paid out once, they can be very large 9even loss-making) as they only happen once and are regarded as the cost of acquiring the new customer.

Having signed up for a $29/mo paid UpPromote plan I discovered that the "Referral" program they were providing only allowed rewards that repeated on all future purchase by the new client.

This is DISHONEST MARKETING - that is not a referral program but rather an affiliate program. I queried this and they demanded I triple my monthly payment to $89 to enable a referral program with once-off rewards.
Then the company claimed that as their customers often incorrectly referred to an affiliate program as a referral program, they felt justified in also incorrectly labeling their $29 plan as a referral program.

I have over the years used dozens of both affiliate and referral apps and was delighted to find a combined app, but BEWARE - this company is being dishonest (and IMHO perhaps fraudulent in their marketing claims.

I lost faith in this company and no longer trust them or want to do business with them and am now uninstalling UpPromote from my Shopify store.

Now the company is asking for a meeting - I wasted so many hours setting the app up and testing it to find it did not do what they promised that am not inclined to waste more time teaching them what it should do.

Our company is looking for affiliates. Non of the affiliates we contacted in the Uppromote Market Place had any interest in our product, even with a very fair % commission. Invites were submitted to over thirty affiliates.
The app appears to be more suited for those that already have affiliates, and not for companies that are starting with affiliates or are looking for more affiliates. It's too bad as the app is user friendly and appears to function perfectly for companies that have affiliates.

I’ve uninstalled the app but they still charged me $69, this is unacceptable, I don’t recommend

This app has done nothing for us. In the first few months something was missing. We were charged without getting notified that there was an issue. This was fixed. In the subsequent months still nothing was happening; we weren't getting any referrals or sales from this app. For us this app was waste of money. Maybe for other stores it works; looks like this app is getting high ratings. I don't know how. We didn't get much support to replicate other stores' success, if indeed this app boosted their sales.

$800 a year GROSSLY OVER PRICED!
WARNING! Those who upgrade to this FROM THE $300 OPTION get offered ZERO discount... That is UNLESS you cancel the next day and they knock off $150 off THE $800, if you select "Was too expensive" - What about those that just buy it? Oh, they get nothing by the way.

For me, that's a disgrace in terms of business-to-business ethics

The basic set of features are lacking, you cannot even setup auto payment to paypal with the basic version, and the accounting options are all greyed out/missing, or constantly saying upgrade to pro next to them - If you have any subscription-based products where it requires a VERY simple , 3 minute bit of code, they force you to go onto pro which $800 a year