Shopify Collabs

For a feature as highly touted as this has been you would think that Shopify would have taken the time to get it right. The entire app is riddled with bugs and pain points. The entire experience needs to be vetted and troubleshot. I don't need to go into detail because so many of the issues have been called out in other critical reviews. I'm just here to encourage Shopify to allocate the resources to get this back on track. Moderator - please escalate this to the decision makers. And decision makers - please get on top of this asap as the holiday sales season is soon approaching.

Collabs is a great system for influencer/affiliate marketing. We have used other apps before and this has really taken the stress and hassle out of everything.
They are constantly evolving and we cannot wait to see what they have in-store next!

has a good potential to be one of the best apps out there. One thing that puts me off (and potential influencers) is the fact that you need to link your social medias when signing up. This is extremely annoying for people that want to join the program.

Have been using Dovetale for a few months now. Extremely user friendly and has helped our business find influencers easily. Priced great too!

Doesn't work with PayPal. Impossible to make a payment to influencers. It always returns with an error. This is unacceptable.

Update: 4 months later and new Collab members still have to create a Shopify account in order to onboard. A new feature lets brands manually add members, which sounded like it would be a great way to quickly onboard -- but turns out this feature STILL requires them to create an account in order to activate their affiliate code. Shopify, you're so great in other areas, this isn't you! Please make this app easier for our community to use!

Update 2: I really hope these reviews prevent others from having the negative experience with Collabs that we have had. We recently learned that creators are not paid by Shopify if they have made under $25 in commissions. How is this legal? Additionally, in order to get paid, creators must jump through multiple hoops, not only going through the sign-up process mentioned in my other Collabs reviews, but also by authorizing auto-payments in a very confusing process. This honestly seems designed to prevent creators from being paid. Again, this is not at all my general experience with Shopify, and I am so appalled by how Collabs/Dovetale has been run since the acquisition.

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If you're thinking about switching your influencer platform because you've heard Shopify Collabs is great, be careful! This used to be a great app with an easy onboarding process (hence all the buzz). But Shopify recently changed the onboarding process, requiring the influencer to sign up for a Shopify account and verify their email before they even land on the brand's application page (and then they need to apply for the brand too!). This has led to a big drop in influencer signups for us, and it seems like the same thing is happening with other brands. We went through a big hassle to switch to Shopify Collabs because it was easier and less complex than Refersion. Now we might need to switch back. What a disappointment.

It theory its a great idea... execution sucks! Talk about lost products, time and money...its like chasing around preschooler's to post something...some got the products and didn't even post...over a dozen sent out...zero sales... HARD PASS until they are held reliable!

Tutto bello e ben fatto, ma non si dovrebbe richiedere per forza l'iscrizione al creator su Shopfy. E' una frizione in più che frena tanti creator.

I love that the app is free and works well at tracking conversions as well as syncs up with ReCharge, our subscription app for recurring purchases/commissions. They've made some necessary updates already too which I love. I hope these can be next on the list as these are a few feature requests we need:
#1 - The ability for us to edit the promo code of our affiliate after they've been accepted if someone wants to change theirs. Right now there's no way for us to do that and it's super annoying.
#2 - The ability to ADD a purchase as a conversion to an affiliate's account. Right now there's no way to do that and having a manual option would be great since we know some conversions are coming from a specific affiliate based on the customer including their name in their application.
#3 - Being able to email our affiliate directly from the dashboard! My only option at the moment is to see if I can set up automation so I can do this on autopilot with my ESP.
#4 - The ability for us to upload and provide assets to our affiliates as a content hub if you will of the different sales/promotions/products we have that they can then use to promote our products.

Providing a very easy platform by which to provide products and/or discounts to people with special codes that can tie back to sales is an A+ 5 star experience. A couple of clicks and all automated payment is all you can ask for.

However, there is no visibility into post gifting even though you have all their info. There's no analytics. There's no backend. There's no feedback.

I should be able to click on their profile and see if they've posted anything related to my product.
I should be able to message people or even send email campaigns and promotions to all my ambassadors or subsets of them.
I should be able to rate people so that other brands can see who follows through and who drives sales.

I would be surprised if even 10% of the people actually post content. It also does not drive sales. I may get 1 sale for every 3 gifts. It is absolutely of no direct value economically.

But I do get some good content from here, and it's much easier than having to deal with endless instagram requests for products. But Shopify could make this infinitely more value almost immediately with very little effort.