ReferralCandy pricing explained: What you pay and when to change plans

Pricing checked October 26, 2026. All amounts are in USD.

When I explain ReferralCandy’s pricing on a demo, I help the merchant work out which plan will give them the lowest total cost for their referral sales, and sometimes that means choosing a plan with a higher monthly subscription fee, but not always.

The first thing that I want merchants to understand is that every plan includes all of our product features and unlimited usage. You will never have to upgrade to a higher plan to use more or better features because you’ll have access to all of them from day one of your free trial, regardless of the plan you choose. What changes is the combination of the monthly base fee and the success fee on eligible referral or affiliate sales, and as those sales grow, a higher base fee with a lower percentage can become the cheaper option.

Here’s how to work out which plan makes sense for your store.

What does ReferralCandy cost?

Our monthly plans have two parts:

The base fee is fixed for your plan and the success fee depends on the eligible sales your program generates during the billing period (if you’re reading this article from the future –how is it?– you can check the current rates on our pricing page in case they’ve changed).

Once again, all product features including referral programs, affiliate programs and our newest customer loyalty program are available across all plans with unlimited usage.

Why do we charge a success fee?

I get this question a lot, especially when merchants are comparing ReferralCandy to apps like Smile, Yotpo or MentionMe. My response? We want you to have the tools to run your program from day one, with the variable part of our fee tied to the actual lift in sales it generates.

Apps that have a fixed monthly subscription can sound like the most rational thing to choose until you realize that they always come with limits that affect what you can do. For example, Smile’s pricing lists one integration and 500 monthly orders on Essential, compared with unlimited integrations and 2,500 orders on Growth, which means that the features you need and your own store’s order volume can affect the plan you need. And we think that’s the wrong approach.

Our approach gives you access to referral and affiliate campaigns across plans, along with integrations and API access. Shopify merchants can also run loyalty campaigns using store credit, and you can choose the plan based on your own economics and margins while using all of our capabilities from the very beginning.

We want to help you generate conversions and earn a success fee when eligible sales happen, and if your program generates no referral or affiliate sales during a billing period, your success fee is zero.

That means you should compare the complete cost compared to your expected results, nothing else.

Which sales does the success fee apply to?

The success fee applies to the first three purchases made by each new customer referred through your program, and purchases that happen after the third don’t incur that fee anymore. Also important to note that your store’s unrelated sales ARE NOT part of the calculation. We calculate the fee using the purchase subtotal after discounts, before tax and shipping (our success-fee guide explains the calculation).

For a simple illustration, suppose a newly referred customer places five orders, each with a $100 subtotal. That customer has spent $500, but only the first $300 matters for our success-fee calculation. On the Grow plan (3.5% success fee), the fee across those first three orders is $10.50.

This is why I typically ask merchants for information that can help me estimate how much referral revenue they can expect, and then recommend a plan based on that.

When does upgrading save you money?

The calculation is:

ReferralCandy’s cost for the period = base fee + (eligible sales × success-fee rate).

Let’s compare plans at the same referral and affiliate sales level.

Let’s say that you’re generating $1,000/mo in referral or affiliate sales, Grow’s base fee is $40 higher than Basic’s, but its success fee is $70 lower, so you save $30 overall by choosing Grow.

At $10,000/mo in referral or affiliate sales, Scale’s base fee is $170 higher than Grow’s, but the lower percentage saves $200 in success fees, leaving your total $30 lower on Scale. And the Scale plan only gets cheaper compared to Grow as your referral sales keep increasing.

That’s the reason I recommend an upgrade when a merchant reaches the right volume: staying on the smaller plan would be the expensive choice.

Using the current rates, the break-even points are:

• Basic to Grow: about $571.43 in monthly referral and affiliate sales.
• Grow to Scale: $8,500.
• Scale to Enterprise: $44,000.

Basic can therefore make sense while your referral and affiliate sales are low, or you’re just getting started. But a store with expensive products could reach the next threshold with only a handful of referral sales – so average order value can matter as much as the number of customers referred.

Can you change plans as sales change?

Yes! ReferralCandy’s plans are month to month, with no annual commitment or contracts. You can request an upgrade or downgrade as your needs change, or cancel if the program isn’t working for you.

Plan changes take effect at your next billing cycle, with the first invoice after a change combining the new plan’s base fee for the upcoming period with success fees at the old rate for the period just completed.

If your business has predictable seasonal peaks, one smart thing to do is review your plan ahead of them. After the peak, check whether a lower base fee makes sense again and use expected eligible sales for the next period when making that decision.

For example, one of our merchants sells garden products for which referrals typically spike during spring and summer, before quieting down in fall and winter. Since they’ve been using ReferralCandy for years, they adjust their success fee before and after their busy referral season.

How I’d choose a starting plan

Start with a realistic estimate of eligible referral sales for the first billing period (roughly – are you expecting more or less than $600, $8,000 or $40k?), then calculate the total under each plan and choose the lowest-cost option that fits your service needs.

If you’re still testing the program, you don’t have to predict its long-term performance perfectly, because you can use the product features on your initial plan, review the actual results, and adjust for the next billing cycle.

The question I’d come back to is simple: at the sales volume you expect, which combination of base fee and success fee costs you least?

If this is something you want to talk about; you can book a time with me in the link below.