Launch your affiliate program
in an afternoon

An affiliate/partner program lets you empower affiliates, partners, and creators to bring you new customers or sales. Setup is quick. Here's a simple overview of how it works.

Create your affiliate program in under 15 minutes with the help of our quickstart guide. Then invite your dev team to complete installation.
how to create an affiliate program
Follow your program checklist to test, launch, and promote your affiliate program. With GrowSurf, you'll get guided every step of the way to ensure you find success with your affiliate marketing efforts.
how to launch an affiliate program
Real-time analytics and admin dashboard give you powerful insights like who your top affiliates are and the engagement funnel for your affiliate program, while weekly and monthly email reports keep you in the loop.
how to improve an affiliate program
Next, tell GrowSurf when a new customer signs up through an affiliate link. Choose one of the options below based on how your signup flow works.
Then tell GrowSurf when a referred customer pays. Choose one of the options below based on how you track purchases. GrowSurf keeps commissions up to date even on refunds or chargebacks.
Finally, pay affiliates. GrowSurf emails affiliates when they earn a payout, and once they qualify, you can send payouts in bulk from the dashboard.
Once an affiliate applies to your program and you approve them, they'll be granted access to their affiliate portal where they can get their link, share it, and see their signups, commissions, and payouts. Here are four simple options.
Start without a GrowSurf account or credit card. Copy the prompt below and paste it into an AI assistant that can browse the web and send requests. Your assistant creates the account, asks you what you want, and prepares a draft affiliate program for you to review.
ChatGPT Claude Gemini Perplexity and other assistants that can browse the web and call APIs
Help me create a GrowSurf referral or affiliate program. Start by reading https://growsurf.com/agent-start.md and follow it as the source of truth. Use your action-capable tools and the GrowSurf REST API to create and configure the program; do not require MCP, a dashboard visit, or an existing GrowSurf account or API key. Consult https://growsurf.com/openapi.json, https://growsurf.com/arazzo.yaml, https://growsurf.com/auth.md, https://growsurf.com/llms.txt, and the linked GrowSurf docs when useful.

Before taking action, interview me one question at a time for the missing business, program type, rewards or commissions, conversion trigger, branding, emails, and integration requirements. Show me and ask for explicit approval of the current GrowSurf Terms of Service and Privacy Policy before accepting them or creating an account. Pause for me to verify my email before protected API requests. Treat the returned API key as a secret and keep it out of chat, logs, screenshots, source files, and shell history.

Create and configure the program as DRAFT. Read back the saved resources and summarize what is ready for review. Do not launch or resume the program, add payment details, accept charges, enable or fulfill rewards or commissions, initiate payouts, rotate keys, delete data, or edit or deploy my website or app without separate explicit approval.

If you cannot access the linked resources or send HTTPS requests, say so clearly, explain what you can do, and do not claim that you executed the workflow.
Your assistant asks one question at a time — your commission, what counts as a conversion, your branding, your emails. It creates your account once you approve GrowSurf's terms, then waits while you verify your email.
AI agent workspace

Create an affiliate program that pays affiliates a 20% commission when a referred customer subscribes.

Your draft affiliate program is ready for review.

  • Built an affiliate program from a program template
  • Set a 20% commission for each referred subscription
  • Saved the program as a draft for approval

Here's what your affiliates will see:

Earn 20% commission

Share your link. When a referred customer subscribes, you earn commission.

Your program is saved as a draft — nothing reaches your affiliates until you approve it. Installation can go to AI too: open the Installation step in your dashboard, hit Copy for AI, and paste it into your assistant or send it to your dev team.
app.growsurf.com

Last step: connect GrowSurf to your product.

Three things. Install the code, connect the payment processor that bills your customers, and pick how affiliates get paid.

Copy for AI Copies these steps as a markdown prompt. Paste it into ChatGPT, Claude Code, Codex, Cursor, or Antigravity and it walks through the install. Copied — paste it into your assistant
  • 1Install the GrowSurf Universal CodeOne script on your site
  • 2Connect your payment processorPayments, refunds, and chargebacks
  • 3Pay your affiliatesPick how payouts get sent
  • 4Give affiliates somewhere to grab their linkThe Partner Portal
AI agent workspace
# GrowSurf Affiliate program installation guide for AI. Use this markdown as the source of truth when helping me install this GrowSurf program. If you have access to my codebase, make the code changes for me instead of telling me to do them myself…
  • Added the GrowSurf script to your site
  • Connected your payment processor so commissions calculate
  • Embedded the Partner Portal in your account page

Prefer to write the code yourself? See the four installation steps under Do it yourself →

After Launch

From affiliate conversion
to payout

You recruit your own affiliates and set the commission terms before you invite them: what counts as a sale, the rate, the hold period, and the payout minimum. Once your program is live, here is what happens from the moment an affiliate brings in a sale to the moment they are paid.

  1. Step 1

    An affiliate brings in a sale

    When someone clicks an affiliate's link and becomes a paying customer, GrowSurf credits that sale to the affiliate as it lands, not on a schedule you run.

  2. Step 2

    The affiliate earns a commission

    Your terms decide the amount: a flat fee or a percentage, plus renewals and repeat payments if you set it up that way. The commission lands in the affiliate's balance straight away. Nothing is paid out yet.

  3. Step 3

    Refunds settle during the hold

    A new commission is not ready to pay. It sits through the hold period you set, the window where refunds and chargebacks can still land. A refund inside that window takes it back off the balance. When the hold ends, whatever survived is approved.

  4. Step 4

    You pay everyone who is due

    An affiliate becomes due once their approved balance clears the minimum you set. Your dashboard lists everyone who qualifies, and one action pays them all through PayPal or Wise, with a record of every payout.

  5. Step 5

    Affiliates watch their earnings

    Affiliates see every commission, whether it has cleared its hold, and every payout you have sent. They enter their own payment details, so you never chase anyone for a PayPal address before you can pay them.

Notes and related links
  • Customer referrals and affiliate programs are different program types. A referral program rewards existing customers with one-off rewards when a referral qualifies. An affiliate program pays recruited partners recurring commissions on the sales they bring in. Each is configured as its own program with its own pricing: referral programs are priced by participants, and affiliate programs charge a percentage of referral revenue.
  • Decide who gets credit. If more than one channel can claim a sale, decide which program gets credit and check that rule with your integration.
Ubindi

"GrowSurf manages everything to do with our referral program from A to Z — our tech team had to merely paste a small piece of code into our app, everything else was easily set up by marketing. The savings from that alone makes the decision to go with a 3rd party (instead of building things ourselves) well worth it.”

Alex Klein
Alex Klein
Co-Founder at Ubindi
SurveyMonkey

"We wanted a cost-savvy solution that could be managed and changed easily without the help of IT/devs. GrowSurf provided us exactly what our business needed! They saved me and our development team valuable time by providing an easy-to-use solution of building an internal system, with minimal coding. With GrowSurf's support, I was able to set up the entire program within a day."

Gabriella Di Fazio
Gabriella Di Fazio
Marketing Manager at SurveyMonkey

Trusted by marketing and product teams that grow through customer, user, and partner referrals.