★★★★★4.9 on Shopify · 1,530+ reviews

Referral marketing, built for Shopify brands.

Your best customers are already telling friends about you. ReferralCandy turns every one of those mentions into an attributed, rewarded sale — without you running it.

On another platform? ReferralCandy works there too.

Two illustrated friends sitting on a couch with coffee mugs, one recommending a brand to the other
How it works

Three steps from a happy customer to a referral sale.

Every part runs in the background — the link, the share, the attribution, the reward.

1

Customer checks out, gets a referral link

The link appears on the thank-you page, waits in their Shopify customer-account block, and rides along in the next email you send.

2

They share the link or a coupon code

Their friend lands on your store and the discount auto-applies at checkout — whether they followed the link or typed the code in by hand.

3

ReferralCandy attributes, rewards, logs

The sale gets attributed to the right advocate, both rewards fire, and the revenue lands in your dashboard. No spreadsheets, no manual reconciliation.

Why it works

The math is different to every other channel.

Paid ads bill you for impressions and hope. Referrals bill you on completed sales — and the customers who arrive already trust the person recommending you.

Trust comes built in

A friend's recommendation lands harder than any ad — and converts higher because the buyer already trusts the source.

You only pay on the sale

No spend on impressions, no risk on clicks. Reward fires only when a referred friend completes a purchase.

Every customer is another potential referrer

As your customer base grows, your referral channel grows with it — without the ad-spend curve.

Success stories

Real merchants, measurable referrals.

Three brands that turned word of mouth into a steady share of monthly revenue. Stores using ReferralCandy typically see 2–10% of monthly revenue come from referrals — top performers go higher.

27%of MiaoMiao's monthly revenue comes through referral sales.

ReferralCandy made it easy for our customers to share MiaoMiao with their friends. The hands-off setup means we can focus on the product while referrals keep adding up in the background.

Kelly Wu
CEO · MiaoMiao
24%referral rate at Atmoph — seven times the industry average.

Our customers love the product enough to tell their friends. ReferralCandy turned that goodwill into a measurable channel that runs alongside everything else we do.

Tokinari Shioya
Sales Lead · Atmoph
$1.5M+generated from Branch Basics' referral program — tiered store credit, all on autopilot.

Word of mouth was always our biggest channel; we just couldn't measure it. ReferralCandy turned every recommendation into store credit our customers could spend back with us — and the program compounded from there.

Branch Basics
Wellness & clean home · Shopify
Integrations

Connect your store, however it's built.

One-click install on Shopify, BigCommerce, and WooCommerce. Email connect for Magento. Custom stacks plug in via API or a JavaScript snippet — your onboarding manager handles the wire-up.

Shopify
WooCommerce
BigCommerce
Adobe Commerce (Magento)
Custom stores: API or JS connection
Rewards

Reward your customers in whatever currency fits your brand.

Coupon codes and store credit are the most popular for referrals — they keep the customer shopping with you. Cash payouts work better for affiliate-style partners. You can run both in parallel.

30%
Percentage discount

Off the friend's next order.

$15
Dollar discount

Flat amount off any cart.

$20
Store credit

Applied at checkout. Most-used for referrals.

$5
Cash payout

PayPal, ACH, Venmo. Most-used for affiliate / influencer.

1×
Free product

"Refer 3 friends, get a free X." Strong fit for beauty, wellness, and consumables.

Cash payouts run through PayPal, ACH bank transfer, Venmo, virtual debit cards, and 30+ other methods via . Gift cards and charity donations also available.

Tiered rewards

FlexiTiers: bigger rewards as advocates do more.

Same coupon every time gets stale by referral three. Tiers keep customers chasing the next reward — and let you save the best incentives for the customers driving the most revenue.

  • 1–4 referrals$20 store credit per friend
  • 5–9 referrals$50 store credit + free product at 5
  • 10+ referrals$100 store credit + exclusive product drop

Set thresholds and rewards however you want — by referral count, by revenue generated, or by both.

Already in your stack

Pipe referral data into the marketing tools you already run.

Klaviyo, Mailchimp, GA4, Google Ads, Meta — every referral event (enrolled, shared, purchased, returned) and every advocate property (referral link, tier, count) flows through to your stack. Use them to trigger flows, segment campaigns, and attribute paid spend.

Klaviyo
Mailchimp
Google Analytics
Google Ads
Meta
AdRoll
Subscription apps

Recurring orders, recurring referrals.

Connect ReferralCandy to your subscription app and the same coupon can run on subscription purchases, the same advocate keeps earning on every renewal, and the referral block can live inside the subscription portal.

Recharge
Skio
RecurPay
Awtomic
Stay AI
SEAL Subscriptions
Loop Subscriptions
Bold Subscriptions
Subi
PayWhirl
Smartrr
…and more

Subscription-only coupon codes, recurring commissions on renewals, and a thank-you-page widget that fires on every order — not just the first.

Inside ReferralCandy

Four product surfaces, one referral program.

From the first share prompt to the fraud check before payout — everything the customer sees and everything you need to run the program.

Referral nudges

Three places your customers will actually see the ask.

The post-purchase thank-you page (the highest-converting surface), the referral block inside their Shopify customer account, and an embeddable widget for your homepage, product, or cart pages. Three places where customers already are — not buried in an email nobody opens.

Fully customisable branding

Emails and pages that match your brand.

Easily customize content and visuals without touching code.

Edit referral pages, popups, and email templates inline. Drop in your logo, your fonts, your colours — everything the customer sees stays on-brand.

Real-time analytics

See referral revenue the moment it lands.

Track referral revenue, top advocates, funnel from share to purchase, and what your top referrers are saying on social. Export to CSV, sync events to GA4 and Meta.

Fraud detection

Catch self-referrals and leaked codes before they cost you.

Auto-flag self-referrals (matching email, name, IP), velocity spikes from a single advocate, and codes leaking to scrapers like Honey or coupon sites. Set a purchase review period so refunded orders don't pay out.

Support

Frequently asked questions

The questions merchants ask most before signing up.

What is referral marketing?
Referral marketing is acquiring new customers through your existing customers. You give your customer a unique link or code, they share it with a friend, the friend buys, and both get a reward. ReferralCandy automates the link, the attribution, and the reward fulfillment.
What's a good referral rate for an ecommerce store?
The average across our merchants is around 5.5% of monthly revenue from referrals. Top performers exceed 20% — MiaoMiao at 27%, Atmoph at 24% (about 7× the industry benchmark for their category). Most stores see results in the 2–10% range within the first 90 days.
What rewards work best for a referral program?
For referrals specifically: store credit and percentage-off coupons — they keep the advocate spending with you. Free-product tiers ("refer 3 friends, get a free X") work especially well in beauty, wellness, and consumables. Cash payouts work better when you're rewarding affiliates and influencers, not customers. Tiers (bigger rewards after milestones) consistently outperform a single flat reward.
What's the best way to run a referral program on Shopify?
Install ReferralCandy from the Shopify App Store, drag the post-purchase block onto your thank-you page, drop the referral block into your Shopify customer accounts, and set up a Klaviyo flow to send the referral link in your post-purchase email sequence. That's the four-surface setup most successful programs run.
How does referral marketing compare to paid ads?
Paid ads charge you per impression and click whether or not anyone buys. Referral marketing only costs you when a new customer completes a purchase — and the payout is sized by you, not by an ad-network auction. Most merchants we talk to use their Meta or Google CAC as the benchmark for sizing the referral reward: if your blended CAC is $30, a $20 reward is still cheaper acquisition than paid, and the customer arrives already trusting your brand.
What's the difference between referral marketing and affiliate marketing?
Audience and intent. Referral programs reward your existing customers for telling their friends — usually with store credit or coupons. Affiliate programs reward content creators, influencers, or B2B partners for driving traffic and sales — usually with cash commissions and unique coupon codes. ReferralCandy runs both side by side, in one install.
Does ReferralCandy do loyalty too?
No — and on purpose. We're focused entirely on referrals. That said, store credit (one of our reward types) gives you most of what merchants use a points program for: customers earn credit for the action you want them to take, and they spend it back on your store. Many of our merchants pair us with a dedicated loyalty app and keep the two programs separate.
We're already on Mention Me / Friendbuy / Smile / Refersion. What does switching look like?
Most migrations take an afternoon with your onboarding manager. Import your existing advocate list via CSV, recreate your reward structure, install the post-purchase block on your thank-you page, and set up the Klaviyo flow. We've migrated stores from Mention Me, Friendbuy, Smile, Refersion, Okendo, Loyaltylion, Yotpo, and custom-built programs.

Can't find the answer? Chat with our friendly team.

On another platform? ReferralCandy works there too.

Quick set-up video

Watch the five-minute crash course on referral marketing.

How to launch a referral, affiliate, or influencer program on your Shopify store — the short version.

On another platform? ReferralCandy works there too.