UpPromote Affiliate Marketing

Disappointing Creator Discovery — Expensive, Poor Filtering, and Wasted Time
I installed UpPromote for my Shopify store to build a commission-based affiliate program. While the basic affiliate management features seem functional, my experience with the paid Creator Discovery add-on has been extremely disappointing.
1. You pay to discover whether a creator is even relevant.
Creator Discovery limits the number of detailed profiles you can view. The Starter add-on costs $39/month and includes just 35 profile views. Essential information, such as audience geography and estimated fake followers, is often only available after consuming one of those views.
2. The “Creator location: United States” filter is misleading in practice.
I specifically need creators who can reach U.S. customers. Yet several creators identified as U.S.-based had surprisingly small American audiences. Some had only around 12%, 27%, or 36% of their followers in the United States.
I understand that creator location and audience location are different metrics. The problem is that there is no audience-country filter available in the search interface, so you must spend your limited profile views just to discover whether a creator reaches your target market.
3. Search filters are inadequate.
Finding relevant creators is unnecessarily difficult. Searching for specific topics such as hair serum or supplements produced no results with my other filters applied. Removing those restrictions returned a large number of poorly targeted profiles that required extensive manual screening.
4. Engagement rates can look impressive while actual video reach is extremely low.
I found creators with engagement rates above 7% whose Reels averaged fewer than 700 views. Without carefully examining individual reports, these accounts can appear much more commercially promising than they actually are.
5. There is no clear indication of which creator profiles you've already reviewed.
This is a basic workflow feature that should exist in a paid discovery tool. When browsing dozens or hundreds of candidates, it becomes difficult to track previously inspected profiles and avoid wasting limited views.
After spending considerable time reviewing creators, I found very few strong matches for my U.S.-focused affiliate program. The combination of limited profile views, insufficient audience targeting, weak discovery filters, and poor workflow management makes this add-on frustrating and inefficient.
My recommendation to Shopify merchants: think carefully before paying extra for Creator Discovery. UpPromote needs better audience-location filtering, transparent reach metrics, and proper tracking of previously viewed creators. For a small business trying to build an affiliate program without a large influencer marketing budget, this experience has been particularly disappointing.

merchants cannot select individual products from the dashboard and set different commission rates. the app charges a commission on every sale, which makes it expensive for merchants at scale. frustratingly

Don’t get. This is a total waste of time. Somehow got auto billed $89 when Inever used the app. I had supposedly tried it 6/7 months prior , worthless and didn’t work. . I asked them to refund me since the $89 was for serviced not rendered and they basically told men to beat it and take a walk. I wouldn’t waste your time dow loading. Just a waste of money. .

Terrible experience
Cancelled as wasn't currently using and got charged for 2 more months

BEWARE

Just remove the app - do not rely on them actually cancelling their end

There are much better applications than this one available. This one is MASSIVELY OUTDATED, compared to the many features and functionalities available with other apps. Also, Support doesn't speak English, so they will not communicate directly or quickly. Email or chat replies come with LONG lag times between questions and responses.

Basic functionality is woefully lacking. I was on a PAID plan, not a free plan, but the starter tier of approx $25-30/month, and this is what I experienced:
1) NO ABILITY TO PAY Creators in-app.
It's all MANUAL, tracking the payment that happens OUTSIDE the app only, for the free and lower-cost starter plans. Basic functionality that other apps provide, this app WITHHOLDS to force you into an upgrade.

2) NO ABILITY TO COMMUNICATE with creators in-app.
You can only "save" a creator profile to a list. However, they WITHHOLD the email from the "save", require you to manually search-populate a blank email field, and they do not offer the capability to email the creator.

3) NO METRICS ON CREATORS.
The withhold both the email, as mentioned, and any useful metrics on the creator besides follower count and @handle, forcing an upgrade to a more expensive plan to view.

4) ONLY 5 SEARCHES PER CYCLE.
If your search results in 1 creator, then that still leaves you with only 4 searches left.

5) EACH PAGE OF CREATORS = 1 SEARCH
If your search results in 150 creators, but the app only shows 10 creators per page, then you do NOT get the benefit of all 150 creators from that search. NO, you only get the 10 creators on that page. And when you click the next page, to see the next 10 from your search, that counts as 1 additional search. EFFECTIVELY, YOU WILL NEVER SEE MORE THAN A HANDFUL OF CREATORS PER MONTH BECAUSE OF THE SEARCH LIMITATION AND THAT ONLY A FEW CREATORS DISPLAY ON EACH PAGE OF A SEARCH. I CONSIDER THIS TO BE MISLEADING MARKETING, PERHAPS EVEN FRAUDULENT MISREPRESENTATION. You only get "unlimited" capabilities if you are in the highest-tier-- again, instead of serving the customer, forcing the PAID customer into the higher plans jut to access basic functionality that other apps provide for the same price as the lower-priced paid plan.

6) UNINSTALLING / UNSUBSCRIBING DOES NOT END THE PAYMENTS
If your cycle starts on the 12th of the month, and you uninstall/cancel on the 16th of the month, you will not only pay for the full month (no pro-rated return). YOU WILL BE CHARGED FOR 1 MONTH AFTER YOUR INSTALL DATE. This policy is NOT made clear on sign-up and differs from other apps. While not all apps will provide a pro-rated return/refund, they DO stop all future billing after the uninstall. THIS ALSO BOARDERS ON FRAUDULENT MISREPRESENTATION.

All-in-all-- this is a terrible app and I would not recommend it to anyone. I can only assume that the 3.7k 5 star ratings are either friend/family/paid or rewarded positive reviews.... or that those reviews are very old, from an era before all the advancement and launch of better apps... because there is no way on earth this is a 5 star app.

I don't review apps often. But I consider this to be a public service-- so other people are not mislead, as I was. The app offered to give me "credits", or free searches, in recognition of what was wrong and my dissatisfaction and to avoid a negative review. But, I prefer to be honest-- save some other people- than to benefit from some credits in an app that isn't worth my time to use.

Very bad UI and affiliates are not checked by the UpPromote team propoerly. I'm getting scam and trash affiliates. And the same affiliate is trying to submit with different emails. Disgusting app.

i uninstalled the day i paid to get my store back up and they still tried to charge me i need my refund...

What a scam this is! We never used the app, and even uninstalled it, and are STILL being charged a hefty monthly fee every month with no way of cancellation. We are now in contact with Shopify Support to try to find a solution and a refund. What a hassle!

UpPromote web pixel does not conform to Shopify legal requirements for respecting customer privacy. This app's lack of respect for a customer's data tracking consent is dangerous and will leave you open to lawsuits.

Customer support doesn't have any experience on how affiliate codes work and answer a google ads detection question. If you are going to offer a feature of detecting google ads, you should have some resources and an educated support team to answer my questions. NOT asking me to ask an affiliate that will deny any claim of using google ads.

Do better.