Shopify Collabs

It's great for being a free app that allows us to manage influencers and also give influencers a way to manage their brands. However, it's extremely lacking some crucial features: 1) Can't add members manually, especially via a CSV file import, 2) Never in a million years would I know to click the Affiliates heading to see where to add new affiliate tiers, 3) Never in a million years would I know to click on the onboarding checklist to edit the application page. The UX is so strange in this app. So many things that are weirdly buried and lacking features, but can't complain because it's FREE.

Considering it's free I'm giving it 5 stars! Quite easy to use from the brand side. I'll echo the comments of the others that the registration needs to be EFFORTLESS for the creators. Also, if there were a tool to see who of our existing customers has a Shopify Collabs creator account that would make a lot of sense. And a step further would be who from our IG following has a creator account. This is a great start and with some tweaks I think we can base our influencer/affiliate marketing in Shopify Collabs. Without improvements we'll likely move to one of the big name platforms soon. Hope this helps.

If you regularly work with influencers and want to build a strong community of affiliates, I can't recommend Dovetale enough. It's only been a few weeks, and Dovetale has been a breath of fresh air! To have our affiliates commission/performance on one platform and easily gift products connected to our store has been a game-changer. We've also received really positive feedback from our affiliates, who can now access their sales/performance at any time. Lastly, the application component is so fantastic! I've really enjoyed reading our applicant's answers and learning little details we wouldn't have known otherwise. Overall, we are extremely happy to have discovered Dovetale and I see them going very far.

Four stars, because in theory, this is a great app. But there is some important functionality/information that is just not clear - happy to update rating if Shopify can help with deeper understanding.

- can you outreach a creator directly from within the recruit tab? We can locate the creators we want to work with, add them to favorites, but there's no way to outreach them other then via an email list upload?? Something is missing.
- what are the sharing requirements for creators - for example, do they just get a link that can be shared in link.bio, or are there other ways that they can share their link? Need more clarification on this.
- What is the difference between members and affiliates?

Very hopeful for this app!

ABSOLUTELY FANTASTIC software - highly recommend it.
Previously called DOVETALE & taken over by Shopify - there have been a few teething challenges during that transition, BUT the support team is super friendly & 'onnit' to improve & make a better experience.
FOR CERTAIN this software COLLABS has been a game changer for our affiliate program & helping our internal team execute and work with WORLD CLASS athletes & professional sportsmen & women ALL AROUND THE WORLD!

I highly recommend COLLABS. it's easy to use. There will be a lot of features coming out this year I believe & Shopify sees the importance of such a software service

We are delighted to be part of the Dovetale/COLLABS community & will keep using & supporting what they do & what they bring out.
Thanks, Team

Seriously amazing. Can't believe this app is free. We were paying $10k per year for Sideqik before we found this. The "recruiting" features could be more robust but heck, it's free. I love that you can change the discount code but keep the same affiliate link. Everything tracks well too. Love how seamlessly this app works with Shopify's back end. It automatically applies the coupon code when someone visits an affiliate link too. Love the tier system as well. I'd love to see a direct deposit payout method added. Would also love to see the ability to create dynamic coupon codes that automatically change every so often but tie to the same affiliate link. That would prevent Honey and Capital One Shopping from snagging our influencers' codes. I'd give this app 10 stars if I could. Thank you so much for making this!!!!

We made the decision to switch over to Dovetale from another affiliate/influencer management platform and it has been one of the best company decision's we've made thus far. Dovetale has a beautiful onboarding experience for our affiliates and we've seen a higher affiliate sign-up rate as a result. The platform also has much cleaner and more sophisticated dashboard views to track affiliate analytics. Following up with affiliate influencers has been significantly easier as a result. We also love using the Discover feature to look for additional affiliates to join our ambassador program. Previously we were paying for 2 separate tools and now we're saving a ton more money by just using Dovetale for affiliate management & sourcing. Our entire team has been highly impressed with the responsiveness of the Dovetale team. They respond to all of our feature requests / suggestions in a timely manner, while providing timeline estimates on when new features will ship. It's been so refreshing to see such amazing customer service. We've been telling everyone in our network to make the switch to Dovetale. It's such a no-brainer.

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.

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.

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.