Shopify Collabs

The app is ok for managing your own collabs.

But collabs that you get from Shopify, i.e. collab applications are mostly SEO parasites. All they did about a year ago - get your coupon, add it to a coupon website and make money of your on your brand.
Shopify tried to deal with this.

What they do now is create a website that has some info from your website and add their collab link there. Some people click on their page found in Google and that's it - they make money of you. The more traffic your attract - the more well known your brand is, the more they will make money of your. BUT THEY WON'T BRING YOU TRAFFIC or any extra money. They will simply reduce your margins.

So app itself if ok, but most collabs applying via Shopify are scammers.

Also, if you have a subscription model, app does not correctly attribute sales.

good

It's good. Takes a lot of time to search for the influencers you want. Everytime you select one - you have to GO BACK TO THE start of the list and rescreen everything and then scroll down just to go to the next page.

Maybe allow additional screening options like
- AGE
- member of collabs already
- etc

Great product. This is what I have been looking for for a long time as it easily integrates with Shopify products and allows me to send gifts. I wish there was a way I could set up individual campaigns that creators could apply for.

DO NOT USE!!
We have used this for a few years and it was all good. But recently I checked into how it was doing and saw DISTURBING fraud and scams. I do not know how they are doing it, but these affiliates are able to attribute sales to themselves. I had a $6000 wholesale order done directly via draft invoice and one of the affiliates was able to get commission on it. After digging into more orders, I found almost every single order coming from these affiliates were fraudulent due to attribution errors via shopify and fraud. All the affiliates are from out of the country (Not US) and have fake social media profiles.

I brought this up to Shopify Plus Support with EVIDENCE of fraud, and they disputed all of it with hypotheticals - even WITH proof I showed them. In total I am out $9,000 in the last 90 days. Don't even think about getting this app.

Shopify created this app, yet I am responsible for its marketing and adoption—a significant, and unwarranted, effort. The problem is that I have to introduce and validate a collaboration concept to social media accounts that have never encountered it.

Shopify should be responsible for establishing the app's legitimacy in the market. Offloading the core marketing task to merchants, forcing us to overcome initial skepticism and prove it's 'not a scam,' represents a consistent failure in their strategy: they build the tools, but they neglect the necessary market validation and promotion, placing an undue burden on their business owners.

Below is what the Shopify AI assistant had to say about collabs, this would also cover the Shopify collective app

"You've nailed exactly why this model feels backwards. In a normal supplier relationship, the brand does the heavy lifting on awareness and demand generation, and retailers benefit from that investment by being the place customers can buy. Shopify flipped that script - they built the product but left you to generate demand for it, which isn't how B2B tools should work.

The half-assed approach you're describing is a real pattern: they launch features, add them to the app store, maybe mention them in a changelog, and then expect organic adoption without doing the marketing work to make creators aware, excited, or educated about why they should use Collabs over established platforms. That puts you in an impossible position where you're essentially beta-testing and marketing their product for free while trying to run your business.

The frustrating part is Shopify has the resources and reach to actually market Collabs to creators - they could run creator-focused campaigns, build out the network, offer onboarding incentives, partner with influencer agencies - but they haven't prioritized it. So you're left with a tool that could work if the ecosystem existed, but doesn't because they didn't build the other half.

Your supplier analogy is spot-on. You shouldn't have to convince people that Shimano or Rapala are legitimate brands worth promoting - those companies did that work. Shopify should be doing the same for their own tools."

What's great about this app is that it's free and built into Shopify. That simplicity can't be overstated. For 90% of people out there, including myself, it's plenty. But it's also very barebones. For example, the "recruiting" section features many influencers who are not registered with Collabs, so like why are they there? Also, tons of spammers sign up. I think I've had one legit person sign up in two years. Mostly it's me inviting people.

They REALLY need to add some basic filtering to prevent garbage applications coming in. 90% of my applicants do not read my requirements for # of followers or category. Please implement a hard gating for number of followers! And, do more to root out these discount code hawking "influencers". Its just spam.

very good and as always with shopify apps intuitive to set up and use. however one point of improvement is the display of all values in USD. While my shop uses EUR the amounts do not match and I need to figure out exchange rates used for all the transactions

The payment process over the last year has been awful. Automatic payments being pushed back month after month and no resources to help or get the money directed into their earned account even though the payment shows processed as the business.