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UpPromote and BixGrow are both affiliate apps built for Shopify stores. Each gives your affiliates tracking links and coupon codes, credits the right partner when an order comes in, and lets you pay commissions from the dashboard.
That shared ground makes them look interchangeable on paper. They aren't. The differences show up in how you recruit, how precisely you define a commissionable sale, and how many ways you can pay affiliates without leaving the app.
Read on to find out which is best for you (and whether there's an even better option out there)...
UpPromote fits Shopify brands that want to recruit actively – it pairs its Marketplace with built-in outreach tools and signup pages, and adds AI commission recommendations and scheduled PayPal payouts once you're on the right plan.
BixGrow fits Shopify brands that want their affiliate program to feel like part of the store. Signup pages embed in your storefront, referral emails can run through Klaviyo or Mailchimp, and you decide whether discounts, shipping, and taxes count toward a commission.
Where they differ: UpPromote gives you more ways to recruit affiliates and pay them in-app, including scheduled PayPal payouts and Wise bank transfers, while BixGrow keeps in-app payouts to PayPal and store credit, and puts its depth into commission rules and storefront integration.
However, both tools have a problem: they don't track the social content your affiliates publish, so you see the orders each partner drove but not the posts, Reels, or videos behind them. That's particularly an issue if you use your affiliate program as a way to generate content. If you want built-in content tracking, you need an alternative affiliate marketing platform like Modash.
Here's a quick look at how UpPromote and BixGrow compare (plus I've thrown Modash into the mix for good measure):
Both apps let you decide how much an affiliate earns per sale. But BixGrow focuses on defining the sale value a commission is calculated from, while UpPromote focuses on helping you pick a rate, then rewarding affiliates who hit targets.
BixGrow offers 3 default commission types:
You can also create multiple affiliate programs with different commission rules, which helps with affiliate program management by sorting affiliates into groups. Duplicating a program copies its commission rules and settings, but existing affiliates stay with the original program, so their relationships and performance history stay intact.
BixGrow's extra control is in what counts as the commissionable sale. You can match the commissionable sale value to the sale value shown on Shopify, or base it on the actual sale including discounts, shipping fees, and taxes.
UpPromote's commission tooling leans toward guidance and motivation. Its AI-powered assistant learns from 50,000+ successful affiliate programs to recommend commission rates and setup structures for your business.
The platform also supports performance bonuses that trigger when an affiliate reaches a target, such as $500 in total sales. When a bonus is generated, UpPromote adds an automatic comment in the order detail explaining why, so you and the affiliate can both see what earned it.
Modash lets you pay higher commissions for new customers and lower for repeat ones – you set one commission rate for a customer's first order and a different rate for repeat orders from customers an affiliate already brought in.
You can also calculate commissions only on fulfilled orders, and a hold period protects you from paying out on orders that get returned.
✍️ Bottom line: BixGrow wins on commission precision, letting you decide exactly which parts of an order – discounts, shipping, taxes – an affiliate earns commission on. UpPromote suits brands that would rather start from a recommended rate and then motivate affiliates with bonuses for hitting sales targets.
The core job is the same for any Shopify affiliate tracking app. A sale comes in through an affiliate's link or coupon code, and the right affiliate gets credit. The differences are in which routes match a sale to an affiliate, and where you can see the results.
UpPromote matches sales to affiliates in 4 ways:
UpPromote's marketplace describes this as an attribution system built to credit affiliates accurately, with tracking options that run from affiliate links to custom coupons.
For reporting outside the app, UpPromote lets you add UTM parameters to affiliate links so affiliate performance shows up in Google Analytics.
BixGrow tracks through customizable tracking links and coupons. It also records affiliate link clicks and supports tracking on headless Shopify stores.
The analytics side is where BixGrow takes a different route: it supports affiliate performance reporting through GA4 via Google Tag Manager or Facebook Pixel. That matters if your team already lives in GA4 or runs paid social, because affiliate-driven results can sit alongside your other channels rather than only inside the app.
BixGrow also keeps a Customers page listing every customer referred by an affiliate, so you can see which affiliate brought in which customer. Affiliates can generate links for individual products from their dashboard, in a standard version or a shortened version for social sharing, and you can hide that option if you want everyone promoting through a single default link.
With Modash, you don't have to learn a new tracking model – once your Shopify store is connected, sales come in through the same kind of links and codes, and the last creator touch gets the credit. If a customer uses both a tracking link and a discount code on the same order, the code owner gets the credit. Tracking doesn't rely on cookies alone, so attribution keeps working when a shopper has cookies blocked.
✍️ Bottom line: UpPromote keeps attribution inside the app – links, coupons, connected customers, and connected products – with Google Analytics reporting via UTMs as the outside view. BixGrow covers links and coupons and leans on GA4 and Facebook Pixel to put affiliate performance next to the rest of your marketing data.
Both UpPromote and BixGrow hand prospective affiliates a registration form, but they differ in where that form lives and what it asks for.
BixGrow lets you embed the affiliate signup or landing page directly into your storefront, so visitors can apply without clicking an external link. The Sign Up button in the affiliate portal can point to that embedded page, so applicants stay on your store from start to finish. You can also show your own logo, brand name, store domain, and favicon across the portal pages and affiliate accounts.
If you'd rather keep a hosted portal, BixGrow lets you pick your own subdomain on bixgrow.com. BixGrow has also added a commission calculator to the affiliate landing page, so prospective affiliates can estimate what they'd earn before they apply.
UpPromote's affiliate registration lives on UpPromote-hosted pages instead. The simplest version of the form asks for first name, last name, email, and password. Other brands' forms also collect company, address, city, and website. Some UpPromote registration forms ask applicants for their Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube handles, and you can also request company details and a VAT number for invoicing.
Every applicant has to pass an hCaptcha check before registering, which keeps automated signups out of your approval queue.
Modash starts from the other direction: instead of waiting for applicants, you search for brand-fit creators, check their audience demographics in discovery before you reach out, then invite them to join your program.
✍️ Bottom line: Choose BixGrow if you want the affiliate application to feel like part of your own store, right down to the branding and a built-in earnings calculator. UpPromote's hosted forms are the better fit when you need an applicant's social handles and business details on file before approving them.
Running an affiliate program means paying in 2 places – the app subscription and the commissions you owe when you pay affiliates.
UpPromote gates its in-app payment integrations by plan. Connecting a PayPal Business account to pay affiliates inside UpPromote is available from the Professional plan, and the same goes for Wise. The free plan doesn't support payouts at all, and the entry-level paid plan only allows you to pay affiliates in store credit.
Meanwhile, BixGrow supports 10 payment methods, including automated payments through PayPal.
Multiple methods are available on all BixGrow plans, but if you want to automate your payments, you'll need to choose the Advanced plan at $49.99/month.
Modash prices the cost of paying affiliates differently again. With Modash Pay, you're charged on what you pay out to creators, not on the affiliate revenue they drive. On the Performance Annual plan, payouts carry a 0% fee up to $10,000 in total payout volume per year, and a 5% fee applies only to the amount above $10,000.
✍️ Bottom line: UpPromote asks you to be on at least the Professional plan before you can pay affiliates through PayPal or Wise inside the app. BixGrow' supports more payment methods, but doesn't allow payment automations unless you choose its top-tier plan.
If your store runs on Shopify, platform fit is settled before you compare anything else. UpPromote is built for Shopify as an affiliate platform. BixGrow runs as a Shopify app. Both are positioned around Shopify stores, so the real question is what each one connects to beyond the storefront.
UpPromote connects with various types of tools – landing page and form builders, email marketing apps (including Klaviyo and Mailchimp), subscription order services, and more.
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BixGrow has Klaviyo and Mailchimp integrations, too. It can track subscriptions from any subscription app and works with Yampi checkout, but there's no support for page-building tools.
Modash is another dedicated Shopify tool. The difference is what sits around its Shopify integration: Modash pairs sales tracking with discovery across 380M+ creators and tracking of the content those creators publish, so recruiting and measuring happen in the same place as commissions.
✍️ Bottom line: If you want an affiliate app that integrates with a landing page builder, UpPromote is a better fit than BixGrow.
Both apps exist to track affiliate sales – which link or coupon code brought in which order, and what commission that earns. What they don't answer is the question that comes right before the sale: what did your affiliates actually post, and how did that content perform?
UpPromote positions itself as the affiliate platform built for Shopify. The unit it measures is the referral – a click, a coupon redemption, an order – not the Reel or TikTok that produced it.
BixGrow describes itself as a Shopify app that connects merchants and affiliates and lets merchants manage their affiliate marketing activities. The scope is the same: the affiliate relationship and the orders it generates, with the content itself living outside the app.
Neither UpPromote nor BixGrow collects the Instagram posts, Reels, Stories, TikToks, or YouTube videos your affiliates publish, so you get no in-app view of reach, views, or engagement next to the sales each affiliate drove.
Modash closes that gap by automatically collecting the posts, Reels, Stories, and videos your creators publish based on your campaign hashtags, mentions, and keywords, so you see what each affiliate published and how it performed alongside the sales they drove.
You can filter and sort that content by creator, type, date, engagement, or views to spot which posts actually moved product.
✍️ Bottom line: Neither UpPromote nor BixGrow tracks what your affiliates post, so if content performance is part of how you judge partners, plan on tracking it outside either app. Modash tracks the content and the resulting sales in one place.
Both UpPromote and BixGrow run marketplaces of affiliates who have already opted in. Neither UpPromote nor BixGrow follows what those affiliates post, so partner performance is judged on orders alone.
With Modash, you search a database of 380M+ creators and see each creator's audience demographics and engagement metrics before you send a single message. Once a creator joins your program, Modash tracks the posts, Reels, Stories, and videos they publish alongside the sales they drive, so you judge partners on content and orders together.
Try Modash for free with a 14-day trial – no credit card required.