Awin for Shopify Brands: Costs, Setup and Commission Rates

Key Takeaways

• Awin is an affiliate network: publishers promote your products and you pay them a commission on the sales they drive.
• Awin Access costs £99 plus VAT a month after a free first month, plus a 3.5% tracking fee on each affiliate sale, with a 3 month introductory term.
• Accelerate costs from £199 plus VAT a month with a 2.5% tracking fee; on fees alone it becomes cheaper once affiliate sales pass £10,000 a month.
• We encourage clients to pay a generous 15% to 20% commission on first time customers only, because new customers cost far more to win through paid search, display and social; with Awin's tracking fee on top, 15% on Access costs 18.5% of each sale.
• When we launched an Awin programme for Awake Organic, it grew to 210 active publishers within 3 days.
• Affiliate marketing can grow into a major channel: affiliate sales took Dotty Dungarees, a client of ours, from 0% of revenue to 38% over two years, and brought in 70% of its first time customers.
• Judge the programme on new customers and incremental sales, not total affiliate revenue, because voucher and cashback sites often catch customers who were already buying.

Quick Answer

Awin is one of the largest affiliate networks in the UK, and Shopify brands can join through its Access plan for £99 plus VAT a month after a free first month, plus a 3.5% tracking fee on every affiliate sale and the commission you choose to pay publishers. Install Awin's Shopify app to track sales, pay a generous commission on first time customers, recruit content sites and creators rather than only voucher sites, and measure the programme on the new customers it brings.

Table of Contents

• What Is Awin?
• How Much Does Awin Cost?
• How to Set Up Awin on Shopify
• How to Set Commission Rates
• Types of Awin Publishers
• UK Rules for Affiliate Marketing
• How to Tell Whether Awin Is Working
• Awin and the Alternatives
• Why Matters Perspective
• Frequently Asked Questions
• Final Thoughts
• Related Articles

Affiliate marketing appeals to Shopify brands because you pay mostly when a sale happens. The catch is that a programme can look profitable while paying commission on customers you would have won anyway. This guide covers what Awin costs, how to set it up on Shopify, and how to run it so the commission buys new customers.

What Is Awin?

Awin is a global affiliate marketing network. Brands, which Awin calls advertisers, list a programme; publishers, which Awin calls partners, apply to promote it; and Awin tracks each sale, pays the publishers and charges the brand a fee. Awin says its Access plan gives unlimited access to over 1,000,000 vetted partners, including content sites, cashback and voucher sites, comparison sites and influencers.

For a Shopify brand, Awin does three jobs you would otherwise do by hand: tracking which publisher drove which sale, holding back commission on returned orders, and paying hundreds of publishers in one place.

How Much Does Awin Cost?

Awin publishes its UK prices on its plan comparison page. Every plan has three costs: a monthly platform fee, a tracking fee charged as a percentage of each affiliate sale, and the commission you pay publishers, which you set yourself.

Awin's own example shows how the fee works: on a £100 sale with a 6% commission, the publisher earns £6 and Awin takes £3.50 on Access or £2.50 on Accelerate. The prices on Awin's US Shopify page are in dollars and differ, so UK brands should use the UK pages.

A worked example

Take a brand on Access with £10,000 a month of affiliate sales from first time customers, paying publishers 15% commission:

• Commission to publishers: £1,500 (15% of £10,000).
• Awin tracking fee: £350 (3.5% of £10,000).
• Platform fee: £99.
• Total: £1,949 a month, or 19.5% of affiliate sales, before VAT.

At that level the two plans cost the same in fees: Access is £99 plus £350, Accelerate £199 plus £250, both £449. Above £10,000 a month, every extra £1,000 of affiliate sales costs £10 less in fees on Accelerate.

In words: Access starts cheaper because its platform fee is £100 lower, but its tracking fee is one percentage point higher, so the two lines meet at £10,000 of affiliate sales a month. Below that, Access is cheaper; above it, Accelerate is.

How to Set Up Awin on Shopify

Awin's Shopify page describes three steps: apply for an advertiser account, follow the integration wizard to connect the account to your store, then track, pay and report on publishers from one dashboard. In practice we work through it like this:

1. Apply and agree the plan. Choose Access or Accelerate and confirm the commission structure before you start, because changing it later unsettles publishers.
2. Install the Shopify app and run the wizard. This connects your store so affiliate sales are tracked.
3. Test the tracking. Click a test affiliate link, place an order and confirm it appears in Awin with the right value. Check that refunds and cancellations feed back so commission is reversed.
4. Write your programme terms. Set the cookie length, whether voucher codes may be shared, whether publishers may bid on your brand name in Google Ads, and the requirement to label content as advertising.
5. Prepare your assets. Banners, product images, a short brand story and an exclusive offer give publishers a reason to feature you.
6. Recruit publishers. Approve the publishers who apply, then invite the content sites and creators who already write about your category.

Agree with whoever runs your Google Ads how affiliate sales and ad conversions will be compared, because both systems can claim the same order.

How to Set Commission Rates

Set commission from your own numbers, not a competitor's. Start from your gross margin and what a new customer costs you through other channels, then remember that Awin's fee sits on top of the commission. In the programmes we run, we encourage brands to pay a generous 15% to 20%, on first time customers only. A 15% commission on a £48 first order is £7.20, and Awin Access adds £1.68, so the sale costs £8.88 in total.

That is cheap next to what a first time customer costs through paid search, display or social. On Meta, the return on ad spend from new customers normally sits just above 1.5 for our clients, which means just under 67p of ad spend for every £1 of revenue. At 15%, commission and Awin's tracking fee come to 18.5p for every £1, and you only pay when a sale happens. The catch is that a voucher site can still collect on a first time customer who was already at your checkout, so watch which publishers your new customers come through. Our customer acquisition guide explains how to work out what a new customer is worth paying for.

• Pay on new customers. Awin's Shopify app tells Awin whether each buyer is new or returning, so first time customers can earn a different commission from returning ones.
• Use commission groups. Access allows up to three. A common split is a standard rate, a higher rate for content and creator publishers, and a lower rate for voucher and cashback sites.
• Protect your brand search. Ban publishers from bidding on your brand name in paid search; otherwise they collect commission on customers searching for you.
• Review quarterly. Raise rates for publishers that bring the most new customers and cut them for those that mostly catch shoppers already at your checkout.

Types of Awin Publishers

Publishers behave very differently, and the mix decides whether a programme brings new customers or simply pays commission on existing ones.

None of these is bad on its own. Cashback and voucher sites can help close a first order. The problem comes when they dominate a programme and most commission goes on customers you already had.

UK Rules for Affiliate Marketing

Content with affiliate links is marketing, and UK rules require it to be obviously identifiable as such. The ASA and CMA influencer guide sets out how creators should label paid content, for example with #ad, and brands share responsibility for ads made on their behalf. Write the labelling requirement into your programme terms and check the posts that drive the most sales. Any claims publishers make about your products must also be ones you can back up.

How to Tell Whether Awin Is Working

Total affiliate revenue is the number Awin's dashboard puts first, and the least useful on its own. Look at:

1. New customer share. What proportion of affiliate orders came from first time customers? Compare it with your other channels in Shopify's customer reports.
2. Publisher mix. How much commission goes to content and creator publishers compared with voucher and cashback sites?
3. Total cost of sale. Commission plus Awin's fees as a percentage of affiliate revenue, compared with your target acquisition cost.
4. Overlap with paid media. Whether the same orders are also claimed by Google or Meta. Customer journey analysis on Accelerate helps here.
5. Lifetime value. Whether affiliate customers come back. Our LTV calculator shows what a returning customer is worth.

Awin and the Alternatives

Awin is not the only way to run affiliates on Shopify. Shopify Collabs is free for creator partnerships inside Shopify and suits brands working mainly with influencers. Other networks, such as Impact, Partnerize, CJ and Rakuten Advertising, compete with Awin for larger brands. Referral apps reward existing customers for bringing friends. Many brands use Collabs for creators and Awin for the wider publisher network, which suits brands that also want content and comparison sites.

Why Matters Perspective

We are an Awin partner, and we set up and run affiliate programmes for Shopify brands. When we launched an Awin programme for Awake Organic, it grew to 210 active publishers within 3 days, which shows how quickly a well prepared programme can find an audience. The harder part comes after launch: keeping commission flowing to the publishers who find new customers rather than those who catch existing ones.

Done consistently, affiliate marketing can grow into a major channel. Affiliate sales took Dotty Dungarees, a client of ours, from 0% of revenue to 38% over two years, and brought in 70% of its first time customers over the same period.

Our advice on commission is to be generous, as set out above. Winning a first time customer through PPC, display or social is expensive, and on Meta our clients' return on ad spend from new customers normally sits just above 1.5. The channel is still profitable once lifetime value is counted, but affiliates are the one channel where you only pay when a sale happens, which is one of the reasons we make the most of Awin for clients. Our guide to what Facebook ads cost in the UK shows the paid social side of that comparison.

We treat affiliates as one acquisition channel among several, judged on the same new customer and lifetime value measures as paid search and social. We are a Shopify Select partner and a Klaviyo, Meta and TikTok partner too, so the affiliate programme, the ads and the email flows are planned together. Our pricing is published, retainers start from £650 a month plus VAT, and clients are billed one month in arrears with no long contracts. For a free review of your affiliate programme, visit our affiliate marketing agency page.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is Awin?

Awin is a global affiliate marketing network that connects brands with publishers such as content sites, cashback and voucher sites, comparison sites and influencers. Brands pay publishers a commission on the sales they drive, and Awin tracks the sales, handles payments and charges a tracking fee on each transaction.

How much does Awin cost in the UK?

Awin's Access plan costs £99 plus VAT a month after a free first month, plus a tracking fee of 3.5% of each affiliate sale, with a 3 month introductory term. Accelerate starts from £199 plus VAT a month with a 2.5% tracking fee. You also pay publishers the commission you set.

Does Awin work with Shopify?

Yes. Awin has a Shopify app with an integration wizard that connects your advertiser account to your store so sales are tracked and reported. Install it after your advertiser account is approved, then place a test order to confirm the sale appears in Awin before you invite publishers.

What commission rate should I offer affiliates?

Work back from your margin and what a new customer costs you through other channels, rather than copying a competitor. In the programmes we run, we encourage brands to pay a generous 15% to 20% on first time customers only, because new customers cost far more to win through paid search, display and social. Awin's tracking fee sits on top, so a 15% commission on Access costs 18.5% of the sale.

Is Awin worth it for a small brand?

It can be, because you pay mostly on results and the Access plan is built for smaller brands. It works best when your product has a clear audience, your margins can carry a commission plus fees, and you have time to recruit and look after publishers. A programme left alone tends to fill up with voucher sites.

What is the difference between Awin Access and Accelerate?

Access costs £99 a month plus a 3.5% tracking fee and allows up to three commission groups. Accelerate costs from £199 a month plus 2.5%, and adds unlimited commission groups, customer journey analysis, custom reports and a choice of self managed or expert service. On fees alone, Accelerate is cheaper once affiliate sales pass £10,000 a month.

Do affiliates have to label their posts as adverts?

Yes. Under UK advertising rules, content that includes affiliate links is marketing and must be clearly labelled, for example with #ad. The ASA and CMA influencer guide sets out what is expected, and brands share responsibility, so put the requirement in your programme terms.

Final Thoughts

Awin gives a Shopify brand access to a very large publisher network for a modest monthly fee, and the Shopify app makes tracking straightforward. The cost that matters most is not Awin's fee but the commission you pay, and whether it buys new customers.

Pay a generous commission on first time customers, recruit content sites and creators deliberately, protect your brand search, and review the programme every quarter. If you would like us to look at your programme or set one up, email us.

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