BigCommerce Affiliate Program: How to Run Your Own Inside Your Control Panel

BigCommerce has no built-in affiliate feature for your store, so your own BigCommerce affiliate program runs in an app, and as of this week it runs natively with Rekomi. You install Rekomi Affiliate Marketing from the App Marketplace in one click, and the app registers your order webhooks, adds the tracking script, mints affiliate coupon codes as real promotions on your store, and pays your affiliates for you. This article covers how the tracking actually works, what happens with coupon codes and refunds, how billing works through BigCommerce, and the steps a store does, in order.

The short version, before the details

Here’s what an affiliate program on BigCommerce looks like end to end.

• What you get: a signup page for recruiting, affiliates who apply and get approved, a link and a personal coupon code for each of them, commission rules you set once, and Rekomi running the payouts and collecting the tax forms.
• What you install: one app from the BigCommerce App Marketplace. It registers the order webhooks and injects the storefront tracking script and a small order-confirmation beacon itself, so there’s nothing to paste and no theme edits.
• How a sale gets credited: the affiliate’s link sets a first-party cookie on your storefront, the beacon on the order confirmation page ties the order to that click, and BigCommerce’s own order webhook tells Rekomi when the order is paid. A redeemed coupon code credits its affiliate even when nobody clicked anything.
• What counts: any paid order, on the pre-tax order total. Card orders count when they’re paid; cash on delivery and other offline methods count once you mark the order paid.
• What reverses: a full or partial refund claws back its share of the commission automatically, and a duplicate refund event is never counted twice.
• Who pays the affiliates: Rekomi does, on real payout methods in 130+ countries, with approval and fraud checks before anything moves, and the 1099-NEC work handled at year end.
• What it costs: a Rekomi plan at $29, $49 or $99 a month after a 14-day free trial, billed through BigCommerce on your regular invoice, plus 3% of the affiliate payouts.
• How long it takes: the install is one click, and most stores go from install to a working program in under ten minutes.

How BigCommerce affiliate tracking works

BigCommerce runs its checkout on your own domain rather than on a hosted page somewhere else, and that one fact makes the tracking simpler than on most platforms. So, where does the tracking happen? In three places: the click on your storefront, the order confirmation page, and the order webhook. Here’s how it works:

The click. The app registers a storefront script through BigCommerce’s Scripts API, and that script stores the referral from an affiliate’s link in a first-party cookie on your own domain. It runs on storefront pages only (never on the checkout steps), so it never touches what your customers see while they pay.

The confirmation. A second script, registered for the order confirmation page only, reads the order number BigCommerce shows there and sends it to Rekomi together with the stored referral. It’s an external file with a subresource integrity hash, which means the browser refuses to run it if a single byte of it ever changed. That’s the part that connects “this order” to “that click”.

The order webhook. This is the part I genuinely like about BigCommerce. When the app installs, it subscribes to your store’s order events, so BigCommerce itself tells Rekomi when an order is created, when it’s paid, and when it’s refunded. Rekomi fetches the full order from BigCommerce’s API, since the webhook payload is deliberately thin, reads the pre-tax total and the coupon codes on it, and records one conversion per order id. If a shopper’s ad blocker stops the confirmation beacon, the webhook still arrives, and the commission still lands whenever a coupon code was used.

Cookie consent. Both scripts are registered in BigCommerce’s Analytics consent category. On a store with a cookie consent banner, they run once the shopper accepts analytics cookies. And an order from a shopper who declined is still credited when it uses an affiliate’s code, because the code lives on the order, not in the browser (I love that part; it’s the reason coupon programs survive every privacy change).

A quick note on what the app can see, since that’s what the marketplace review was mostly about: it reads orders, products and customers, and it writes promotions and scripts. It never holds checkout content access, and it has no way to touch your payment settings.

Coupon codes on BigCommerce

For most stores doing affiliate marketing on BigCommerce, the codes are the real money-maker, because Instagram and TikTok audiences type codes; they don’t click links. Here’s the flow: each affiliate claims a personal code from their portal, Rekomi literally creates it as a promotion in your store with the discount you configured, and every order that redeems it is credited to that affiliate, click or no click.

Two BigCommerce rules worth knowing up front. Codes are cart-wide – a promotion can’t be scoped to a single product from the app – and revoking a code in Rekomi disables the promotion instantly. Also, each code can carry its own commission rate, so a creator deal can pay differently from a link sale (e.g. 15% on the code, 10% on links, or whatever the two of you agree).

Refunds and what counts

Commissions are calculated on the pre-tax order total, so affiliates never earn on sales tax or shipping. Card orders count the moment they’re paid. Orders on offline payment methods like cash on delivery count once you mark them paid in BigCommerce, which is exactly the moment the money is real.

Refunds adjust themselves. Refund an order in full and the commission reverses in full; refund it partially and the commission claws back in proportion, on the same pre-tax basis it was earned. BigCommerce sometimes delivers the same refund event more than once, and Rekomi records it once, so a $40 refund never claws back $80. Every adjustment sits in the ledger next to the sale it belongs to, so month-end is a report, not an argument.

One thing I’d flag: commissions become payable after the grace period you set on the campaign (your refund window, often 30 days), so a refund inside that window simply cancels a pending commission before anyone was paid.

What a BigCommerce affiliate program costs, billed through BigCommerce

Your Rekomi subscription rides your BigCommerce invoice, like your other apps. Plans start at $29 a month with a 14-day free trial, and the charge shows up with your BigCommerce app subscriptions, not on a separate card. Three platform rules, plainly:

• Your store needs a paid BigCommerce plan. BigCommerce doesn’t bill apps on trial or free stores, so on those the Subscription tab asks you to pick a BigCommerce plan first, and your Rekomi trial is ready right after.
• Plan changes wait until the trial converts. That’s a BigCommerce rule for app subscriptions, not ours. Pick your plan when the trial ends, or cancel and subscribe straight to the plan you want.
• Uninstalling cancels the subscription. Tracking stops immediately, and reinstalling from the App Marketplace re-arms everything, campaigns and affiliates included.

I went back and forth on whether to bill through BigCommerce at all (a Stripe checkout would have been easier for us to build) and landed on the invoice, because that’s where a merchant expects app charges to be. Definitely the right call.

What a store on BigCommerce does, step by step

Everything below happens inside your control panel; you never leave it.

1. Install the app. Apps, then App Marketplace, search for Rekomi (or open the listing), click Install, and approve the permissions. That’s the whole technical setup!
2. Pick a plan. The app opens on the Subscription tab. Every plan starts with a 14-day free trial, billed through BigCommerce.
3. Create your first campaign. Name it, set the commission as a percentage or a flat amount per sale, one-time or recurring, and set the refund grace period. This is the moment tracking goes live: the app registers the webhooks and both scripts.
4. Set up the coupon offer. Decide what the shopper gets, say 10% off, and what the affiliate earns on code sales. Rekomi mints the codes as promotions from then on.
5. Share the signup page. Every campaign gets a hosted signup page, on your own domain if you want. Send it to your best customers, the creators already tagging you, and anyone who’s ever asked about a program. Approve the ones you want, or switch on auto-approval.
6. Place one test order. Open your storefront with ?via=test on the URL, buy something cheap, and watch it show up on the Conversions tab within a minute. Refund it and watch the commission reverse – when both land, you’re live.

The BigCommerce integration page has the pricing and feature list, and the Install on BigCommerce guide has every screen, the billing rules and the theme note.

The questions that come up

Does BigCommerce have an affiliate program I can join?

No, not anymore. BigCommerce closed its own affiliate program (the one that paid people for referring new merchants to BigCommerce) in May 2025, and this article is about the other meaning of the phrase anyway: running your own program for your store, where your affiliates promote your products and you pay them.

Does it work on my theme?

Yes on any Stencil theme, which is Cornerstone and everything modern; it’s fully automatic there. If your store still runs a legacy Blueprint theme, BigCommerce doesn’t render app-injected scripts, so order tracking through the webhooks still works and click tracking uses a one-line snippet from inside the app instead.

Can affiliates link to specific products?

Yes. Affiliates pick from your live catalog inside their portal and create product links, each tracked with its own clicks and sales, and you control which products appear in their picker.

Do my affiliates need to be on BigCommerce?

No. Affiliates only need a Rekomi account, which is free for them. They connect their own payout method, fill in their tax form once, and get paid on your schedule.

Can I run it next to a program on another store?

Yes. A Rekomi workspace follows one store, so a second platform means a second workspace, and your affiliates work all of them from one login.

Do this next

If the reason you don’t have an affiliate program yet is that it looked like a project, it’s an install now. Open the App Marketplace, install Rekomi Affiliate Marketing, create one campaign, and buy something through your own affiliate link. When that sale shows up credited on the Conversions tab, the first affiliate you invite is earning from their very first order!