SamCart includes an Affiliate Center on its Pro plan and above that handles affiliate signup, link tracking, and commissions on SamCart sales. It suits a small roster. Sellers add dedicated affiliate software when the program becomes a real sales channel, since activating quiet affiliates, training them, and coordinating promotions all happen outside the Affiliate Center.
SamCart built the Affiliate Center for the moment a seller wants somebody else sending buyers to the checkout. You approve an applicant, set a commission, and SamCart credits their sales without a spreadsheet. For a seller with a handful of partners, that’s enough.
Then the roster grows. Past about 20 affiliates you can’t keep the whole roster in your head, and you can see who sold but you can’t see who signed up and didn’t grab a link. Sellers on other platforms hit the same wall, and the best affiliate software for Kajabi post covers how it plays out there.
What does SamCart’s Affiliate Center do, and which plans include it?
SamCart’s Affiliate Center gives you an affiliate signup page, tracked links, and per-product commissions on sales made through your SamCart checkout. As of September 2026 it comes with the Pro plan at $199 a month and above, and the $79 Core plan doesn’t include it.
SamCart’s pricing page lists the Affiliate Center under Pro, next to one-click upsells, order bumps, A/B testing, and Subscription Saver. A custom-priced plan above Pro includes everything on Pro. Yearly billing takes 25 percent off, and SamCart offers a 7-day free trial.
SamCart retired its older Launch, Grow, and Scale plans for new customers in 2026, and existing customers can keep them. If you’re on one of those, check what your account includes before you plan around the Affiliate Center.
If you’re on Pro for the bumps and upsells already, the Affiliate Center costs you nothing extra, which makes it the right place to start. If you’re on Core, the upgrade adds $120 a month, and you can weigh that against a dedicated tool with the comparison in Best Affiliate Program Software: How to Choose the Right Platform.
How do you set up affiliates in SamCart?
Open the Affiliate Center under the Marketing tab, send affiliates to the signup page SamCart generates, set a commission on each product, and create a tracked link. Four settings decide how the program behaves.
Signup runs through a page SamCart builds for you. Applicants land in Pending Approval, and you approve or deny them from the notification email or the Affiliates table. A slider at the bottom of the Affiliates tab approves applicants automatically.
Commissions start at zero. SamCart sets every product to 0 percent by default, so an affiliate who sells a product you forgot to configure earns nothing. In the Commission Structure table you pick a percentage or a flat rate for each product. SamCart’s own example is 50 percent on a $50 product paying $25, or a $5 flat rate paying $5 at any price.
Subscription products get a Recurring or One-Time setting, which decides whether affiliates earn on every charge or only the first. How long to pay recurring affiliate commissions covers how to choose. Commission Plans let you build several structures, like one for your best partners and one for the rest. You assign affiliates to a plan one at a time, each affiliate holds only one plan, and affiliates can’t see which plan they’re on.
Links carry the tracking. You create a link, choose any destination URL, and each affiliate gets their own version on their dashboard. A click sets a cookie that lasts 30 days by default and up to 999 days. The cookie credits the affiliate whenever that visitor reaches a SamCart checkout, even if the link pointed to a blog post or an opt-in page.
Where do SamCart sellers hit the Affiliate Center’s limits?
Sellers hit the limits when they need to manage affiliates instead of only track them, which usually means past 20 partners or the first time they sell outside SamCart. SamCart’s Affiliate Center help article covers signup, links, commissions, the dashboard, and imports. It doesn’t cover training, promo calendars, or contests.
Payouts are a file. When you click Payout, SamCart produces a CSV listing each affiliate and the amount owed, and you send the money yourself through PayPal MassPay, check, Venmo, or another method. A refund does pull the commission back out of the affiliate’s ledger, so you only pay on sales that stay sold.
Credit goes to the last referrer. If a buyer clicks two affiliates’ links, the affiliate clicked most recently earns the commission. SamCart’s documentation describes no other attribution model.
Manual adjustments stay in the ledger. When you add a credit or debit to an affiliate, the entry shows in the ledger, but the Stats section, the Top Affiliates list, and the Payable Commissions total don’t change.
Some paths need a workaround. When a buyer clicks an affiliate link, lands on a non-SamCart page, then moves to another third-party page with an embedded SamCart checkout, tracking needs the workaround in SamCart’s Checkout Anywhere article.
The most expensive problem in affiliate management is the gap between affiliates who signed up and affiliates who promoted, and you have no view of it in the Affiliate Center. You can export the list and check it by hand until you have about 20 partners. After that you need software that shows who finished training and who scheduled an email. ThriveCart sellers reach the same point, and what is the best affiliate software for ThriveCart covers where its built-in center stops.
A signed-up affiliate who doesn’t promote looks identical to an active one on a signup count. These are free email templates for getting those affiliates to start promoting. Grab the Affiliate Activation Templates and send the one that fits whichever group is stalling.
What should you look for in affiliate software for a SamCart business?
Look for software that records every kind of SamCart order under the right affiliate, then manages the affiliates after they sign up. The first half is tracking. The second half is the reason you’re buying.
Run these five checks on any tool you’re considering:
- It records subscription renewals. SamCart’s webhook setup uses separate rules for Product Purchased and Subscription Charged, and a tool wired to only the first misses every charge after the initial one.
- It reverses commissions on refunds. SamCart deducts the commission when you refund an order, so your software should match. Refund a test order and watch the commission reverse.
- It pays affiliates beyond a CSV. SamCart hands you a file and stops. Ask what the tool does with that file, including bank transfers and payouts to affiliates in other countries.
- It manages affiliates. Activation sequences, training completion, promo commitments, and contests are the features the Affiliate Center help article leaves out.
- It carries the affiliate’s identity through the SamCart checkout. Outside tools depend on a custom field on the checkout form to hold their tracking cookie, so ask the vendor to show you a SamCart test order landing under the right affiliate.
Many SamCart sellers run courses, and the best affiliate software for course creators compares the options for that kind of business.
Demo reps answer most questions well, so you learn only as much as the questions you bring. This post lists 14 questions to ask before you sign with any vendor. Run every candidate through 14 Questions To Ask Before You Buy Affiliate Software first.
How do you track SamCart sales in outside affiliate software?
SamCart sends order events to outside software through webhooks or Zapier, and the outside tool needs its tracking cookie captured at checkout. SamCart’s help center documents the setup for Post Affiliate Pro, which shows the pieces involved.
Three pieces make it work. A custom field on the checkout form carries the tool’s tracking cookie, and Post Affiliate Pro’s guide names its field papCookie and switches it on for every product’s checkout form. A tracking code goes into each product’s advanced settings. Then a webhook in SamCart’s App Marketplace sends the order to the tool through a Notify URL, with a rule that fires when someone buys a product.
Add the same rule for Subscription Charged if you sell subscriptions. Skip it and the tool records only the first charge.
Zapier is the other route. Zapier’s SamCart and Tapfiliate page lists triggers for new orders, refunds, cancelled subscriptions, and new leads. Check which SamCart plan includes webhooks and Zapier before you buy anything, because SamCart’s pricing page lists API access under Pro.
Leads work too. SamCart adds the affiliate’s token to the destination URL as sc_ref, and a hidden field on your opt-in page can capture it, so your email tool can count each affiliate’s opt-ins.
Test before you announce anything. Run one order for the main product, one with an order bump, and one with an upsell, then refund one. Each should land under the right affiliate at the right amount, and the refund should reverse the commission. How affiliate tracking works explains where cookies break when a buyer crosses from one platform to another.
Once tracking captures your SamCart orders, the harder work is getting the affiliates behind them to promote. AffiliateHQ is affiliate management software I built, so weigh my opinion accordingly, and it handles link tracking, commission calculation, recruiting, activation, training, contests, communication, fraud review, and payouts in one platform. See whether it fits your next promotion at AffiliateHQ.
How do you migrate from SamCart’s Affiliate Center to dedicated software?
Export your affiliates, connect the new tool and test every order type, announce one cutoff date, and set SamCart’s commissions to 0 percent only after the last old cookie and pending commission clear. With SamCart’s defaults, a click on the last day before your cutoff can still produce a sale 30 days later, and that commission stays pending for another 30 days.
Do the switch in this order:
- Export your affiliate list from the Affiliate Center, and download your past payout history from the dashboard.
- Connect the new tool and run the test orders above, including the refund.
- Email your affiliates once with their new links and a cutoff date, and keep the old SamCart links live until that date.
- Pay each order once. A buyer who holds cookies from an old link and a new link can end up credited in both systems, so match orders by SamCart order number, which appears in the affiliate ledger.
- After the cutoff, plus your cookie length, plus the pending window, run the final Payout in SamCart. Do NOT set a product to 0 percent until you’ve paid out.
For the general version of this switch, see how to migrate an affiliate program to new software.
If you’d like a second set of eyes on your roster and your switch plan before you touch anything, there’s a free option. It’s a 20-minute call to review your current affiliate program and leave with an action plan for the next 30 to 60 days. Book it at Your Affiliate Launch Coach.
What should you do first?
Confirm your SamCart plan includes the Affiliate Center, then open the Commission Structure table and check that every product has the commission you intend, since new products start at 0 percent. If you haven’t decided whether to pay on add-ons at all, read should you pay affiliates a commission on upsells and downsells first.
Pull up your last promotion and count how many affiliates signed up and how many sent at least one email. Under 30 percent means your problem is activation, and better tracking won’t fix it.
If you have fewer than 20 affiliates and sell only through SamCart, keep the Affiliate Center and spend your time recruiting. Past that, add software that tracks each SamCart order and manages the affiliates behind it.
Frequently asked questions
Does SamCart pay affiliates on order bumps and upsells?
SamCart’s help center covers upsell upgrades. The customer pays the prorated difference, and the affiliate earns the upgrade’s commission on that difference, on top of the main product’s commission. With 50 percent set on both, the affiliate gets 50 percent of each amount. The article doesn’t address order bumps, so run a test order with a bump before you promise affiliates anything.
Does SamCart’s Affiliate Center pay commissions on subscriptions?
Yes. For subscription products, the Commission Structure table has a Recurring or One-Time setting, so you choose whether affiliates earn on every charge or only the first. If you move an affiliate to a different Commission Plan, existing subscriptions keep the terms set when they started. Only new orders and new subscriptions use the new plan.
How do SamCart affiliate payouts work?
SamCart tracks what each affiliate has earned and produces a CSV when you click Payout. It doesn’t send money. You pay through PayPal MassPay, check, Venmo, or any other method. Commissions become payable after a pending period that defaults to 30 days, and SamCart deducts a commission from the affiliate’s ledger when you refund the order.
Can you run SamCart’s Affiliate Center and separate affiliate software at the same time?
Briefly, during a switch. When a buyer holds cookies from both systems, both can credit the order, so match orders by SamCart order number and pay each order once. Outside a switch, give each product one system that owes commissions and leave that product at 0 percent in the other. SamCart already defaults new products to 0 percent.
Does SamCart affiliate tracking work when affiliates send traffic to a page outside SamCart?
Yes. The click sets the cookie, so an affiliate can point to a blog post, an opt-in page, or a webinar registration, and the sale credits when that visitor reaches a SamCart checkout. The exception is a path through a non-SamCart page to another third-party page with an embedded SamCart checkout, which needs the workaround in SamCart’s Checkout Anywhere article.
