Launch a SaaS Affiliate Program With FirstPromoter and AI

The short answer: if your SaaS bills through Stripe, Paddle or Chargebee and you are signing your first 10 to 50 affiliates, launch on FirstPromoter's Starter plan at $49 a month, which covers up to $5,000 a month of affiliate revenue and includes its fraud controls, then let an AI agent prepare a weekly review that a person signs before anything is paid (FirstPromoter pricing, checked on 26 October 2026). Affonso does the same job from $39 a month on monthly billing. For example, at 20% for 12 months on a $99 plan, one referred customer earns an affiliate 0.2 x 99 x 12 = $237.60, so a single self-referral that slips through costs more than four months of the tracker.

Disclosure: I may earn a commission through some links on this site. It does not change what this page says.

The tracking script takes an afternoon. What decides whether the programme pays for customers it brought or for customers you already had is the paperwork around it: the terms, the consent decision, the fraud rules and the person who reads the flags.

Settle these before the first link goes out:

1. The commission, and how long it waits. A commission should stay pending until a refund can no longer arrive. Affonso's rule of thumb is trial length plus refund window, so a 7-day trial and a 30-day refund policy give 37 days (hold period article); Rewardful asks you to align its "days before commissions become due" with your refund policy (campaign settings).
2. Where your money already flows. The billing tool picks the tracker. FirstPromoter reads Stripe, Paddle, Chargebee, Recurly and Braintree (pricing page); Affonso documents Stripe, Paddle, Polar, Creem and Dodo Payments checkouts (payment providers). The first partners are usually customers and agencies who already recommend you.
3. The terms, in writing. Rate, the months it runs, the hold, the minimum payout, the cookie window, first or last click, and what is banned: bidding on your brand name, referring yourself, coupon sites.
4. The baseline. New paying customers per month for the last three months, by source, and how many of them started a trial on their own. The programme is judged against that count.

The referral cookie needs a decision first

Article 5(3) of the ePrivacy Directive allows storing information on a visitor's device only with consent, unless it is strictly necessary for a service the visitor explicitly asked for (ePrivacy Directive, consolidated text). Affiliate trackers store exactly that: FirstPromoter's script sets two cookies, _fprom_ref and _fprom_tid, when a visitor arrives through a referral link (fpr.js guide). Affonso has a consent mode: with data-requires-consent="true" its script waits for consent before setting any cookie, and without the attribute it sets them immediately (consent guide).

Reditus argues that a referral cookie with no visitor profile needs no consent under Dutch law; the argument and the exemption it rests on are laid out in how to use Reditus. Decide with counsel before launch. The consequence is mechanical either way: a visitor who declines the banner, with the script held back, cannot be credited to anyone.

The launch, in seven steps

1. Connect billing and test one referral on purpose. Install the script behind your consent tool, connect the billing provider, then buy your own plan through a test partner's link. Neither tool gives you a sandbox: resetting a FirstPromoter campaign deletes its leads, customers, rewards and payouts (sandbox answer), and revenue in an Affonso test programme counts toward the plan's cap (sandbox guide). Refund the test and check that the commission reverses.
2. Write the terms into the campaign. Reward, duration, cookie life (FirstPromoter allows up to 9999 days, first or last click), payout cycle, NET terms and minimum threshold, all on every FirstPromoter plan (pricing page). The step-by-step setup and the activation emails are in how to use FirstPromoter.
3. Switch the fraud rules on. FirstPromoter lists self-referral detection, a paid-ad traffic policy, reCAPTCHA, automatic negative commissions on refunds, manual approval thresholds and two-factor authentication on large payments on every plan (pricing page). In Affonso, each Risk Center rule runs Off, Detect or Block, and Affonso's advice is to start in Detect for a week or two to learn the false-positive rate (Risk Center).
4. Monday: the agent prepares the review. Connect Claude to FirstPromoter with the custom connector https://mcp.firstpromoter.com and sign in by OAuth (MCP overview). The agent reads the last seven days through the documented tools: new referrals with their event log, pending commissions, and the traffic sources report, which splits referral traffic into direct, organic, social and paid (tools reference). It flags a referral whose customer email shares a domain with the promoter's, a promoter whose traffic is mostly paid, a burst of signups with no payment, and commissions on customers who refunded. It writes one table: flag, evidence, suggested action. It moves no money, because payouts, invoices and commission creation are not exposed to it at all.
5. A person decides on every flag. Whoever owns the programme opens each flagged referral and chooses. Any change the agent then proposes, such as blocking a promoter on a campaign, arrives as a confirmation card with a field-level diff that a person approves or refuses (MCP overview). On Affonso, the agent lists Risk Center events across seven types, from self-referral to paid traffic and duplicate payout methods (fraud event tools); confirming one rejects the referral and declines its commissions, so sign the agent in with a separate team seat on Affonso's view-only Viewer role, since a role's permissions also govern what the API allows (roles article), and leave confirm and resolve to a person in the dashboard.
6. First of the month: payouts, after the hold. Commissions that passed the hold and the review become due. A person approves the run; FirstPromoter pays by PayPal, Wise, Stripe, crypto or bank transfer (pricing page), and Affonso's Managed Payouts, from Growth, pays affiliates from one invoice (Managed Payouts).
7. Output: a paid run and a record. The review table, the decisions and the payout file go into one folder per month, so an affiliate's question about a declined commission can be answered from the record.

Running it by hand first

Before any tracker, a programme of five to ten partners runs on Stripe and a spreadsheet. Create one coupon and give each partner their own promotion code that points to it; Stripe lets a code apply to first-time customers only, caps its redemptions and records each redemption as a discount on the customer's subscription or invoice (Stripe coupons and promotion codes). At month end, list the paid invoices per code, compute commissions in the sheet, hold them through the refund window and pay by PayPal or Wise. The self-referral check is your own eyes on the partner's email beside the customer's.

The hand version breaks on links. A code survives a podcast or a newsletter; a link needs a script to remember the click, and that is the point to pay for a tracker. All three tools named here start with a 14-day trial (FirstPromoter, Affonso, Rewardful).

What it costs, side by side

Prices checked on 26 October 2026. FirstPromoter's own docs say adding a custom connector needs a paid Claude plan (MCP overview), while Anthropic's help centre allows one on the Free plan; budget for a paid seat if the review runs alongside other connectors. Paying affiliates through Affonso's Managed Payouts adds a flat $25 per invoice, a 3.25% surcharge when you pay that invoice through Stripe, and $0.50 per affiliate payout after the first 25 (Managed Payouts). Rewardful suits a Stripe-only team that wants creator codes without a script, covered in how to use Rewardful; its webhooks send commission.created and sale.refunded events to your own app or Zapier, which is the hook for a review agent you build yourself (event types).

Read the defaults against the price list. Affonso prices every tier by revenue from partners, and two of its documented defaults credit more of that revenue to partners: Paid Traffic Detection is Off until you switch it on (paid traffic article), and the tracking script sets its cookie before consent unless you add one attribute. Change both on day one, and the tier you pay for reflects partners' work rather than your own ad spend.

Is the programme adding customers?

The measure is net new paying customers credited to affiliates, after the hold, refunds and confirmed fraud, set against the three-month baseline from the top of this page. Add one check by hand each month: take the credited customers and look them up in your own CRM. A customer who was already in a trial before the referral click is a sale the affiliate caught on its way in, not one they made.

A holdout rarely fits an affiliate programme, because you cannot stop a partner's audience from reading a review. The fair substitute is a before-and-after on total new customers. If credited customers rise while the total stays flat, the programme is moving credit, not sales, and the terms need another look before the next payout.

FAQ

How long should a commission stay pending?

At least as long as a refund can still arrive. Affonso suggests trial length plus refund window, for example 7 + 30 = 37 days (hold period article), and refunds during the hold reduce or void the commission before money goes out.

Can the agent pay affiliates or approve payouts?

Not on FirstPromoter: money movement stays in the dashboard, and every change the agent proposes needs a person's approval on a confirmation card (MCP overview). Affonso's MCP does include commission and payout tools (MCP introduction), which is why the agent there should sign in with a view-only role.

Does the referral cookie need consent?

Under Article 5(3) of the ePrivacy Directive, storing it needs consent unless it is strictly necessary for a service the visitor asked for (EUR-Lex). Some vendors argue a narrow referral cookie qualifies for an exemption; how to use Reditus sets out that case. Take the decision with counsel, then configure the script to match it.