Affiliate Program - InstaPods

The affiliate program pays a recurring commission on every payment made by customers you refer, for as long as they keep paying. You enroll from Dashboard → Affiliates, which is also where the numbers below are rendered; these endpoints are the same data.

This is the general affiliate program, open to anyone with an account. It is separate from the Hosting Partnership, which is a 20% rev-share arranged with maintainers of open-source apps we host. Don’t enroll in both for the same traffic.

How it works

Enroll. You get a referral code, and two links built from it.
Share the link. A click is recorded against your code.
They sign up through it. The signup is linked to you as a pending referral.
They pay. The referral flips to active and you earn a commission on that payment and every one after it.

Commission is a percentage of what the customer actually paid, taken at your tier’s rate at the moment of payment. The rate is snapshotted onto each earning, so a later tier change doesn’t rewrite history. Each invoice earns once.

Tiers

You start on Starter and move up automatically as the revenue you’ve referred crosses a milestone. Reaching a tier also pays a one-off bonus.

Tier	Commission	Auto-upgrade at	Upgrade bonus
Starter	10%	- (you start here)	-
Partner	15%	$500 referred revenue	$25
Pro	20%	$2,000 referred revenue	$100
Elite	20%	By arrangement	$250

Upgrades happen on the payment that crosses the milestone, and are never downgraded. Read the live values from GET /api/affiliates/dashboard rather than hard-coding these - tiers are configurable, and your account may be on a negotiated one.

Enroll

POST /api/affiliates/enroll

No request body. Enrolling twice is safe - you get the existing record back rather than a second one. Response: 201 Created

{
  "id": "aff_abc123",
  "user_id": "usr_xyz",
  "referral_code": "1a2b3c4d",
  "tier_slug": "starter",
  "status": "active",
  "total_revenue": 0,
  "total_earnings": 0,
  "total_paid_out": 0,
  "referral_count": 0,
  "created_at": "2026-02-20T10:00:00Z"
}

All money fields are in cents.

Dashboard

GET /api/affiliates/dashboard

Everything the Affiliates page shows, in one call. Response: 200 OK

{
  "affiliate": { "...": "..." },
  "tier": { "slug": "starter", "name": "Starter", "commission_rate": 10 },
  "next_tier": { "slug": "partner", "name": "Partner", "commission_rate": 15, "milestone_amount": 50000, "bonus_amount": 2500 },
  "progress_pct": 34,
  "pending_balance": 1250,
  "referral_link": "https://app.instapods.com/join/1a2b3c4d",
  "referral_link_alt": "https://instapods.com/join/?r=1a2b3c4d",
  "visit_count": 214
}

Field	Description
`tier` / `next_tier`	Your current tier, and the one you’re working toward. `next_tier` is absent on the top tier
`progress_pct`	How far to `next_tier`’s milestone, 0-100
`pending_balance`	Earned but not yet paid out, in cents
`referral_link`	Send people here. Uses your custom slug if you’ve set one
`referral_link_alt`	The same attribution as a `?r=` parameter, for linking to the marketing site
`visit_count`	Clicks recorded on your links

Returns 404 with not enrolled if you haven’t enrolled yet. That is the check to make before rendering anything - the same 404 comes back from referrals, earnings, payouts and settings.

Referrals

GET /api/affiliates/referrals

Query Param	Type	Description
`limit`	int	Page size
`offset`	int	Pagination offset

Response: 200 OK

{
  "referrals": [
    {
      "id": "ref_abc",
      "affiliate_id": "aff_abc123",
      "referred_user": "usr_def",
      "status": "active",
      "signed_up_at": "2026-02-01T10:00:00Z",
      "activated_at": "2026-02-05T10:00:00Z",
      "email": "gr***@example.com",
      "pod_count": 2,
      "plan_slug": "build",
      "subscription_status": "active"
    }
  ],
  "total": 12,
  "limit": 25,
  "offset": 0
}

Referral statuses: pending (signed up, hasn’t paid), active (has paid at least once), churned. Emails are masked. You can see that someone signed up and whether they’re paying; you cannot see who they are or reach them through us.

Earnings

GET /api/affiliates/earnings

Same pagination. One row per commission-earning payment.

{
  "earnings": [
    {
      "id": "ern_abc",
      "affiliate_id": "aff_abc123",
      "referral_id": "ref_abc",
      "invoice_id": "inv_xyz",
      "payment_amount": 700,
      "commission_rate": 10,
      "commission_amount": 70,
      "tier_slug": "starter",
      "created_at": "2026-02-05T10:00:00Z"
    }
  ],
  "total": 34,
  "limit": 25,
  "offset": 0
}

commission_rate and tier_slug are recorded per earning, so this list stays accurate across tier changes.

Payouts

GET /api/affiliates/payouts

Same pagination. Payouts are recorded by us when money is sent; there is no endpoint to request one.

{
  "payouts": [
    {
      "id": "pay_abc",
      "affiliate_id": "aff_abc123",
      "amount": 5000,
      "method": "paypal",
      "status": "completed",
      "reference": "8XY123456",
      "note": "",
      "paid_at": "2026-02-15T10:00:00Z",
      "created_at": "2026-02-15T10:00:00Z"
    }
  ],
  "total": 2,
  "limit": 25,
  "offset": 0
}

Settings

PUT /api/affiliates/settings

{
  "paypal_email": "you@example.com",
  "custom_slug": "ada"
}

Field	Type	Description
`paypal_email`	string	Where payouts are sent. Set this before you expect one
`custom_slug`	string	A readable alternative to your generated code, used in both referral links

A custom slug is 3-30 characters, lowercase letters, numbers and hyphens only. Response: 200 OK - returns the updated affiliate record.

Code	Reason
`400`	Slug is the wrong length or contains disallowed characters
`404`	Not enrolled
`409`	Someone else already has that slug

Your original referral_code keeps working after you set a slug.

Recording a Visit

POST /api/affiliate/visit

Public, no auth. Records a click against a referral code - this is what our own site calls when someone lands with a ?ref= or ?r= parameter, and you only need it if you’re building your own landing page in front of a referral link.

{ "code": "1a2b3c4d" }

Always returns 200 OK with {"status": "ok"}, including for an unknown code: it’s tracking, and it never blocks the page it’s called from. A click from the affiliate’s own logged-in session is silently ignored, so you can’t inflate your own visit count.

​How it works

​Tiers

​Enroll

​Dashboard

​Referrals

​Earnings

​Payouts

​Settings

​Recording a Visit

How it works

Tiers

Enroll

Dashboard

Referrals

Earnings

Payouts

Settings

Recording a Visit