For subscription businesses
Affiliate commissions that respect the billing cycle.
Box-of-the-month, recurring memberships, streaming, refillable product — they all need the same thing: an affiliate engine that pays per cycle, reverses on cancellation, and understands skips, pauses, and downgrades. That is what HeldSway was built around.
- Recurring · lifetime · capped
- Skip / pause aware
- Renewal events drive payouts
Sound familiar?
Subscription affiliate math has more edges than people think.
Skips and pauses confuse most platforms
Customer pauses for two months, comes back. Did the affiliate earn months 1, 4, 5 — or all five? Most tools give up and pay nothing.
Refunds happen mid-cycle
Customer cancels and refunds month 6. You already paid commission on month 6. The reverse is manual.
Trial-then-paid creates phantom commissions
Affiliate gets paid on trial signup, customer never converts. You ate the commission on a customer that never paid.
Downgrades break the math
Customer drops from $99/mo to $19/mo. Most platforms still pay the affiliate on the original $99 forever.
How HeldSway helps
Built around the renewal event, not the signup.
Renewal-driven commissions
Stripe / Paddle renewal webhook fires → HeldSway records the commission. No commission on signup; the cycle drives the math.
Trial-to-paid conversion check
Trials don't fire commissions until they convert. No phantom payments on signups that never paid.
Skip / pause aware
When a customer pauses, the affiliate gets paid for paid cycles only. Resumed cycles resume commission. No spreadsheet reconciliation.
Downgrade-proportional pay
Customer downgrades from $99 to $19? Affiliate commission drops proportionally on the next cycle. Math stays honest.
Refund auto-reversal
Refund inside the attribution window auto-reverses the matching commission. No clawback queue, no awkward email.
Cohort retention per affiliate
See 30-/60-/90-day retention by affiliate. Find the partners who deliver lifetime value vs. signup tourists.
A typical subscription setup
Wiring billing events into commissions.
- 01
Connect Stripe / Paddle / Woo Subscriptions
OAuth or API key. HeldSway listens to subscription.created, .renewed, .paused, .resumed, .cancelled events.
- 02
Pick your commission shape
Recurring 15% per cycle for life · 12-month cap · trial-only on conversion. Stack with bonuses for retention milestones.
- 03
Watch retention reports
Per-affiliate cohort retention shows up after the first 30 days. Trim partners who deliver churners; double down on LTV-positive ones.
Built on these features
The features that make this work.
Pay the cycle, not the signup.
30-day free trial. Recurring commissions on Standard and above; subscription event support on every plan.