Referral Program
Give every member a code and a link, count the friends they bring in for thirty days, and reward them with free membership days or a commission you pay out — with holds, refunds and payouts handled for you.
A Referral Program turns your members into affiliates. Each one who joins gets a code and a link; a friend who arrives through them is counted as theirs for thirty days; and when that friend's first payment settles, the affiliate earns what you promised: free membership days banked on their own membership, or a cash commission you pay out yourself. Subscriby tracks every touch, quotes every reward when the payment lands, holds commissions through your refund window, takes them back on a refund, and keeps the ledger you pay from.
The Referral Program is bundled with the Growth plan. On Free or Starter, add the Referral Program Addon.
Setting it up
Open Referral Program
In your project's menu, under Coupon Codes, open Referral Program and press Set Up the Program.
Choose what referrers earn
Free membership days banks a number of days on the affiliate's own membership for every friend who pays. If they hold no live membership at the time, the days wait on their balance until their next purchase.
A cash commission is money you pay out: a percentage of every settled payment the friend makes, for the friend's first payment only, for a number of months, or for life; or a fixed amount on the friend's first payment. Pick the currency a fixed commission is paid in.
Choose what the friend receives
Nothing, free days on their first purchase, or one of your coupon codes applied at their checkout. A coupon as the friend reward needs coupon codes on your plan.
Set the hold and who may join
A cash commission waits out a hold before it is payable, so a refund inside the window can take it back; the default is 14 days. Switch on Customers only to let only members with a live membership join, and Approval required to approve each affiliate yourself before their code counts. Write your own terms if you want them shown to affiliates and their friends, and the payout question you need answered to pay them, such as a PayPal email.
Save
The programme is live the moment you save. Members see Refer & Earn in the portal and in your bot, and can join from either.
A connector whose bot has a creator-side menu sets the programme up and runs it too: Manage Referral Program on the project card asks the same questions, then shows the overview, the settings, the affiliates and the payouts; see your connector's bot guide under Connectors.
How a referral is counted
A friend arrives in one of three ways: through the affiliate's portal link, through the affiliate's bot link on a connector, or by typing the affiliate's code where the checkout asks for a coupon code. Either way the friend is counted as that affiliate's for thirty days; if they do not pay within the window the referral expires. The first affiliate to touch a friend keeps them: a second link does not move a friend who is already counted, and a member who has already paid you cannot be referred.
The reward is earned when the friend's first payment settles, on any payment method. On a free-days programme the days are banked at once. On a cash programme the commission is written to the ledger as pending, becomes payable when the hold passes, and is reversed if the payment is refunded inside the hold; a refund after you already paid it out writes a clawback the affiliate's next payout nets against.
Rewards never change after they are written
Every reward is priced from the programme as it stands when the payment settles. Changing the programme later moves nothing already in the ledger, and every approved or pending affiliate is told the new terms in their chat and by email the moment you save them, pause the programme or switch it back on.
Affiliates
The Affiliates tab lists everyone who joined with their code, status and the days or money they have earned. From there you can:
- Approve an affiliate who is waiting, when approval is required. They receive their link, code and the programme's terms in their chat and by email.
- Suspend one who should stop earning. Their code stops counting new friends; what they already earned stays and can still be paid.
- Add an affiliate by hand from a member search. They are approved whatever the switches say.
An affiliate's own payout details, the wallet address or email they typed when you asked, are shown wherever you pay them: in their flyout, in the Record a Payout dialog, in the Pays Out To column of the Payouts tab and its CSV export, and on the platform bot's affiliate screen. They never travel over the API or the webhooks.
Paying affiliates
A cash commission is yours to pay, outside Subscriby. The Affiliates tab shows what each affiliate is owed per currency, past the hold and not yet paid; the Payouts tab records what you paid and exports the history as a CSV. When you record a payout, the ledger marks the affiliate's oldest payable commissions in that currency as paid, up to the amount, and the affiliate is told. A payout larger than the payable balance is refused.
The minimum payout you can set is a guide for you, the balance an affiliate reaches before you bother paying; nothing is enforced and affiliates are not shown it.
Pausing, changing and deleting
Pause the programme to stop it safely: links stop counting and payments stop earning at once, the ledger and the payouts stay readable, and every affiliate is told. Switch it back on and they hear the terms as they stand. Delete removes the programme, but is refused while any affiliate is still owed a commission: record their payouts, or pause instead.
If your plan stops including the programme, it reads as lapsed: nothing new is attributed or earned until the addon is bought, while the reads, the ledger and the payouts keep working so affiliates can still be paid.
Where referrals show up
- A connector's creator-side bot runs the programme from Manage Referral Program on the project card.
- The Overall and Project Dashboards carry a Referral Program card: the affiliates who brought the most paying friends, referrals, conversions, rewards earned and what is payable now, in the dashboard export too.
- The member flyout on Managing Members shows Referred By and Referrals Made.
- The ten
referral.*webhook events announce every join, capture, conversion, reward and payout. - The REST API, the MCP tools, Zapier and n8n read and run the same programme.
Questions
Related
- Referral Program Addon — pricing for Free and Starter.
- Coupon Codes — the friend reward a programme can apply at checkout.
- Refer a friend — what your members see.
- Managing Members — Referred By and Referrals Made.
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