Pay when it works.
And only as much as it works.
Herd is variable pricing. You only owe us when your referral program is bringing in revenue, and our bill scales with that revenue. When your business grows, ours grows with it. When your business is just getting started, you owe us nothing.
Yes — at scale, you'll pay us more than you would a flat-fee vendor. That's the deal. Our incentive is your growth, and the only way our bill goes up is if your business grows. That's how it should be.
Free
Install the script, pick a reward shape, ship a link. We don't charge you anything while you're proving the program works.
Start free →- ✓ Unlimited programs
- ✓ All 8 touchpoints
- ✓ Full analytics
- ✓ Email & community support
Variable
Once you cross $1K/mo of referred revenue, you pay a small percentage of what we're bringing in. That percentage gets smaller as your program scales — so the bigger you get, the more aligned we are with helping you grow further. See the curve below.
Start free →- ✓ Everything in Starter
- ✓ Priority support
- ✓ Multi-program segmentation
- ✓ Advanced fraud rules
- ✓ Webhooks + API
The rate bends down
as your program scales.
Marginal rates — the same shape as income tax brackets. Each dollar of monthly referred revenue is priced at the rate of the band it falls in. You never pay the higher rate on the lower bands.
Say your program is bringing in $20,000/mo of referred revenue. The first $1,000 is free. The next $9,000 is at 10%. The remaining $10,000 is at 5%. Your bill: $1,400/mo — a blended 7% effective rate. At $50K/mo of referred revenue your blended rate drops to roughly 5.8%. At $100K/mo, around 3.9%. The bigger your program gets, the smaller the share we take.
Pay regardless of success.
Or pay proportional to it.
The category is split into two philosophies. Our competitors charge a flat fee the day you install — whether the program works or not. We earn when you earn. Our incentives are aligned with yours by design, not by claim.
Herd | Rewardful | Cello | FirstPromoter | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Starting price | Free | $49/mo | Sales call · ~$50K min ARR | $49/mo |
| When does the bill start? | When you cross $1K/mo of referred revenue | Day one — whether the program works or not | On contract signing — annual commit up front | Day one — whether the program works or not |
| Pricing shape | Variable. Scales with your referred revenue. Rate bends down as you grow. | Flat monthly fee. Higher tier the more you earn. | Flat annual contract. Renegotiated at renewal. | Flat monthly fee. Plus affiliate count caps. |
| Whose incentive is your growth? | Ours — we only earn when your program does | Yours alone — they get paid the same regardless | Yours alone — contract was signed before you grew | Yours alone — flat fee doesn't scale with results |
| Setup time | 5 min | 5-step onboarding | ~5 days SDK build | 5-step onboarding |
| Affiliate experience | Embedded widget inside your app | External portal at rewardful.com | In-app SDK widget | External portal at firstpromoter.com |
| Payout flow | Stripe Connect, automatic | CSV export to PayPal/Wise (manual) | Multi-currency automated, 40+ countries | CSV export, manual |
| Tax compliance (W-9 / 1099) | Collected at signup; threshold tracked per partner | Add-on (Managed Payouts) only | Fully managed, MoR-style | On you |
| Best for | Bootstrapped → growing B2B SaaS up to ~$15M ARR | Comfortable mid-market choice once you're past PMF | PLG-stage SaaS doing $50K+/mo in referred revenue | Teams who picked it in 2019 and never re-evaluated |
We're not for everyone. If you need a dedicated CSM and a Salesforce integration, the bigger tools will serve you better.