Changelog

July 2025

Feature Improvement

Hold Period Settings: Introduced configurable hold periods (0-365 days) that delay when affiliate earnings become eligible for payout. This feature protects against refunds, chargebacks, and subscription cancellations by ensuring commissions are only paid out after a safe waiting period. Affiliates now see both total earnings and payout-eligible earnings separately, with clear indicators of when held earnings will be released. Includes comprehensive admin controls, API integration with new earnings fields (eligible_earnings, held_earnings, next_release_date), and complete documentation at /docs/hold-periods.
Enhanced Wise Auto-Payouts: Significantly improved the Wise integration for automated affiliate payouts. Simplified the setup process. You can now set up payouts for your affiliates with ease.
Polar Payment Integration: Added complete integration with Polar payment system following the established patterns of Stripe, LemonSqueezy, and Paddle. Includes automatic webhook processing for subscription.created, subscription.updated, and subscription.canceled events. Features secure HMAC-SHA256 signature verification, comprehensive affiliate attribution logic (referral codes via metadata, coupon-based attribution, email fallback), and seamless commission calculation. Added Polar configuration to project onboarding and integration settings, plus complete documentation at /docs/polar with setup guides, implementation examples, and troubleshooting tips.
Paddle Payment Integration: Added complete integration with Paddle payment system following the established patterns of Stripe and LemonSqueezy. Includes automatic webhook processing for transaction.completed, subscription.created, and subscription.updated events. Features secure HMAC-SHA256 signature verification, comprehensive affiliate attribution logic (referral codes via custom data, coupon-based attribution, email fallback), and seamless commission calculation. Added Paddle configuration to project onboarding and integration settings, plus automatic referral code processing for Paddle payment links via Refgrow.processPaddleLinks() JavaScript helper. Includes complete documentation at /docs/paddle with setup guides, implementation examples, and troubleshooting tips.
Individual Affiliate Commission Duration Settings: Enhanced affiliate commission management with personalized duration settings. Now admins can set custom commission duration (lifetime, first purchase, limited period) for each affiliate individually, alongside existing commission type and value overrides. Includes complete UI integration in affiliate management modal with period specification for limited duration commissions. Applies affiliate-specific duration rules in conversion processing logic, allowing precise control over how long each affiliate earns commissions from their referred customers.

June 2025

Feature Improvement

Webhooks System: Launched complete webhook infrastructure for real-time event notifications. Supports configurable events (referral signup, conversion, cancellation) with secure HMAC-SHA256 signatures for authenticity verification. Features automatic retry logic (3 attempts), comprehensive delivery logging with status codes and error messages, and an intuitive testing interface directly from the project settings. Includes detailed English documentation at /docs/webhooks with implementation examples, security best practices, and troubleshooting guides.
Manual Affiliate Creation & Management: Introduced comprehensive manual affiliate management system. Admins can now directly create affiliates through the dashboard with email specification, automatic or manual referral code generation, and payment method configuration. Added full editing capabilities for existing affiliates including updating email addresses, referral codes, and payment settings. Includes validation for email uniqueness and referral code conflicts within projects.
Team Collaboration & Multi-User Access: Launched comprehensive team collaboration features. Project owners can now invite team members via email with automatic account creation. Enhanced invitation system with robust link handling, Google OAuth integration, and secure token-based authentication. Team members gain full project access while maintaining role-based permissions.
Reference Parameter Support: Added optional reference parameter to manual conversion tracking. Track conversions with custom identifiers using Refgrow(value, type, email, { reference: "ORDER-123" }). References are stored with conversions and displayed in dashboard for easy order matching and reconciliation.
Anti-Manipulation Protection: Implemented comprehensive protection against referral attribution manipulations. The system now prevents existing users (direct customers, previous referrals, or users with purchase history) from being retroactively attributed to affiliates. This blocks self-referral schemes and ensures only legitimate new referrals are tracked. Includes automatic detection of direct customers attempting to become referrals and server-side validation that cannot be bypassed.
Enhanced Existing User Detection: Added intelligent detection of users who were already in the system before clicking referral links. The system checks multiple data sources (referred_users, conversions, direct signups) to prevent attribution gaming.
Automatic Cookie Cleanup: When manipulation attempts are detected, the system automatically clears referral cookies and localStorage to prevent continued tracking of blocked users.
Detailed Logging & Diagnostics: Enhanced logging with specific reasons for blocking (direct customer, existing user, conversion history) to help administrators understand attribution decisions.

May 2025

Feature Improvement

Smart Trial Handling: Enhanced webhook processing to automatically ignore trial subscriptions and orders with $0 amount. Commissions are now only triggered for actual paid conversions, ensuring affiliates are rewarded only for genuine purchases.
Secure Public API & Optional Project Secret: Enhanced the security of public-facing API endpoints used by the embeddable widget. Introduced an optional project_secret for each project, which, if set, requires requests to /api/referral-data and other widget-related endpoints to be authenticated via an Authorization: Bearer <secret> or X-Project-Secret: <secret> header. If a project does not have a project_secret configured, the API remains accessible without this specific token. Updated embed.js to send the secret if provided via data-project-secret. Added UI in project settings to generate/manage this secret key.
Coupon Tracking System: Implemented a comprehensive coupon tracking system. Conversions can now be attributed to affiliates via unique coupon codes. This works for Stripe (matching Stripe Coupon IDs), LemonSqueezy (matching LemonSqueezy Discount Codes), and manual conversion tracking via `Refgrow(value, type, email, couponCode)`. Includes UI for managing coupons (add, edit, delete) per project.

April 2025

Feature Improvement Fix

Enhanced Auth Form UI: Redesigned the affiliate email authentication form in the embeddable widget (`embed.js`) with a modern, responsive two-column layout for improved user experience and visual appeal.
Multicurrency Support: Added the ability to select the display currency symbol ($, €, £, etc.) in project settings. This symbol is now used across the dashboard and embeddable widget.
Referral Exchange (Beta): Launched the Referral Exchange system, allowing Refgrow users to cross-promote programs. Includes a credit system (+1 for sending an affiliate, -1 for receiving), a public directory of participating programs (`/affiliate-programs`), and configuration options within project settings (enable/disable, listing details, credit purchase).
Exchange Widget Integration: The embedded affiliate widget (`embed.js`) now includes a block to discover other exchange programs. Display modes include a simple text link or a preview of recommended programs.
Localization Support: Added multi-language support for the embedded affiliate dashboard. Project owners can set a default language, and users can override it via the `data-lang` attribute in the embed code. Added initial translations for English, Romanian, Ukrainian, German, Spanish, French, Italian, and Portuguese.
Anonymous Payment Tracking: Added support for tracking payments without requiring user registration (via direct code integration with duplicate prevention to avoid conflicts with Stripe events).
Affiliate-Specific Commissions: Added the ability to set custom commission rates (percentage or fixed) for individual affiliates, overriding project defaults. Includes UI management within the project affiliates section.
Stripe Product ID Commissions: Introduced the ability to set specific commission rates based on the Stripe Product ID, allowing overrides for different products within a project.
REST API V1 Launch: Introduced a public REST API (v1) allowing programmatic access to manage affiliates and referrals. Includes API Key authentication.
API Documentation: Added comprehensive API documentation site including an overview, endpoint references, and guides (accessible via `/docs`).
Cookie Lifetime Setting: Added the ability to configure the cookie lifetime in days through project settings, giving more control over how long referral attributions remain active.
Custom Referral Link Parameter: Introduced support for customizing the URL parameter used in referral links, allowing projects to use their preferred parameter name instead of the default.

March 2025

Feature Improvement Fix

LemonSqueezy Integration: Added automatic conversion tracking via LemonSqueezy webhooks.
Manual Affiliate Approval: Added an option within project settings to require manual approval for new affiliates joining a program.
Embedded Dashboard Customization: Users can now customize the primary, secondary, and font colors of the embedded affiliate portal via project settings to better match their application's branding.
Mass Payouts (Beta): Introduced an initial version for processing payouts to multiple affiliates simultaneously.
Dark Mode Preset: Added a dark mode preset option for the embedded affiliate portal, allowing users to quickly apply a dark theme without manually configuring individual color settings.

February 2025

Feature Improvement Fix

Cross-Domain Tracking: Improved the `tracking.js` script to better handle scenarios where affiliate signups or purchases occur on a different domain than the initial referral click, relaxing strict domain checks for conversion tracking when initiated via `window.Refgrow(...)`.
Enhanced Analytics: Improved data points available in the dashboard and refined conversion tracking logic for accuracy.
Stripe Webhook Integration: Added comprehensive webhook handling for Stripe events, enabling automatic conversion tracking and commission calculations for all payment types.
Stripe Integration: Added support for Stripe's `invoice.paid` event to track recurring payments and calculate commissions for ongoing subscriptions.

~Late 2024 / Early 2025

Launch

Refgrow launched with core features including project creation, Stripe integration (initial checkout tracking), embeddable affiliate portal (`embed.js`), referral link tracking (`tracking.js`), basic commission structures (percentage/fixed, lifetime/first), and user management (Email/Pass, Google OAuth, Magic Link).

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