✨ Customer referrals are part of the Subi Loyalty Program, available on the Subi and Subi Plus plans.

This article answers: how do I set up customer referrals ("Refer a friend") in my Subi loyalty program? Refer a friend is an earning method inside your loyalty program. When one of your existing customers shares their personal referral link or code and a friend places an order, the friend gets a discount on that order and your existing customer (the "advocate") earns loyalty points. Both sides earn: the advocate gets points, the new customer gets a discount.

Note: this is different from Subi's merchant referral program (Subi > Growth > Referrals), where you refer other Shopify merchants to Subi. This article is only about your customers referring their friends to your store.

Each customer gets their own referral link and referral code from your customer portal. When a friend opens the link, your store opens with the referral discount applied automatically, so the friend never has to type a code. The friend's order counts as a referral if it is placed within the attribution window you set.

As soon as the friend places their first order, the advocate's points appear as Pending. The points are Confirmed and added to the advocate's balance when the trigger you choose fires: the friend's first paid renewal, the fulfillment of their first order, or the order itself. If the trigger does not fire within the pending window, the pending points are revoked automatically.

Worked example: you set "Percentage off" with a discount value of 10, and 300 points awarded per successful referral, confirmed on the friend's first paid renewal. A friend opens the link and subscribes with a $50 first order. The friend pays $45 (10% off $50 is $5). The advocate sees 300 pending points right away. When the friend's first renewal is billed successfully, the 300 points are confirmed and added to the advocate's balance.

Referral settings live on the same page as the rest of your loyalty program, on the Configuration tab.

If you have not set up a loyalty program yet, start with How to Set Up a Loyalty Program in Subi. Your loyalty program must be Active for referrals to work: while the program is inactive or paused, customers do not see a referral page and new orders are not counted as referrals.

The Refer a friend settings are grouped into five sections. Every field has a short help text in the app; the important ones are explained below.

Discount type: choose Percentage off or Fixed amount off. Percentage off scales with order size; fixed amount works best for high-AOV stores. Discount value: the percentage or amount the friend receives. A percentage cannot exceed 100.

Points awarded per successful referral: the points the advocate receives for each referral. They are awarded as Pending when the friend places their order and confirmed when the trigger fires. The app suggests that most stores see the best results awarding 300–500 points to the advocate.

Pick one of three triggers. When the referee's first paid renewal succeeds (recommended for subscriptions) gives the strongest fraud protection: points are only paid out after the second successful billing.

When the referee's first order is fulfilled reduces the risk of paying out on cancelled or refunded orders, and is best for one-time products.

As soon as the referee places their first order gives faster gratification, but you may pay out on cancelled orders.

Attribution window: how long after clicking the link a friend's order still counts as a referral. 30 days is the default. Pending window: how long pending points wait for the trigger before they are revoked automatically. 14 days is the default. Both are entered in days.

Run fraud checks before confirming a referral: runs 8 checks (self-email, self-customer, shared phone, address or IP, cookie tampering, existing customer, manual exclusion). Recommended ON. Require a vaulted payment method on the referee: only confirms the referral if the friend saved a payment method to their account, which filters out one-time guest checkouts. Allow combining with other order discounts: when off, the referral discount cannot stack with other order discounts; off protects your margin. Minimum order value: the smallest subtotal eligible for a referral; leave it blank to allow any order value.

Click Save. Changes apply to new referrals; the discount each friend receives is created in your Shopify store from these settings.

Customers get their referral link and code from the Refer a friend page of your Subi customer portal, which they open while logged in. The page lives at the /refer-a-friend/ path of your customer portal, for example https://your-portal-domain/refer-a-friend/ (or /portal/refer-a-friend/ when the portal is served from your store domain). It is not linked from the portal's menu, so share the address with your customers yourself, for example in an email, a campaign banner in the portal, or your account page.

On that page a customer sees Your referral link and Or your code, each with a Copy button, plus Share via buttons for WhatsApp, X, Facebook and Email that pre-fill a message such as "Get 10% off your first order with my referral link." together with the disclosure "I'll earn rewards if you order." Below that, the customer sees their own counts for Pending, Confirmed and Points earned, and a Referral history table listing each friend's initial, status, points and date.

If the referral earning method is off, or the loyalty program is not active, a customer who opens the page is sent back to their subscriptions list instead.

Opening the referral link takes the friend to your store home page with the referral discount already applied to their cart. The discount applies to both one-time and subscription purchases, can be used once per customer, and does not combine with product or shipping discounts. Whether it combines with other order discounts, and whether a minimum order value applies, follows the settings above.

Once the Refer a friend earning method is on, a Referrals tab appears on the Loyalty program page next to Configuration. Before any customer has shared a link it shows "No referrals yet" with two buttons: Promote referrals opens the referral settings, and Learn how it works opens the loyalty help article.

Once referrals exist, the tab lists them with the columns Advocate, Referee, Status, Points and Date. You can search by advocate or referee and filter by status.

Pending (in the status filter: Pending signup) means the friend clicked the link but has not ordered yet. Pending fulfillment means the friend has ordered and the advocate's points are pending until the trigger fires.

Confirmed means the trigger fired and the points were added to the advocate's balance.

Revoked means the pending points were taken back, for example because the order or subscription was cancelled, the pending window expired, a fraud check failed, or you excluded the advocate. Rejected means the order was not accepted as a referral, for example a gift order or a failed fraud check.

From a referral's row actions, choose Exclude advocate. That customer will no longer be able to share their referral link or earn points from new referrals, and their existing pending referrals will not be paid out. This only affects referrals: their existing points balance, redeemed rewards and other earning methods stay intact.

Why does a referral show as Revoked? Pending points are revoked when the friend's order or subscription is cancelled before the trigger fires, when the pending window runs out, when a fraud check fails, or when you exclude the advocate.

Do gift orders count? No. Orders marked as gifts are skipped and never create a referral.

Can a customer refer themselves? The fraud checks reject referrals where the friend's email or customer account matches the advocate's, and flag shared phone numbers, addresses or IP addresses for review.

The customer sees "We couldn't load your referrals" on the referral page. The page could not reach Subi at that moment. Ask the customer to refresh the page in a moment; their referrals and points are safe.