AfterShip vs Refersion

AfterShip is a post-purchase platform for ecommerce brands, started in Hong Kong around 2011 to 2012 by Teddy Chan, Andrew Chan and Dante Tsang after Teddy built a script to cut where-is-my-order emails in his own store. It raised a $66M Series B led by Tiger Global in 2021. Its core job is keeping shoppers informed after checkout and reducing support tickets about deliveries, returns and delays.

The suite is sold as separate products: Tracking (branded tracking pages, delivery notifications, estimated delivery dates and analytics across 1,300+ carriers), Returns (self-serve returns and exchanges), Shipping (label printing and rate comparison), Protection (shipping insurance), plus personalization and warranty tools. AI features and an MCP server give assistants read access to shipment and return data. Each product has its own tiers, and the Shopify App Store versions are priced differently from direct plans.

AfterShip fits Shopify, BigCommerce and WooCommerce brands that ship thousands of orders a year and want to turn tracking emails and pages into a marketing channel. Brands mainly needing cheap labels should look at Shippo, Easyship or ShipStation, and EU merchants often pick Sendcloud.

Buying tip: in mid-2026 AfterShip cut its direct Tracking plans from four to three, renamed Pro to Premium at $59 a month billed yearly, and moved to annual shipment quotas (6,000 a year on both paid tiers). API and webhooks start on Premium. On Shopify, compare the app's own plans, which include a free tier for 50 shipments a month.

Refersion is an affiliate marketing platform from US-based Refersion Inc. It helps direct-to-consumer brands recruit affiliates, creators and influencers, track the sales they drive, and pay them commissions. Its main selling point is first-party tracking: instead of third-party cookies and redirects, conversions are attributed through the brand's own tracking domain, which Refersion says captures 95 to 99 percent of referred sales.

Brands get branded sign-up pages, a marketplace where affiliates can discover offers, flexible commission rules (percent of sale, subscription, product-level, new versus returning customer), performance dashboards and one-click payouts, including PayPal, with tax form collection. Pricing combines a monthly fee with a percentage of affiliate-driven revenue: Launch adds 3 percent, Growth adds 2 percent and unlocks the API and 30+ marketing integrations, and Scale moves to a flat fee.

Refersion fits Shopify, WooCommerce and BigCommerce stores that want a serious affiliate program without enterprise contracts. Impact.com is stronger for large partnership programs across many partner types, ReferralCandy is better for customer-to-customer referrals, and PartnerStack targets B2B SaaS rather than retail.

In January 2026 Refersion added a free Marketplace Listing plan, so brands can publish an offer and collect affiliate applications before paying. Approving affiliates, tracking and payouts still require Launch or above, so model the 2 to 3 percent fee against your expected affiliate revenue.