Flat-fee affiliate tracking without third-party cookies

In the world of affiliate marketing, merchants often face challenges with percentage-based apps, as costs increase as sales grow. To address this issue, a new app called ZeroCut has been developed. This app offers a flat-fee model, with pricing options starting from free, $19, or $39 per month, and no commission on tracked sales. The commission is enforced server-side and is reversed automatically for cancelled or refunded orders, with partial refunds also reversed proportionally.

ZeroCut uses three signals in order to attribute sales: a _zc_ref cart attribute from the theme, a real Shopify discount code per affiliate, and the landing_site query parameter. To protect user privacy, the app does not store any customer Personally Identifiable Information (PII) and does not rely on third-party cookies, as these are increasingly being blocked by browsers. Instead, it uses first-party cookies, localStorage, and does not load any external scripts on the storefront.

In case of a cancelled or refunded order, the commission is automatically reversed. However, once an order has been marked as paid, the commission cannot be rewritten, even if a later refund occurs. This feature ensures that merchants are not penalized for refunds, which can be a concern with percentage-based apps. For very small affiliate programs, a percentage-based app's free tier might sometimes cost less than any flat fee, including ZeroCut.