Recurring & lifetime commissions

Recurring commissions (subscriptions)

If your store sells subscriptions with WooCommerce Subscriptions, you can credit the original affiliate every time a referred subscription renews — not just on the signup.

Turn it on under Affiliates → Settings → Commissions → Recurring commissions:

• Rate — renewals can use the same rate as normal referrals, or a custom percentage or flat amount (many programs pay a lower rate on renewals than on the first sale).
• Renewal cap — 0 credits every renewal forever; 12 credits only the first 12 renewals of each subscription, then stops automatically.

Renewal referrals are ordinary referrals in every way: they show the renewal order in their description, go through the same fraud review and maturity window, reverse automatically when a renewal is refunded, and count toward payable balances.

The affiliate credited is always the one attributed to the subscription's signup order — the customer doesn't need to keep any cookie for renewals to track.

Lifetime commissions

With lifetime commissions, a customer's first referred purchase links them to that affiliate. From then on, every later order by that customer credits the same affiliate — no cookie, no coupon, nothing required from the customer.

Turn it on under Affiliates → Settings → Commissions → Lifetime commissions:

• Rate — same as normal referrals, or a custom percentage / flat amount for linked-customer orders.
• Link expires after — 0 means the link never expires; 365 means orders more than a year after the link was created no longer credit the affiliate.

Rules worth knowing:

• First affiliate wins. Once a customer is linked, the link never silently reassigns. Removing an affiliate's links is an explicit admin decision.
• A live referral beats the link. If the customer arrives through another affiliate's link or coupon on a later purchase, that fresh attribution wins for that order — lifetime links only fill the gap when no other attribution exists.
• Privacy-conscious by design. Customer emails are stored only as salted hashes (the same technique used for IP addresses), so the link table never contains personal data in readable form.

Which should you use?

They solve different problems and combine well: recurring commissions reward affiliates for the subscription they brought; lifetime commissions reward them for the customer relationship — repeat one-off purchases, upsells, and comebacks. Programs with subscription products usually enable both.