Shopify Collabs is free and it's not accepting new creator signups, confirmed in Shopify's own Help Center as of 2026-08-19. That second fact is the reason you're reading this: if you can't add new creators, Collabs can't grow your program, whatever the price says. Below are seven tools that work today, ranked by fit, with real prices instead of the "contact sales" wall most of this category hides behind.
The short version
| Tool | Price, verified 2026-08-19 | Best for |
|---|---|---|
| Shopify Collabs | Free + 2.9% on payouts | An existing roster, no new creators needed |
| Influencer Gift Form | Free, $68/mo (100 orders), $380/mo (unlimited) | Low-volume link-based gifting |
| Seed | Free, $19/mo (50 orders), $49/mo or $499/yr (unlimited) | Scaling gifting without per-order or percentage fees |
| Stack Influence | $0/mo, ~$30 per completed post | Fully managed, pay for results only |
| Social Cat | $99, $199, $299/mo | An inbound creator marketplace, not gifting-first |
| Influencer Hero | $649, $1,049, $2,490/mo, 3-month minimum | Full outreach and payments suite at scale |
| GRIN | $0, $200, $500, $1,000, $1,500/mo, month-to-month, self-serve | Enterprise creator CRM, team already running it |
1. Shopify Collabs, the free default with a closed door
Free to install, 2.9% on automatic commission payouts, 4.1 stars across 390 App Store reviews, the most-reviewed app in this category by a wide margin. That 4.1 average hides a wide spread though: 53% of reviews are five stars, but 21% are one star, verified 2026-08-19. It lives inside the admin you already have open every day, and if your creators are already signed up, nothing about running your program changes. Two problems sit underneath that convenience. New creator signups are closed, so you can't grow your list. And Collabs does not deduct partial refunds from creator commissions, a gap an App Store reviewer named Apparalel (United States, March 29, 2026) called out directly: "partial refunds are not deducted from commissions!!! We have had orders that were mostly returned and the affiliate keeps their entire commission unless it is a full refund." If your gifting program is done growing its creator list and doesn't run commission-based payouts, Collabs remains the cheapest option there is. If either of those isn't true, this is where it gets expensive in ways the free price tag doesn't show.
2. Influencer Gift Form, the closest mechanic to Seed
Same core idea as Seed: a branded link, the creator picks a product and variant, a $0 order lands in your admin. Free for 5 orders a month, $68/mo for 100 orders, $380/mo for unlimited. At low volume, under 100 orders a month, this is a genuinely fair price and a real option. It gets expensive at scale: $380/mo for unlimited orders is nearly eight times Seed's $49/mo unlimited tier, both verified 2026-08-19 on their App Store listings. Influencer Gift Form also carries a 5.0-star rating across 52 reviews, so on trust signals alone it sits close to where Seed does, just with a steeper price curve once you're past the free tier.
3. Seed, placed honestly
I built Seed, so read this entry with that in mind. Same link mechanic as Influencer Gift Form: a creator claims a product on a page, types an address, and a real $0 Shopify draft order lands in the admin, gated behind approval before it ever becomes a live order. What's different is the ceiling. Seed's unlimited tier is $49/mo or $499/yr, well under Influencer Gift Form's $380/mo unlimited and nowhere near Influencer Hero's $649/mo floor. Bri Beauty, one of our customers, ran 43 gift orders in its first week on Seed, which is the kind of ramp speed that matters once a brand decides to actually run this weekly instead of quarterly. hiccpet runs 19 gifts a week on an ongoing basis, and hiccpet, Tiny Harlow, and JNJ Apparel between them cover three different product categories, which is a reasonable signal the mechanic isn't tied to one kind of store. The free tier caps at 5 orders and 1 campaign, the same shape as the tiers above and below it here. Under 5 gifts a month, none of the paid tiers in this list matter yet, and Seed's own-domain embedding, running the claim page on the brand's own domain instead of a third-party link, is live today, which neither Influencer Gift Form nor Collabs offers. For brands that want the sending done for them rather than running it themselves, Seed also has a Concierge tier at $299/mo, a done-for-you option none of the self-serve gifting apps here offer at any price.
4. Stack Influence, done-for-you at a flat rate per result
No monthly fee. Stack Influence sources creators, runs the outreach, and charges around $30 for each completed post, verified 2026-08-19. If you don't want to run a gifting program yourself, this removes the most work from your week, at the cost of paying per result instead of a flat monthly rate. It's not a self-serve app sitting in your Shopify admin, it's a managed service that happens to work with Shopify stores.
5. Social Cat, an inbound marketplace, not a gifting queue
$99, $199, or $299 a month depending on tier, with a 7-day free trial. Social Cat isn't in the Shopify App Store at all, it's a standalone platform marketing to Shopify brands that claims over 2,000 of them as customers. Creators apply to your brand through Social Cat's own directory, which puts it closer to a smaller, cheaper Collabs marketplace than a gifting tool, minus the closed-signup problem, since it isn't part of Shopify's ecosystem.
6. Influencer Hero, the enterprise suite
$649/mo, $1,049/mo, or $2,490/mo, each with a 3-month minimum commitment, no free trial. This is a full outreach and creator-payment CRM with gifting as one feature among many: 1,000 to 10,000 monthly reach-outs, dozens to thousands of influencer payments, multiple team seats. A team running high-volume outreach campaigns with payment automation at scale can justify that price. A brand whose actual need is "let creators claim free product" is paying for a lot of suite around one feature.
7. GRIN, if you already run enterprise creator ops
GRIN publishes a full self-serve ladder on its own pricing page: Free at $0/mo, then $200, $500, $1,000, and $1,500 a month, month-to-month with no annual contract or required sales call, verified 2026-08-19. It's built for teams already managing creator relationships as a full discipline, with dashboards and reporting layered on top of outreach and payments. If that's not you yet, it's more platform than a gifting program needs.
How to actually pick one
Three questions do most of the work. First, do you need new creators, or are you working an existing list? If it's the latter, Collabs at $0 plus 2.9% is hard to beat, full stop. Second, how much of the work do you want to do yourself? Stack Influence, and Seed's own Concierge tier at $299/mo, trade a higher price for someone else running outreach; the self-serve link tools, Seed's Starter and Scale Gifts tiers and Influencer Gift Form, trade a lower price for you doing the sending. Third, what's your actual monthly volume? Under 100 orders a month, price differences between the self-serve tools are small enough that features matter more than dollars. Past 100 a month, the gap between $49/mo unlimited and $380/mo unlimited stops being rounding error.
Who should stay on Shopify Collabs
If your creator roster is already built and you're not trying to add names to it, stay put. Collabs is free, it lives where you already work, and the only real cost is 2.9% on money you're already paying out, plus whatever the refund-commission gap quietly costs on returns. Switching has a cost too, in setup time and in re-training whatever habit your team has around gifting. That cost only pays for itself once the closed-signup wall, or the refund leak, is actually costing you more than the switch does.
What to do next
If new creator signups are the wall you're hitting, run the exact math at your volume in our Shopify Collabs pricing breakdown or the direct Seed vs. Shopify Collabs comparison, see Seed's pricing, or install Seed from the Shopify App Store and send your first gift link today.
Frequently asked questions
Can I still add new creators to Shopify Collabs?
No. Shopify's own Help Center confirms new creator signups are closed as of 2026-08-19. Existing creator relationships still work, but the marketplace side is frozen to growth.
What's the cheapest real alternative to Shopify Collabs for gifting?
Seed's unlimited tier is $49/mo or $499/yr, well under Influencer Gift Form's $380/mo unlimited tier and nowhere near Influencer Hero's $649/mo floor. Both create real $0 draft orders via a branded link.
Does Shopify Collabs have any hidden cost beyond the 2.9% fee?
Yes. A reviewer flagged that partial refunds aren't deducted from creator commissions, so an order mostly returned still pays the affiliate their full commission unless the refund is processed as 100%.
Who should stay on Shopify Collabs?
A brand whose creator roster is already built and isn't trying to add names to it. Collabs is free, lives where you already work, and the only real cost is 2.9% on payouts plus the refund-commission gap.
What if I want the sending done for me instead of running it myself?
Stack Influence charges roughly $30 per completed post with no monthly fee and full outreach handled for you. Seed's Concierge tier at $299/mo is the self-serve-app equivalent, a done-for-you option none of the other gifting apps offer at any price.