How to Migrate Off Rewardful: Step-by-Step Checklist

I built Referralful's Rewardful importer after hearing the same worry from every founder switching over: "what happens to the affiliates who are already earning?" Nobody wants to break live links or lose a commission history that took a year to build. The good news is the actual migration is mechanical if you do it in the right order. Here's the checklist I'd run.

Most founders who reach out about migrating aren't unhappy with Rewardful as a product, they've just outgrown the pricing tier they're on, hit an integration gap, or want an open API instead of a fixed feature list. Whatever the reason, the mechanics of the move matter more than the reason for it: get the data and links across cleanly and nobody but you notices the switch happened.

Before you start: what Rewardful will and won't hand you

Rewardful's dashboard has one self-service export: due payouts, downloadable as a CSV formatted for PayPal mass payments, Wise batch payments, or a generic format. That's it for one-click exports. It's built for paying affiliates, not for pulling your whole program out.

For everything else, meaning your full affiliate roster, historical commissions, and referral records, Rewardful's own help center is explicit: email hello@getrewardful.com and they'll help export your data "in a format that is convenient to you." There's no self-service "export everything" button. Budget a day or two of lag for a support reply if you go that route.

This is exactly why a direct, API-based import matters: it skips the support-ticket step entirely.

The two ways this usually goes wrong

Before the checklist, it's worth naming the failure modes, because every step below exists to prevent one of these:

• Affiliates get new links. Someone swaps the tracking snippet without preserving tokens, every previously shared link 404s or stops attributing, and affiliates who spent months building content around their old link lose that traffic overnight.
• Balances don't match. A manual export drops a decimal, misses a payout that was already approved but not yet paid, or loses the running total on a recurring commission. The affiliate notices before you do.

Both are avoidable if the data moves with the program instead of getting re-entered by hand.

The checklist

1. Pull your Rewardful API secret

Log into Rewardful, go to Company Settings, and copy your API Secret. This is the credential that lets an import tool read your program directly instead of waiting on a manual export.

2. Decide your cutover date

Pick a low-traffic day. You're not taking anything offline, but it makes it easier to spot-check the import against real activity before affiliates notice anything changed.

3. Run the import

On Referralful, this step is one action: paste your Rewardful API secret into the dashboard. It pulls in campaigns, affiliates, tracking links, promo codes, unpaid balances, and history, referrals, paid commissions, and payouts, with the real dollar amounts intact. Commission rates, cookie windows, and payout caps map across one to one, so you're not rebuilding your program rules from scratch.

It's safe to run more than once. A second pass skips anything already imported instead of duplicating it, so if new signups happen between your first run and your actual cutover, you can re-run it to catch up.

4. Verify before you touch anything live

Spot-check a handful of affiliates: does their unpaid balance match what Rewardful shows? Do their historical commissions add up? Pick your top earner specifically, since they're the one most likely to notice and the one whose trust matters most. Check that their commission rate, cookie window, and any promo codes carried over correctly too, not just the dollar totals. This is the step people skip and regret. Ten minutes here saves an awkward email to an affiliate about a missing payout later.

5. Swap the tracking snippet, but not all at once

Install the new tracking snippet alongside Rewardful's, don't just replace it. Because affiliate tokens carry over unchanged, links your affiliates have already posted on their blogs, YouTube videos, and social profiles keep converting the moment the new snippet is live. No one needs a new link.

Keep Rewardful's snippet running in parallel for about 90 days. That covers any click already sitting in a Rewardful cookie so it still converts and gets credited properly, instead of falling into a gap between platforms.

6. Invite affiliates to set up their new login

Passwords don't carry over between platforms for security reasons, only the account data does. Send the invite email so each affiliate can set a login with the same email address they already used. Their links, history, and balance are already sitting there waiting when they log in.

7. Update anything that points at your old signup URL

If your affiliate signup link is linked from your footer, help docs, or a welcome email sequence, update it to the new program URL now, not after affiliates start asking why the old one looks broken.

8. Tell your affiliates what's changing, briefly

One email covers it: new dashboard, same links, same earnings, nothing they need to do except log in and set a password. Affiliates don't need the technical detail, they need reassurance nothing they earned got lost.

9. Remove Rewardful's snippet and cancel

Once your 90-day overlap window has passed and you've confirmed conversions are flowing through the new snippet, pull Rewardful's tracking code and cancel the subscription. Rewardful's help center has a specific article for canceling if you want the exact steps on their end.

What actually determines how smooth this goes

The riskiest part of any affiliate platform migration isn't the software, it's whether affiliate tokens and historical balances survive the move intact. If links break or a balance comes over wrong, that's the kind of thing an affiliate notices immediately and remembers. Everything else on this checklist exists to protect those two things.

Done right, most of your affiliates never need to know the platform underneath changed at all. Their link still works, their dashboard still shows the right number, and the only email they get is the one inviting them to set a new password. That's the bar to aim for, not a fast migration, a quiet one.

I put together the mechanics of the import itself on Switch from Rewardful, and if you're still deciding whether to move at all, /vs/rewardful and the Rewardful pricing breakdown cover the "why" side of that decision.

FAQ

Can I export my full affiliate history from Rewardful myself? The dashboard's self-service export only covers due payouts, as a CSV formatted for PayPal or Wise. For full history, Rewardful's help center says to email hello@getrewardful.com and they'll export it for you.

Will my affiliates lose their tracking links when I switch? Not if the platform you're moving to keeps each affiliate's original token. Referralful's importer preserves tokens, so already-shared links keep converting once the new snippet is installed.

How long should I run both tracking snippets at once? About 90 days. That's enough time for clicks already sitting in a Rewardful cookie to still convert and get credited before you remove Rewardful's snippet for good.

Do affiliates need to reset their passwords after migrating? Yes, passwords don't transfer for security reasons. Their account, links, and history are already imported, they just set a new login using the same email.

If you're ready to see what the import actually looks like on your own program, Referralful's one-click Rewardful import is free to run, you don't pay until your first affiliate joins.