Legal

Partner programme terms

Last updated: November 10, 2026

These terms govern holdmark's referral programme: who can join, what we pay, how we know that a store came through someone, and what cannot be done. The programme is provided by Aletheia Software, S.L., tax ID B05672654 (hereinafter, «holdmark»). Anyone who sends an application accepts them, and anyone who is admitted is bound by them. The page Recommend holdmark explains the same thing in plain language so that it can be understood before joining; if a sentence on that page and one here do not say the same thing, this document prevails.

1. What a partner is

A partner is a person or a company, independent from holdmark, that recommends holdmark to online stores and earns a share of what holdmark takes in from the stores that come through them. There are two tiers, and what sets them apart is the work they do, nothing else:

• Affiliate: recommends holdmark to their audience or to their clients.
• Partner: on top of recommending it, installs the app, configures it and handles the merchant's questions. This is the tier for agencies and consultancies.

In this document «partner» refers to both tiers unless stated otherwise. The tier is assigned by holdmark on admission, based on what the applicant described, and holdmark can change it if the work actually being done is a different one. A change of tier is notified in writing and does not affect commissions already accrued.

2. Joining the programme

Admission is not automatic: holdmark reads the applications one by one and decides. Anyone can ask to join from the programme application form. holdmark may say no without giving reasons, and meeting these terms does not create a right to be admitted.

When applying, the applicant declares that the information provided is true, that they are acting on their own behalf or with authority to bind the company they name, and that they are of legal age. If the information turns out to be false, the admission is void from the outset and creates no right to payment.

On being admitted, the partner receives a code, a link and the materials. The code identifies the partner: it is not a coupon and it makes nothing cheaper. The code and the dashboard account are personal and cannot be transferred, resold or shared.

Access to the partner dashboard works through a link sent to their email address, single-use and with an expiry. The partner is responsible for that address remaining theirs and for telling us if it stops being so.

3. What we pay

The affiliate earns 20 % and the partner 30 %.

That percentage is not calculated on the fee the store pays, but on what holdmark actually takes in for that store. It is not the same thing, and the difference is not small: billing is handled by Shopify with its app billing system, and what holdmark receives is what is left after deducting from the charge to the merchant Shopify's processing fee, its revenue share where it applies and, depending on the merchant's country, an additional regulatory fee. What arrives is what gets shared.

What arrives is what Shopify's payout says, not what the charge screen says: if a charge's details and the payout disagree, holdmark settles by the payout, which is the rule Shopify applies and the only figure holdmark can verify.

holdmark's plans are published in tiers and there are no separately negotiated prices. So that the figure is not abstract: a store on the smallest tier leaves around $13 a month to an affiliate and $20 to a partner; one on the largest tier, around $97 and $145. These are example calculations with the prices and deductions in force on the day of this publication, not a guaranteed amount.

The Registry plan is free and generates no commission, because it generates no revenue. Trial days do not either: during the trial the store is charged nothing and there is nothing to share.

3.1 Twelve billed months, not twelve calendar months

The commission for a store lasts twelve billed and paid monthly charges of that store. The clock does not run during the trial, nor during a month that has not been charged or whose payment has not arrived, nor while the store is cancelled. If the store comes back later, the remaining monthly charges keep counting up to twelve.

It is written this way for a specific reason, and the partner should know it: holdmark gives some stores free months. If the year were a calendar year, that gift would come out of the partner's pocket. Being billed monthly charges, nothing is taken away: it is deferred.

4. How a store is attributed

Attribution is declared by the merchant. In the holdmark app dashboard there is a field where the store types the code of the partner who brought it. The store has sixty calendar days from installing the app to do so; after that it can no longer be declared.

There is no tracking cookie, and this is not an oversight. When a store installs from the App Store, the app opens inside the Shopify admin, where the browser does not hand over holdmark.org's cookies, and Shopify's rules require the app to work without that kind of cookie. An attribution cookie is not necessary to provide the service either, so in Europe it would require consent. The consequence for the partner is stated without hedging: fewer stores get attributed than would be attributed with a cookie. In exchange, what does get attributed cannot be disputed by anyone.

A store can only have one live code at a time. If a store already has an attribution and declares another code, the previous one is withdrawn and the commission for that store stops accruing from that moment.

holdmark may attribute a store by hand, with no time limit, when it is established by other means that a partner brought it. An attribution made by hand is seen and can be removed exactly like the one the merchant declares.

4.1 The merchant sees it and can remove it

In their app dashboard, the merchant sees the name of the partner who gets the credit and the date, next to a button to remove it. Always, not only on the first day.

This is deliberate and it is not going to change: holdmark exists to publish facts that anyone can check, and a programme whose attributions nobody could see would be exactly what holdmark criticises. It also closes the most common fraud in these programmes —claiming stores you have not brought— because the person who would suffer it sees it the same day.

The consequence is stated in full too: a merchant can withdraw the credit at any time, and once withdrawn the commission for that store stops accruing. Commissions already accrued and pending payment are not lost through a withdrawal.

4.2 What the partner sees and what they do not

In their dashboard, the partner sees how many people have clicked their link, how many stores they have recognised and how much has accumulated for them. They do not see which stores those are, nor their domains, nor how much each one leaves.

This is not coyness or distrust: holdmark's price tiers go by order volume, so telling the partner what a store leaves would be telling them how much that merchant sells. That figure belongs to the merchant. For the same reason, holdmark gives the partner no data about the stores they brought: not their figures, not their dashboard, nothing that is not already published in the record anyone can consult.

The partner may ask for the detail of a specific settlement, and holdmark will give it with a breakdown that identifies no store.

5. The commission does not touch what is published

holdmark sells itself on the promise that no store can pay to come out looking better, and at the same time it pays people to recommend it. The two only coexist if the separation is structural, so it is, and these rules are part of the contract:

• The commission does not depend on whether a store gets verified, on what figures it ends up with, or on what its record says. What is paid for is the recommendation, never the verdict.
• A partner cannot influence any piece of data of any store, nor the calculation, nor the order in which anything appears.
• A partner cannot grant access, free months or discounts, and no coupons or discount codes exist. Special terms are granted by holdmark and only by holdmark.
• Neither a partner's tier nor their percentage is negotiated in exchange for volume, for exclusivity or for any consideration regarding what is published.

6. What the partner undertakes to do

The rules are few and they are firm. Breaking any of them is grounds for suspension or for removal with loss of what is pending, under section 10.

• Nothing in exchange for reviews. A partner may not offer, hint at, ask for or organise that a merchant leave a review of the app, neither inside the app nor by email, message or any other channel of their own. Shopify expressly prohibits it and the consequence does not fall on the partner alone: it can cost holdmark its entire partner account. It is the rule holdmark watches most closely, and a single breach is enough for removal.
• Say what holdmark does, not what it would be convenient for it to do. A partner may not promise search engine positions, nor that an AI assistant will cite a store, nor more sales, nor verification deadlines. holdmark does not promise them either.
• Do not present yourself as holdmark. Not in a name, not in a profile, not in a domain, not in an email that looks as if it came from holdmark. The partner recommends holdmark; they are not holdmark, they do not speak in its name and they cannot bind it before anyone.
• No advertising using the brand. No bidding on «holdmark» or on variants of it in search engines or app stores, and no ads that use the brand as bait: the click being bought was already coming here.
• No spam. No bought mailing lists, no unsolicited bulk messages, no automated comments, no direct messages in series.
• Do not attribute your own stores to yourself. Not the partner's own, nor those of companies they control or that control them, nor those of people in their family or corporate group. Nor ask a merchant to declare a code for a store the partner had no part in.
• Do not install or declare anything on a store's behalf without its permission. A partner at the Partner tier who works in a merchant's dashboard does so on that merchant's instructions and under their responsibility.
• Comply with the law that applies to them, and in particular label as advertising whatever is advertising when recommending holdmark in exchange for commission. holdmark does not ask the partner to hide it, and would rather they said it.

The partner keeps confidential whatever they learn about holdmark or about a merchant through their participation in the programme and that is not public, including any store data they reach while doing their work.

7. Brand and materials

holdmark grants the partner, for as long as they are admitted, a non-exclusive, free and revocable licence to use its name, its logo and the materials it provides, for the sole purpose of recommending holdmark and in the form in which they are provided, without altering them.

The materials are provided by holdmark and that is not decoration: it is how nobody promises things in its name that have not been measured. Any other material the partner wants to publish with holdmark's brand needs prior written agreement, which holdmark will give or refuse within a reasonable time.

The licence ends when they leave. From that moment the partner removes holdmark's brand from their pages, profiles and materials within fifteen days, and stops using their code and their link.

8. Settlement and payment

• Accrual: a commission accrues when holdmark receives from Shopify the payout corresponding to that monthly charge of that store, not when the merchant is charged.
• Settlement: monthly. Within the first fifteen calendar days of each month, holdmark settles what accrued in the previous month and shows it in the partner's dashboard.
• Minimum: if the accumulated amount does not reach $50, it stays accumulated and is paid with the first settlement that exceeds it. When a partner leaves, the accumulated amount is paid even if it does not reach the minimum.
• Currency: commissions are calculated in US dollars, because the plans are in dollars, and are paid in euros at the European Central Bank reference exchange rate on the day of settlement. If the partner asks and it is possible, they can be paid in dollars.
• Method: transfer to the account the partner provides. Outside the SEPA area, the method is agreed with the partner and the cost of the transfer is deducted from the amount.
• Reversals: if Shopify reverses, refunds or cancels a charge, or if the merchant disputes it, the corresponding commission is deducted from the next settlement. If there is no next settlement, holdmark does not claim the amount from the partner unless the reversal stems from a breach of theirs.
• Disputes: the partner has sixty days from a settlement to dispute it. After that it is taken as accepted.
• Taxes and invoice: the amount settled is understood to be exclusive of indirect taxes. The partner issues an invoice for what is settled and holdmark provides the detail they need in order to do so; the partner is responsible for their own tax obligations and registrations where these apply.

9. What holdmark does not do

• It does not pay per install, only for stores that pay. Paying per install invites bringing in stores that leave within a month.
• There is no second tier. Nothing is earned for bringing in other partners or for the activity of anyone other than the partner themselves.
• There are no exclusives, territorial or sectoral, no quotas and no targets to meet.
• There is no minimum number of stores to get paid. A store that pays generates commission.
• There is no volume commitment on holdmark's part: nothing in these terms guarantees the partner a number of stores, of clicks or of earnings.

10. Suspension and leaving

The partner may leave whenever they want, from their dashboard or by writing to holdmark. On leaving of their own accord, they are paid what has accrued up to that moment and stop accruing from then on.

holdmark may suspend a partner while it reviews an anomaly, and remove them if they break these terms. In both cases it notifies them in writing with the reason.

Breaking the rules in section 6 leaves what is pending unpaid, and the review rule in particular. This loss applies to what has accrued and not been settled, it is the only financial penalty in the programme and holdmark claims nothing further from the partner for that breach, without prejudice to any harm they have caused to third parties or to what Shopify may claim from them.

holdmark may close the whole programme on thirty days' notice. If it closes it, it pays every partner in good standing the monthly charges remaining up to twelve for the stores already attributed to them.

11. Personal data

The data the partner provides when applying and during the programme is processed by holdmark as controller, in order to decide on the application, run the programme and pay the commissions. What that data is, how long it is kept and how rights are exercised is set out in the privacy policy, section 2.8. A rejected application is deleted after a year.

When a partner at the Partner tier processes data about a merchant's customers under the engagement that merchant has given them, they do so on the merchant's behalf and under their own agreement with them. holdmark is not a party to that engagement.

12. Relationship between the parties

The partner is independent. These terms create no employment, agency, franchise or partnership relationship between holdmark and the partner, and neither party may bind the other before third parties. Each bears its own costs, taxes and liabilities.

Except for wilful misconduct or gross negligence, holdmark's liability towards the partner in respect of the programme is limited to commissions accrued and unpaid.

13. Changes to these terms

If they change, holdmark notifies admitted partners by email at least thirty days in advance, and the change applies to everyone at once. The percentages and the twelve-monthly-charge term for stores already attributed are not touched by a later change: what has been attributed is settled on the terms in force when it was attributed. If the partner does not agree with the change, they may leave before it takes effect and be paid what has accrued.

14. Law, jurisdiction and languages

These terms are governed by Spanish law.

These terms are published in Spanish, English, German, French, Italian and Portuguese. The translations are provided so that they can be understood; in the event of any discrepancy between versions, the Spanish one prevails, as it is the version drafted under the applicable law and the one that binds the parties.

Contact: equipo@holdmark.org.