Possible SiteGround Affiliate Scam

This is to alert you people of possible scam attempt by Siteground in delaying and possibly refusing to pay my affiliate commission. I sell websites and refer my buyers to their hosting because I found their performance to be good and pricing to be fair.

Their affiliate payout structure made it appealing and their qualifying sale criteria was very reasonable but what I liked most is they never shaved my sales. I referred my buyers to buy one year hosting package and got commissions 30 days later.

Now they have put my affiliate commissions on hold and saying the referred clients are not updating regularly their site with new content so they are withholding the commissions as it is not meeting their content criteria. This is pure BS on their part as I have never encountered any other hosting affiliate program having this criteria. I have always sold the same type of started sites have explained to them before that I sell my sites on Flippa and refer my buyers to their hosting service. They are also claiming that I

To make matter worse they have put me on a flat structure of $50 per sale regardless of how many sales I generate. They are questioning my quality of buyers which is also BS as I have had only 2-3 cancellations out of almost 50 people I have referred to them in almost a year.

They owe me more than 600 bucks which ain't life or death for me but it is not pocket change either.

I find their timing not coincidental with the pandemic and I feel as if they are perhaps trying to limit their loss by possibly trying to keep my money.

Is anyone having any similar experience with them? What hosting affiliate program would you guys recommend that matches their payout structure/schedule.

Move to Wpx Affliate what else can you do

Mr Positive said:

Move to Wpx Affliate what else can you do

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I am afraid my customers won't be able to afford their plans. I also think they only provide WP hosting and my buyers don't always buy WP sites.

You should create a reseller hosting account and charge users yourself, whatever price you want. I'd get rid of Siteground though, because that is some straight garbage they are saying.

Move to Namehero, exact same commissions and great performance (better than Siteground)

What about bluehost.

go for stablehost...they are the best

Okay, I just saw their response and it is pretty much clear to me that they are refusing to pay out without directly saying so. They have put my commission on hold and will review after 30 days to see if the sites of people are updated with unique content. I sell starter site so I don't think my customers are going to work on updating those sites as they are not blogs and do not require unique content. They also seem to have issue with quality of sales I have been generating for them. Apparently clients sticking with them for a year are not good enough.

What bothers me that they never raised this issue over the last 12 months but now? I don't know what to make of it but I'd like to be clear.

What is this criteria of updating content?

I think they are just making some excuses to refuse payment.

Okay,

I don't know if it's related or not, but I sometimes suggest my clients buy hosting from my affiliate links. Around 2018's cyber week, I had referred a few clients to them, maybe 2-3, but the commission never reflected in my dashboard, so I had to ask them to get their money back and purchase with some other hosting, which is also popular but don't want to name it and sound like a promotion.

So, @SiteGround you have a money-back within 30 days and your commission uphold time is 30 days as well, then why do you bother if they cancel? The commission needs to be paid right.

Or, if you thought it was an issue, then you should have increased your commission uphold time. Even by 1 day would have worked well for everyone.

I don't know why it would bother you when you only have 1 month and then yearly plan, for which people would have already paid and there is no reason to restrict paying a commission if they cancel after the yearly plan is expired, even if the ones that were referred a year ago by OP.

Okay now, you have a money-back within 30 days, and so is your uphold period. If the buyer has purchased for a month, then he would be canceling his subscription when he receives an invoice or he will ask for a refund if he is charged automatically if that's the case then paying commission wouldn't be possible.

So, it's not clear when they are canceling their subscription and are they buying 1 month's hosting only?

I would go with Bluehost. The commissions are a lot better, your affiliates don't need to keep updating their sites, and it's a pretty good host for starter sites.

Dresden said:

I would go with Bluehost. The commissions are a lot better, your affiliates don't need to keep updating their sites, and it's a pretty good host for starter sites.

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But Bluehost blows chunks as to quality of product and service and that is on a good day.

crazy behaviour from them... also they should do well out of the pandemic, so why cut their losses? more people are moving their business online atm = more revenue for hosting companies.

BillyTheKid001 said:

crazy behaviour from them... also they should do well out of the pandemic, so why cut their losses? more people are moving their business online atm = more revenue for hosting companies.

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I think they exploit the situation a lot. I experienced this during cyber week sale, now this. In fact, all my sales were for 1+ years. So, there was no point in not counting. And they tried to give reasons signing up just to reply to this thread and now, there is no reply from them.

Oh, where are their posts BTW? They had 2 of them.

Their speed isn't even good, I moved my sites to Cloudways, I pay less and my sites are like 10 times faster.

That condition with fresh content is just pure garbage just like their renewal rate after the first year, so glad i will move away next month.
Maybe it's time you find a new hosting company to promote and look very careful next time at the TOS as i'm sure siteground is not the only one playing this kind of game.

Cheers

Are they blocking all of your commissions or just from those websites that are not updated often?

That is normal behaviours of high paying networks. They are paying almost 110% per sale.

Overpriced renewals. Trash company, never managed to get considerably better results to justify the price difference. No idea why some people praise them so much on this forum.

It's disappointing that Siteground are doing this. I signed up as an affiliate with them a few years ago and never had any issues in terms of payout. I don't remember seeing a clause in the agreement that the sites need to be kept up to date for the commission to remain valid.