ShareASale is now Awin: what happened, and what affiliates should do about it

ShareASale was absorbed into Awin and shut down. Awin, which had owned ShareASale since 2017, completed the migration on 15 August 2025, moving more than 9,500 advertisers and 250,000 active publishers onto a single platform. The ShareASale platform itself closed on 6 October 2025, and account access ended on that date along with historical reports and data. If you had a ShareASale account with active programs, those relationships moved to Awin. If you were relying on ShareASale reporting for past years, that access is gone unless you exported it first.

That is the whole answer. The rest of this is what it means in practice, because the consequences are still showing up nearly a year later, and because a large share of the articles ranking for affiliate network advice have not caught up.

Why you are still seeing ShareASale recommended

Search for the best affiliate networks and you will find articles published under 2026 headlines listing ShareASale and Awin as two separate options to consider, sometimes in the same numbered list, occasionally with a comparison of which one suits you better. They are one platform. This is not a small slip, and it is the single most useful quality filter available for this category of content.

The reason it happens is that affiliate network roundups are among the most heavily recycled articles on the internet. They earn well, they rank on the strength of the domain publishing them rather than on accuracy, and updating one means rechecking twenty platforms rather than changing the year in the title. Most publishers change the year in the title. A network closing entirely is about the largest fact an article in this category can get wrong, so if a roundup missed that, its commission percentages and cookie windows were not verified either.

Use it directly: if an article recommends ShareASale as a live standalone network today, stop reading it. That one check will remove most of the low-quality results for any affiliate network query you run.

What actually moved, and what did not

The migration was more thorough than most platform consolidations. Merchant relationships, approved program memberships and tracking moved across, so publishers who had been approved for programs on ShareASale generally found those programs waiting in Awin rather than needing fresh applications. Awin also folded in capabilities ShareASale did not have, including real-time tracking and more flexible commission structures.

What did not survive was access to the old platform and everything stored only inside it. Awin told users to export their data before the closure date, and once account access ended on 6 October 2025 the historical reports went with it. Anyone who did not export is now working without their own ShareASale earnings history: no year-over-year comparison, no record of which merchants performed, no evidence of past performance to show a brand during a negotiation.

If you did export, that history is worth more than it looks. A few years of commission data tells you which categories actually converted for your audience rather than which ones felt like they did, and a CSV export is easy enough to interrogate in plain English without building a spreadsheet model first. Most creators never look at their own numbers closely enough to notice that eighty percent of their commission came from four merchants.

What ShareASale affiliates should do now

If you have not logged in since the migration, the practical sequence is short.

1. Check your Awin account exists and is verified. Migrated accounts carry over, but payment details and tax information sometimes need reconfirming before Awin will release funds. A balance sitting behind an unverified payment profile looks identical to no balance.
2. Confirm which programs came across. Not every merchant survived the transition, because some left rather than migrate. Any program that did not move means links in your published content pointing at a network that no longer resolves.
3. Audit your live links. This is the step that costs real money. Old ShareASale tracking links in posts, videos, descriptions and storefronts need checking, and any that are dead are traffic you are currently sending nowhere. A dead affiliate link looks exactly like a working one until someone clicks it.
4. Note the new payout terms. Awin's minimum payout is $20, lower than the $50 ShareASale used and lower than CJ Affiliate. If small balances were previously stranded, they may now clear.

Is Awin a good replacement for ShareASale?

For most publishers, yes, and the combined catalog is larger than either network held alone. Awin is free for publishers to join, the $20 threshold is the lowest of the major general networks, and merchant coverage across retail, travel and consumer brands is genuinely broad. The structure is the same one ShareASale used: joining the network gets you an account, and each merchant inside it still approves you individually.

The honest limitation is the same one ShareASale had. General networks are weighted heavily toward physical products, and physical products pay badly. Retail commission runs roughly 1% to 10% and pays once. That is the ceiling, and no network changes it.

The alternatives worth considering, by what you recommend

Rather than swapping one general network for another and stopping, this is a reasonable moment to check whether your network mix matches what your audience actually buys.

Two details in that table decide more income than the network names do. Impact consolidates earnings from every brand program into one balance, which is why a $10 threshold there is far easier to clear than $50 spread across separate merchants elsewhere. And PartnerStack has no minimum threshold at all, which matters most in the early months when every other platform is holding your first commissions hostage against a bar you have not reached.

ClickBank carries a rule that catches people out. Before your first payment you need at least five sales made with at least two different payment methods, so a handful of sales all paid by the same card will not release funds no matter how far past the threshold the balance sits.

The bigger lesson: a network closing is not the main risk

Losing a network is disruptive and recoverable. The more expensive pattern, which the ShareASale closure made visible for a lot of people, is that affiliate income built entirely on retail commission has a low ceiling and no memory. You earn 3% once, the sale closes, and next month starts at zero.

Only about a quarter of affiliate campaigns of any kind pay on renewals, and almost none of those are retail. The concentration is in software and subscriptions, where commission commonly runs 20% to 50% and frequently repeats every month the customer stays subscribed. The arithmetic is not close. A $1,200 laptop at roughly 2.5% pays about $30 and is finished. A $50 a month tool at 25% recurring pays $150 across the first year and starts the second year still paying.

The reason most creators are not earning that is not preference. It is catalog: general networks and retailer storefronts do not stock software, so the recommendations where a creator often has the most credibility, meaning the tools they actually work with every day, are the exact ones their affiliate setup cannot list. Migrating from ShareASale to Awin does nothing about that, because it was never a ShareASale problem.

If your content touches AI tools, editing software, hosting, analytics or anything billed monthly, that portion of your output is worth several times its share of your time and needs somewhere that carries software programs. Impact and PartnerStack cover the network side. A creator storefront covers the part networks do not do at all, which is giving your audience one place to find the recommendation months after the post that mentioned it.

Common questions

Is ShareASale now Awin?

Yes. Awin acquired ShareASale in 2017 and completed the full platform migration on 15 August 2025, moving more than 9,500 advertisers and 250,000 active publishers onto Awin. The ShareASale platform closed on 6 October 2025. Existing merchant relationships and approved programs moved across, so ShareASale publishers now operate inside Awin using the same underlying program memberships.

Is ShareASale closing or already closed?

Already closed. Account access to the ShareASale platform ended on 6 October 2025, together with historical reports and data stored there. Awin advised users to complete data exports before that date. There is no ShareASale platform to log into now, and any current article describing the closure as upcoming is out of date.

Can I still sign up for ShareASale?

No. There is no separate ShareASale network to join. New publishers who would previously have applied to ShareASale should apply to Awin instead, which is free to join and carries the combined merchant catalog. As with ShareASale, joining Awin creates an account rather than earning commission, because each merchant inside the network approves publishers individually.

What happened to my ShareASale earnings and reports?

Outstanding balances and active program relationships transferred to Awin. Historical reporting did not survive the platform closure on 6 October 2025 unless you exported it beforehand. If your payment or tax details did not carry over cleanly, funds can sit unpaid behind an unverified payment profile, so confirming those settings inside Awin is worth doing before assuming a balance was lost.

Is Awin better than ShareASale was?

On the terms publishers care about, yes. The minimum payout is $20 rather than $50, the merchant catalog is larger than either network held separately, and the platform added real-time tracking and more flexible commission structures. The limitation is unchanged: it is a general network weighted toward physical products, which pay roughly 1% to 10% once, so it raises the floor rather than the ceiling.

For a full breakdown of the networks worth joining and what each requires before it actually pays you, see affiliate marketing platforms and networks compared. If cookie windows are the part that keeps costing you, affiliate cookie windows explained covers why two programs paying the same percentage can differ by half your income.