Yesterday, during a live Google Meet session with members of the Shopify Partner team, there were several announcements. Having joined the call about 5 minutes late, I apparently missed the most important one (listed in this Shopify blog post from July 7th, 2026) . . .
Forever partner rev share for all plans is now limited to four years as of August 10th, 2026.
This is devastating to me. Granted our entire business model at ShopaFree is unique (build stores for free for the partner rev share), but it affects the whole partner community. There were a lot of frustrated folks in the Meet chat yesterday. Mostly due to losing Shopify Plus opportunities to technicalities (which I have also experienced several times) such as past the 90 day window, or merchant is already talking with Plus Sales Team, or another partner already submitted a lead.
Joe Pizarro had two good suggestions (uncertain which “Joe” he is here or I would have tagged him). Summarizing and paraphrasing here.
- Open Window : If a specific time passes (say 90 days) and merchant has not signed a Shopify Plus contract, then it reverts to being an “open window” again and eligibility in dashboard is updated to reflect this.
- Eligibility Status : Before even discussing Shopify Plus with a merchant, partners should have definitive knowledge in their dashboard as to whether or not the opportunity is “Open” or “Pending” with another partner or in “Internal Sales” status listed. For “Pending” and “Internal Sales” there should be a date/timer/countdown.
Consolation Cold Comfort
It appears that adding .1% of GMV profit (excluding B2B and wholesale sales [why?] and capped at $100m annually) on all plans is the “trade-off” for sunsetting forever rev shares. This is cold comfort. Most businesses make next to nothing in the first year or two or more, if they survive at all. So .1% of nothing, is still nothing. Only higher end Plus stores that are already highly profitable (10 mill in the example in the above blog post) and migrating from another platform would be even remotely attractive, and even then only minimally, because of the four year expiration.
Plea Pretty Please
While I realize most partners do not emphasize or value the forever rev share as much as I do, this is my simple plea to whoever might see this (had no idea where to put it, since the Partner Slack channel was shut down in Dec '25, so “Community Feedback” in the dev channel here seemed somewhat fitting).
Please make it optional to opt out of the .1% and instead continue with the “Forever Rev Share”.
Thank you for considering this potential partner compromise.