When customers sign up to your referral program — whether through the Join Page link, an embedded signup widget on your store, or the floating referral widget — they all land in the same advocate-facing experience afterwards: the advocate portal. Its Share Page gives them their referral link, a friend discount code, and one-click share buttons with no sign-in needed, and its rewards dashboard — opened with an emailed sign-in link — is where they track rewards and manage their account.
This article walks through what advocates see and what they can do at each step, regardless of which signup surface brought them in.
How the post-signup flow works
Every advocate goes through the same three-stage path after signing up:
Signup — through whichever signup surface you've set up (Join Page link, Join block on Shopify, Embedded signup on Other Platforms, or the Floating Referral Widget on either).
Share Page — the advocate portal's landing page, where they see their referral link, friend discount code, and one-click share buttons. No sign-in required. This is also where the link in your welcome email takes them.
Rewards dashboard — the private part of the portal where advocates track their rewards, see their referral progress, customize their referral link, and manage payout details. It opens with a sign-in link sent to their email.
After signup, every advocate lands in the same ReferralCandy-hosted advocate portal — the Share Page at <your-subdomain>.referralcandy.com/v2/rewards/<advocate-code>/login and the dashboard at <your-subdomain>.referralcandy.com/v2/rewards/<advocate-code>. This is the same on Shopify and Other Platforms. The signup surface itself varies — the Join Page is also RC-hosted, but Join block and Embedded signup live on your storefront.
Note: links to the previous advocate pages — /share/<advocate-code> and /rewards/<advocate-code> URLs — automatically redirect to the advocate portal, so links advocates shared or bookmarked before the portal keep working.
The Share Page — sharing without signing in
Right after signing up — or whenever they click the link in your welcome email — the advocate lands on their Share Page. Everything an advocate needs to start referring is available here without signing in.
What the advocate sees on the Share Page:
Your store branding and program summary — your logo, the program name, and reward highlights generated from your campaign's reward settings (what they earn per referral, what friends get, and the top tier if you use tiered rewards).
Their personal referral link with a Copy button — a URL like
<your-subdomain>.refr.cc/<campaign>/u/<username>. By default the username part is auto-generated; they can customize it from the dashboard (see below).Their friend discount code with a Copy button (shown when your friend offer is a coupon code) — labeled "Friends can also use code". Friends who receive the code instead of the link can apply it directly at checkout.
One-click share buttons for WhatsApp, Email, X (Twitter), and Facebook — each opens the sharing flow with the referral link and a message prepopulated.
A "View your rewards dashboard" block with a Send me a sign-in link button — the entry point to the private dashboard.
No sign-in required. Anyone who opens the advocate's unique portal URL — or enters the advocate's email on the Join Page — sees this page with the referral link ready to share. The Share Page is designed for easy sharing without friction; the private details live behind the dashboard sign-in instead.
The rewards dashboard — signing in
The dashboard is the private part of the advocate portal. Because it includes personal details — reward history, payout settings, the ability to change the referral link — advocates sign in to open it.
How advocates sign in
Advocates sign in with an emailed sign-in link — there are no passwords on the advocate portal:
On their Share Page, the advocate clicks Send me a sign-in link. (They can also start from the Join Page — it has an "Already a member? Sign in" link where they enter their email.)
ReferralCandy emails them a secure one-click sign-in link (subject: "Sign in to the <your store> reward portal").
They click the link and land on their dashboard, signed in. The link is valid for 2 hours — if it expires, they just request a new one.
Note: the advocate portal doesn't use passwords. If an advocate asks how to set or reset their password, there's nothing to reset — they sign in with the emailed link instead. The only thing they need is access to the email address they signed up with.
What advocates can do on the dashboard
The dashboard is a single page where the advocate can:
Track the status of earned rewards. Coupon rewards appear as cards with the code, what it's for, any expiry date, and a Copy button. Cash rewards show the total earned with a paid-out vs. pending breakdown. Store credits show as applied to their store account. Older rewards collect under a Past rewards section.
See their referral progress. A running referral count, what unlocks at the next tier, and the full tier ladder (if you use tiered rewards).
Follow recent activity. Each referred purchase and the reward it earned, with its current status (for example pending, delivered, or paid). Friends' identities aren't shown — activity appears as "Someone made a purchase", which keeps referred friends' details private.
Customize their referral link. A Customize button next to the referral link lets them replace the auto-generated username (e.g.,
/u/PWHW4ZK) with a memorable one (e.g.,/u/adamcool) — easier to share verbally or in print.Heads up: changing the username breaks the previously-shared link. The old link will stop working — referred friends who click it land on your store URL instead of the friend offer. Advocates should pick a name they're happy keeping long-term.
Manage their payout details. If your campaign pays cash rewards through PayPal, ReferralCandy uses the email an advocate was enrolled with as their PayPal payout email by default — which works for most advocates. Once they've earned a cash reward, they can update the payout email from their profile page (opened via the avatar in the top corner, under How you get paid) so payouts go to the right PayPal account.
Reach you directly. The profile page also includes a contact link with your store's contact email, plus a Log out button.
Returning advocates
An already-enrolled advocate who clicks your Join Page link, signup widget, or floating widget — and enters the email they originally signed up with — is recognized and taken straight to their Share Page, with no signup flow and no sign-in. They can grab their referral link and share again. The link in their welcome email also keeps taking them there.
Signing in is only needed for the rewards dashboard. So the typical advocate who just wants to share their link again never hits a sign-in step.
Customizing the advocate portal design
The advocate portal is customized in your campaign's theme editor. Open any referral campaign, go to Themes, click Customize on your active theme, then open the Advocate Account Pages section. It contains two assets:
Advocate Portal — the Share Page and rewards dashboard described in this article. The editor previews both views (with a desktop/mobile toggle).
Messaging Preferences Page — where advocates manage email notification frequency (linked from email unsubscribe).
The portal editor has controls for each view. On the Share view you set the branding: the primary color used for buttons and highlights, your logo, whether the store name shows, and the display and body fonts. On the Dashboard view you can customize the dashboard's hero: upload a banner image, adjust its tint, and edit the hero headline and subtitle — both support variables like {name} (the advocate's first name), {reward}, and {friend_offer}, so the text stays personalized automatically. (The subtitle is shown for single-tier campaigns; campaigns with multiple tiers show tier-progression text instead.) The Share Page's copy and the reward summaries on both screens are generated from your campaign's reward settings — to change what the reward blurbs say, edit your reward descriptions there rather than in the theme editor.
For broader theme editor guidance, see [Shopify] Customizing your referral emails, pages, and widgets or [Other Platforms] Customizing your referral emails, pages, and widgets.
Still seeing the older Share Page? Some campaigns haven't switched to the new advocate portal yet — for example, live campaigns using a developer-mode theme. For those campaigns, advocates still see the previous Share Page (Invite Friends / Your Rewards tabs) until the campaign moves to the portal, and the older pages and links continue to work in the meantime.
Article FAQ
Why can advocates share without signing in, but need a sign-in link for the dashboard?
Why can advocates share without signing in, but need a sign-in link for the dashboard?
The Share Page is meant to make sharing as frictionless as possible — the goal is to get advocates referring friends, and a sign-in step at that moment would just create drop-off. Anyone with the advocate's portal URL (or who enters the matching email on the Join Page) reaches the referral link directly.
The rewards dashboard, on the other hand, exposes more personal information and actions — the advocate's payout email, their reward history, the ability to change their referral link. That content sits behind the emailed sign-in link so only the advocate themselves can see or change it.
Do advocates need a password for the portal?
Do advocates need a password for the portal?
No — the advocate portal doesn't use passwords at all. Advocates open their rewards dashboard with a secure sign-in link emailed to the address they signed up with. There is no password to create, remember, or reset.
How long does the sign-in link stay valid?
How long does the sign-in link stay valid?
The sign-in link is unique and expires 2 hours after it's requested, for security reasons. If the link expires before the advocate clicks it, they can simply request a new one from their Share Page — as long as they still have access to the email they signed up with.
What if an advocate no longer has access to their signup email?
What if an advocate no longer has access to their signup email?
Sign-in links are sent to the email address the advocate signed up with, so access to that inbox is the one thing the portal depends on. If an advocate has lost access to that email account, our support team can help update or recover their account — just let us know.
Can two different signup widgets (Join Page + Join block, for example) coexist for the same campaign?
Can two different signup widgets (Join Page + Join block, for example) coexist for the same campaign?
Yes. The signup surface (Join Page link, Join block, Embedded signup, Floating Referral Widget) is just the entry point — they all feed into the same advocate portal described in this article. Many merchants run more than one signup surface at a time: an embedded option on a "Refer a friend" page on their storefront, plus the Join Page link to drop into campaign emails. Each advocate ends up at the same Share Page regardless of which surface they signed up through.
What happens if an advocate changes their custom referral link?
What happens if an advocate changes their custom referral link?
Their old link stops working the moment they save the new one. Referred friends clicking the old link land on your store URL instead of the friend offer — so any link the advocate had already shared (in DMs, social posts, printed materials, etc.) becomes a dead-end for new referrals.
The portal warns about this when the advocate uses the Customize option, but advocates may not pause to read it. If an advocate reaches out asking why their old link "stopped working," this is usually the cause — they (or someone with access to their account) updated the link's username.
The advocate can change the username back to recover the previous link, as long as no other advocate has claimed it in the meantime.