The partner program
Partners earn a commission when someone they refer becomes a paying customer. That is the whole arrangement, and everything below is the detail of it.
Applications are read by a person, and codes are issued one at a time, to people we can have a conversation with. There are no tiers.
- Commission
- Recurring
- on what a referred customer pays for their plan, after any discount they used. Your rate is in your approval email and on your partner page.
- Earning window
- 12 months
- from their first paid plan invoice, then the referral stops earning.
- Attribution
- 60 days
- from the click, and the first code a visitor arrives with keeps the referral.
- Payouts
- $50
- and up, monthly, by hand, in US dollars over Wise.
Each of those has a condition on it, and the conditions are the sections below. Every figure on this page is read from the same place the money is worked out from, so the page and your statement cannot quote different terms.
Who it is for
People who already work with small businesses, and who would recommend PlainQuill to them anyway.
Agencies that build AI automations.
Your clients ask what AI can do for their marketing. This is a service they can run without you operating it.
Web designers and web agencies.
A new site needs something published on it every week. PlainQuill writes to the WordPress site you built, or to a hosted blog.
Freelance writers.
Clients who want daily volume at a flat price can have it, while you keep the pieces that need your own hand.
Bookkeepers and niche consultants.
You are the adviser a small business already trusts. A referral is a recommendation you can stand behind, because the business decides what goes out under its name.
How it works
Apply.
The form asks where you would write about PlainQuill and who reads it. A person reads it; nothing is scored.
Get your code.
If it is a fit, we issue a code and email it to you with your link and the partner kit.
Share your link.
A client who follows it and opens an account is attributed to you, and you see it on your partner page.
Get paid.
You earn a share of each plan payment they make for 12 months, at the rate in your approval email, paid monthly once your balance clears the minimum.
What you get to sell with
You are recommending a service your client will run for themselves, so what helps most is being able to show it plainly. Nothing publishes without an approval of that exact version, given by you, a teammate you invite, or an assistant you have authorised to approve for you.
Your partner page.
Sign in to the dashboard with the address we sent your code to. There is no password: we email you a link. It shows your clicks by day, your signups, how many of them are paying, which of your pages your referrals came from, and every entry on your balance, held or ready. It shows you no customer names and no customer data, because none of that is yours to see.
The partner kit, sent with your code.
A one-page summary of what PlainQuill does and what it costs, a walkthrough of the product screens you can use in a demo, ready-to-send messages for your own clients in English and Spanish, and a short list of what may and may not be claimed. It is not published: it goes to partners by email once a code is issued.
These pages.
How it works, pricing and the comparisons are written to be sent to a prospective customer. Your code works on every one of them.
What your client will see
Screens from a demo account for an example coffee roaster. The business and every article shown were written for the demo, and the check results shown are illustrative.
Founding partners
The first 20 partners to hold a code can have a Growth account for their own business at no charge, for as long as at least 2 of the customers they referred are paying for a plan. We check that once a month, at the payout run. When you qualify, write to the partner address below and we switch your own account to Growth at no charge; it is set by a person, not automatically.
If fewer than 2 of the customers you referred are paying at 2 monthly checks in a row, the free account ends with 30 days of notice, and you can keep it on an ordinary paid plan or close it. Nothing else changes: you earn your rate for 12 months on each referral exactly as below, and your own account earns no commission.
What you earn
- A fixed share of the plan payment. You earn a fixed percentage of what your referred customer actually pays for their plan, after any discount they used. Monthly or annual, it is the same share of what was paid. The percentage is the one stated in the written approval that issued your code or, if none was sent, the one shown on your partner page in the dashboard. For a code issued before 5 October 2026, it is the rate these terms stated on the day the code was issued. It moves only as the errors and changes section below allows.
- For 12 months. The window opens on their first paid plan invoice, which is raised when they complete checkout, and runs for 12 months from that date. After that the referral stops earning, and the customer is simply a customer.
- 60-day attribution, first code wins. Someone who arrives through your link is attributed to you for 60 days. If they arrived through someone else’s link first, that first code keeps the referral.
Plans start at $24.17 a month billed yearly, or $29 month to month, so a single referred customer on the entry plan is worth a few dollars a month for up to 12 months. We give no earnings figure, because what you would earn depends entirely on who you refer and we have no way of knowing that.
What does not earn commission
- The optional add-ons: website hosting, extra article volume, extra tracked searches and human review. A customer chooses those later, on their own, so commission is on the plan lines only. Extra bylines are not an add-on at all any more, because team members are included in every plan.
- Your own account, and any account you or your own business owns or pays for, including a second business of yours. Signing up through your own code earns nothing, and the check is automatic. Being a member of a client’s account, for example because they invited you to help review their pieces, does not make it yours, and that referral still earns.
- A payment that is refunded or charged back. Every plan payment can be asked back within 7 days of it being taken, in full or in part, so this is a real thing rather than a formality. The commission on it is taken back off your balance, shown on your statement as a negative entry rather than a quiet correction, and it is why commission waits out the hold below before it can be paid.
How referrals are tracked
Your code becomes a link. Anyone who follows it and starts an account is attributed to you. The direct form is https://app.plainquill.com/start?via=YOURCODE, with your own code in place of YOURCODE.
A link to any page on plainquill.com carrying ?via=YOURCODE works too, so you can send a reader to whichever page suits what you wrote, and it is still your referral.
The code is kept in a first-party cookie in the reader’s browser for 60 days. A referral is recorded when the account is created, so an account that already exists cannot be attributed to a code afterwards.
Visitors in the European Union, the wider European Economic Area and the United Kingdom are asked before that cookie is set. One who declines is still attributed if they sign up during the same visit, and not if they come back later.
We also record which of your pages a click came from, as the site and path only, so you can see what actually converts rather than only a total. That is a property of your site, not of the person who clicked: no addresses, no devices, and no record of an individual visit are kept.
How you must promote
These are the conditions of holding a code. They are short because they are the ones that matter, and they apply from the day a code is issued.
- Say that you are a partner, every time. Wherever you promote PlainQuill, in a post, a video, a page, a newsletter or a message, clearly and conspicuously disclose that you earn a commission. It has to be somewhere a reader sees it before they click, not at the bottom of a page or inside a bio. We may ask to see where a placement ran. Promoting without disclosure is grounds for ending the arrangement and for forfeiting commission that has not been paid.
- Do not claim anything we do not claim. No promises about rankings, traffic, income or results, for a customer or for a partner, and no describing features the product does not have. Our own site is the boundary: if it is not said there, it is not ours to stand behind.
- Methods that are not allowed. No unsolicited bulk messaging of any kind, by email, direct message, comment or anything else. No bidding on our name or on terms confusingly similar to it in search advertising, and no registering domains that do the same. No cookie stuffing, forced clicks, hidden frames or links that misrepresent where they lead. No self-referral in any form, which is the rule above about any account you or your own business owns or pays for.
The relationship
- Single tier. Commission is earned on customers you refer. There is no commission for recruiting other partners, and there is no second level to any of this.
- You are independent. Holding a code makes you an independent contractor. It does not create employment, agency, a partnership in the legal sense, or any authority to enter into anything on our behalf.
Payment
- Held for 60 days. Commission is held for 60 days after it is earned, because a customer payment can still be refunded or charged back in that time. It applies the same way to every payment, monthly or annual. Your partner page shows what is held and what is ready, so the wait is visible rather than a surprise at the end of a month.
- Paid monthly, by hand, over $50. Once $50 has come through that hold it goes out in the next monthly run. Below that it carries over. A person checks the list and pays it; nothing about the payout is automated.
In US dollars, by Wise, to a Wise account or straight to a bank account. PayPal instead if you prefer, just say so. Any conversion or receiving fee your own bank charges comes out of what arrives, because we cannot see it and cannot pay it for you.
Tax is yours. We do not withhold anything. Where the law requires it we will ask for a W-9 from a partner in the United States, or a W-8BEN from a partner outside it, before the first payment, and the payment waits until the form is on file. Earning more than $600 in a year decides whether we file a 1099-NEC about a United States partner at year end, not whether the form is needed. If we ever end the program, commission you have already earned is still paid: what is past its 60-day hold goes out at the next monthly run, and the rest when it clears.
Errors and changes
We may change the rate or these terms with notice. A change applies to referrals and commission from the date it takes effect and never backwards: what you have already earned stays earned at the rate it was earned at. That sits alongside the promise in the payment section, which is that if we ever end the program we still pay the balance.
Tracking and attribution are technical systems, and technical systems have failures. A referral can fail to be recorded, a cookie can be lost or refused, an outage can drop a click. We would rather say that than imply a precision we do not have. Where we can verify that a referral of yours was missed, we may credit it. Whether and how to put a tracking error right is our decision, made in good faith, case by case. What is not a judgement call: commission that has been recorded and can be verified is always honoured, and no reading of this paragraph changes that.
Questions partners ask
Do I need a PlainQuill plan to apply?
No. Applying creates no account and asks for no payment. If you would like to use the service for your own business, that is an ordinary account, and it earns no commission.
Who does my client pay?
Us, directly, at the prices on the pricing page, and they hold their own account. You do not handle their billing, and your commission is worked out from what they actually paid.
What if I think a referral was missed?
Write to the partner address below with the date, the link you used and anything that identifies the signup. Where we can verify it, we may credit it, as the errors section below says.
My client already has an account. Can it count?
No. A referral is recorded when an account is created, so an existing account stays unattributed.
How soon will I hear back?
A person reads every application and replies from the partner address below. We do not promise a timeframe, because a promise nobody has staffed is worth nothing.
How to get a code
Apply here. The form asks where you would be writing about PlainQuill and who reads it, and an application is read by a person rather than scored. If it is a fit we will issue a code, email it to you with the partner kit, and settle your payout details the same way. If you would rather start with a conversation, email partners@plainquill.com instead; both roads lead to the same desk.
The program terms sit alongside the rest of the agreement on the terms of service page.
Version 2026-10-05. This is the version a partner is asked to read and accept when they open their partner page in the dashboard.
Get started
Run it on your own site
Checkout takes your first month, or your first year on annual billing, and the plan starts, on your own site and your own topics. You approve every piece before it goes live, and you can cancel any time from the dashboard. Ask within 7 days of a payment and you get all of it back while fewer than 7 articles have been generated since that payment. From 7 on, you get back the part that covers the articles not yet generated.