The fake check
A spinner, a pause, and a green tick. Nothing was verified. The shopper is misled in a small way and the merchant in a larger one, because they think they bought a follow.
Follow for discount
Get a follow. 📣 Give a discount.
Your discount budget can buy followers, subscribers and reviews instead of just shrinking orders. Here is how to do that without pretending you can check.
The awkward truth
Nobody can verify a follow
Social platforms do not tell third-party apps who follows whom, and they are right not to. Every product in this category works around that. The only question is how honestly.
The screenshot queue
Trivially faked, and it moves the cost onto you. Someone is now reviewing pictures of phone screens to approve a 3% discount that costs less than the minute it took.
The over-collection
Asking a shopper to log in with a platform so you can read their account. That is a great deal of personal data in exchange for a few percent off a jumper.
We took the fourth option: say it out loud, price it accordingly, and make the cap do the work.
Heads up: I can't actually check any of these. I'm taking your word for it. Fair enough?
I'll do it I might fake it
Price each favour as a thank-you you'd happily give anyone who asks. Most people play fair, and the campaign cap is what limits the worst case.
Granted on trust
14 doables
Verified by checkout
6 basket goals
What the shopper sees
The widget asks 🗣️ straight
Before any trust-based reward, the negotiator tells the shopper it cannot check, and gives them a real choice about it. Most people answer honestly when honesty is made legible.
- Fourteen rewards granted on trust, six verified by checkout
- Every card in the widget is labelled as one or the other
- The admin labels them too, so you can price them differently
Channels
Your links, opened by the shopper
No API keys, no connectors, no permissions to grant. You paste your own URL and the shopper opens it in a new tab.
Granted on trust
TikTok
Granted on trust
YouTube
Granted on trust
Granted on trust
Granted on trust
Google review
Granted on trust
Newsletter
Granted on trust
Basket goals
Verified by checkout
The reasoning behind all of this is in we can't verify a follow, so we don't pretend to.
Turn your discount budget into followers
Every plan starts with a 7-day free trial and carries the whole product. See them on the pricing page.
Add to Shopify →Questions
Good to know
Can a Shopify app verify that someone followed my Instagram?
No. Social platforms do not expose follow relationships to third-party apps, and that is a deliberate privacy position. Anything claiming to verify a follow is either collecting far more shopper data than the reward is worth, or showing a spinner that checks nothing.
So how does follow-for-discount work if you can't check?
The shopper opens your link, comes back, and taps “I did it”. The widget tells them plainly that we are taking their word for it. Price the reward as a thank-you you would happily give anyone who asks, and the campaign cap bounds the worst case.
Won't people just claim it without following?
Some will. Most do not — being told openly that you are being trusted is a surprisingly strong prompt, and there is no system to beat, just a request. More importantly, the cost is one you chose in advance rather than a risk you are absorbing.
What is a follow worth as a discount?
Two or three percent is a common starting point. Think of it as buying an owned-channel follower once and reaching them repeatedly, versus paying for that impression every time. For most stores that maths works comfortably at a few percent of an order.
Which platforms can shoppers follow for a discount?
Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, Facebook, LinkedIn, X, Pinterest and WhatsApp channels, plus a Google review, a share, an account sign-up, and a custom link of your own. All of them are link-outs to your own pages — Symbiotic asks for no API keys and connects to no third-party service.
How do I stop someone claiming every reward at once?
Cap the stack. Rewards add up only to the maximum you set for the campaign, 20% of list by default, and nothing is ever priced below 5% of list. The worst case for any single order is a number you chose.