The ShareASale merger into Awin has been in motion for a while, and if you've been living in the ShareASale dashboard, your world is about to change. The two networks — both owned by Axel Springer — are being consolidated into a single platform under the Awin brand. For affiliates, that means new interfaces, new APIs, potentially new tracking links, and a transition period where your earning data is split across two systems.
This guide covers what the ShareASale Awin migration means in practice for affiliates: what changes, what doesn't, how to handle the transition without losing visibility into your earnings, and what to watch out for.
Heads up: Migration timelines and specifics can shift. This guide covers what affiliates should generally expect and prepare for. Always check your official Awin/ShareASale email communications for dates specific to your account.
Background: Why Is ShareASale Merging Into Awin?
Awin acquired ShareASale back in 2017. For years, they operated as separate platforms — different dashboards, different advertiser pools, different tracking infrastructure. That parallel operation was always a stopgap. The consolidation into a single Awin platform simplifies operations, reduces costs, and gives the combined entity a cleaner product story against competitors like CJ Affiliate, Impact, and PartnerStack.
For Awin, the merger strengthens their US market presence. ShareASale has always been especially strong with US-based direct-to-consumer advertisers — the kind of brands that power a lot of content-based affiliate income. That advertiser base now sits inside the Awin affiliate dashboard.
What Changes for Affiliates
The Dashboard
The most immediate change is where you log in. ShareASale's interface — familiar to thousands of US affiliates — is being retired. Everything moves to the Awin dashboard at awin.com. The Awin interface is modern and functional, but it's a real learning curve if you've spent years in ShareASale.
Reporting structures differ. ShareASale's transaction reports and Awin's activity reports aren't identical in schema. Columns are named differently, date filters work differently, and exports have different formats. If you've built any automation around ShareASale CSVs or their API, plan to rebuild it.
Tracking Links
Existing ShareASale tracking links will be migrated, but the underlying URLs change to Awin's tracking infrastructure. Affiliates should audit any tracking links embedded in content — blog posts, email sequences, resource pages — and update them to the new Awin format.
This is the most labor-intensive part of the migration. If you have dozens of articles with embedded ShareASale links, you're looking at a real content audit. Start early. Let old links redirect for as long as the network allows, but don't let them become single points of failure in your earnings stream.
API Access
ShareASale had its own transaction API. Awin has a different one. If you pull data programmatically — for your own dashboards, spreadsheet automation, or third-party tools — you'll need to update your integration. Awin's API is well-documented and generally regarded as more robust than ShareASale's older implementation, but it's still a migration task.
What Stays the Same
Here's the good news: the fundamentals of your affiliate relationships are preserved through the ShareASale merger.
| Item | Status | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Advertiser relationships | ✓ Preserved | Programs you're approved for carry over automatically |
| Pending commissions | ✓ Preserved | Unpaid earnings are migrated to Awin's payment system |
| Payment schedule | ⚠ Check timing | Payment calendars may shift; verify your first Awin payment date |
| Commission rates | ✓ Preserved | Existing rate agreements with advertisers stay intact |
| Tracking links (old format) | ⚠ Redirected temporarily | Will redirect to new Awin links — update proactively |
| ShareASale dashboard | ⚠ Being retired | Login will eventually redirect to Awin |
| ShareASale API | ⚠ Being deprecated | Migrate to Awin API before cutoff date |
How to Track Earnings During the Transition
This is where most affiliates run into real problems. During a network migration, earnings data is temporarily split across two systems. Your historical ShareASale data lives in one place; new Awin transactions appear in another. Without a tool that aggregates both, you're flying partially blind.
The cleanest solution: run both network connections simultaneously in a unified affiliate dashboard. CommPilot connects to both Awin and ShareASale (and a dozen other networks) in parallel. During the migration window, you can watch historical ShareASale data alongside live Awin data in a single view — no CSV exports, no manual reconciliation.
Why this matters: Network migrations create data gaps. A commission earned in ShareASale that migrates to Awin mid-cycle can look like a loss in one system and an unexpected gain in another. With CommPilot's unified dashboard, you see the full picture across both networks in real time — so you know exactly where every dollar is.
Even after the migration is complete and ShareASale is fully sunset, you'll have clean historical data covering both periods. That matters for trend analysis, tax reporting, and understanding which advertisers performed best before and after the platform change.
Your Migration Action Plan
Here's what to do before, during, and after the ShareASale → Awin cutover:
Before the cutover
- Export your historical ShareASale data. Pull transaction history going back as far as you can. Once the platform shuts down, that data may not be accessible. CSV exports now, before the deadline.
- Audit your tracking links. Find every place you've embedded a ShareASale tracking URL — blog posts, landing pages, email sequences, social bios. Build a list. Prioritize by traffic volume.
- Create your Awin account (if you don't already have one) and connect your new account to your advertiser programs. Awin should handle this migration automatically, but verify your program approvals carry over.
- Connect Awin to your tracking dashboard. If you use CommPilot, add your Awin credentials now. Running both ShareASale and Awin in parallel during the transition gives you full earnings visibility at all times.
During the transition
- Update tracking links in your highest-traffic content first. Don't try to do everything at once — prioritize pages that drive meaningful affiliate revenue.
- Monitor your Awin dashboard daily for the first few weeks. Commission cadence and reporting latency work slightly differently than ShareASale. Get familiar with the rhythms.
- Watch for payment timing changes. Verify when your first Awin payment processes and confirm it reflects the expected commission totals.
After the migration
- Complete your tracking link audit. Every old ShareASale link should be updated or confirmed to redirect properly.
- Archive your ShareASale export data somewhere permanent. You'll want it for tax purposes and historical benchmarking.
- If you were using ShareASale's API, deprecate that integration and confirm your Awin API connection is pulling complete data.
The Bigger Picture: Network Consolidation Is the Trend
The ShareASale–Awin merger is one example of a broader trend: affiliate networks consolidating. The affiliate marketing ecosystem is large but fragmented, and the major platforms have been acquiring, merging, and sunsetting competitors for years. That means managing multiple affiliate networks — and migrating between them — is now a permanent part of the job.
The affiliates who navigate this without disruption are the ones who've already centralized their tracking. When your earnings data lives in a tool like CommPilot rather than scattered across five different network dashboards, a migration like ShareASale → Awin is a new connection to add, not a crisis to manage. Your historical data stays intact, your new data flows in automatically, and your earnings picture never goes dark.
If you've been meaning to unify your affiliate tracking and keep putting it off — a network migration is the forcing function. CommPilot is free to start. Connect Awin, ShareASale, and every other network you run in one place before the cutover, and the migration becomes a non-event.