Docs

1. Sign up with your email. You'll get a magic link.
2. Name your program. Pick a slug (e.g. acme) and set your commission % (default 30%).
3. Connect Polar in /dashboard/settings — paste your Polar webhook secret, add our webhook URL in Polar.
4. Drop the tracking script on your marketing site.
5. Share https://usesled.com/acme/join with potential affiliates. They sign up and get their own link.

An affiliate sale follows this chain:

1. An affiliate shares their link, e.g. https://yoursite.com/?ref=abc1234
2. A visitor clicks it. Our tracking script reads ?ref=abc1234 and stores it in a ta_ref cookie (90 days default).
3. The visitor browses your site, eventually buys something through Polar / Stripe / etc.
4. Your checkout code passes the cookie value as metadata.referral to the payment provider.
5. The provider fires a webhook to Sled. We look up the referral code → match it to an affiliate → record the conversion + commission.
6. Your affiliate sees the sale in their dashboard. You see it in yours.

Step 1: Add the webhook in Polar

In your Polar dashboard → Settings → Webhooks → Add endpoint:

Copy the signing secret Polar generates. You'll paste it in your Sled settings.

Step 2: Paste the secret in Sled

Go to /dashboard/settings → Polar webhook secret → paste the value → save.

Step 3: Attach the referral cookie in your checkout

Wherever you create a Polar checkout session, attach the ta_ref cookie value as metadata:

import { Polar } from "@polar-sh/sdk";

const polar = new Polar({ accessToken: process.env.POLAR_ACCESS_TOKEN });

const checkout = await polar.checkouts.create({
  products: [productId],
  successUrl: "https://yourapp.com/thanks",
  metadata: {
    referral: req.cookies.ta_ref ?? "",
  },
});

That's it. When a referred customer pays, the conversion appears in /dashboard within seconds.

Webhook URL: https://usesled.com/acme/api/webhook/stripe

Events: checkout.session.completed, charge.refunded

Pass the referral in checkout session metadata:

const session = await stripe.checkout.sessions.create({
  // ...your existing fields
  metadata: { referral: getCookie("ta_ref") || "" },
});

Paste the Stripe signing secret in /dashboard/settings → Stripe webhook secret.

For any provider that can POST JSON, use our generic webhook. POST to https://usesled.com/acme/api/webhook/generic:

{
  "event": "order",
  "orderId": "ord_12345",
  "amount": 4900,
  "email": "customer@example.com",
  "metadata": { "referral": "abc1234" }
}

For refunds:

{ "event": "refund", "orderId": "ord_12345" }

Set a shared secret in /dashboard/settings → Generic webhook secret → and send it on every request as either X-Webhook-Secret: yoursecret or Authorization: Bearer yoursecret.

Amounts are always in cents.

Embed on any page where affiliate links land (usually your marketing site root):

<script async src="https://usesled.com/acme/t.js"></script>

What it does, in order:

1. Reads ?ref=CODE from the URL.
2. Stores CODE in a ta_ref cookie for the configured attribution window (90 days default).
3. Pings https://usesled.com/acme/api/click to record the click. We dedupe by IP for 24 hours so refreshes don't inflate stats.

It's less than 1KB minified. No external dependencies. No third-party calls.

Inviting them

Share https://usesled.com/acme/join. Anyone with the link can sign up — name + email, that's it. They immediately get their affiliate link.

What they see

• Their unique referral link
• Click count, conversion count, revenue, earnings
• Pending vs paid amounts
• A form to add payout details (PayPal, Wise, IBAN, crypto wallet) — only after they earn their first commission

Managing them

In /dashboard/affiliates you see everyone's stats — clicks, conversions, owed, payout method.

Sled doesn't move money for you. We track who's owed what — you send payments manually from your own PayPal / Wise / bank / crypto wallet.

This means: no KYC, no payment processing fees, no compliance overhead. Just a clean ledger.

The flow

1. Open /dashboard/payouts. Affiliates above your minimum threshold appear in Ready for payout.
2. Each row shows their payment method (PayPal / Wise / Bank / Crypto) and destination (email / IBAN / wallet address).
3. You send the payment manually.
4. Click Mark paid in the admin — the affiliate gets an email confirming, their pending balance resets.

Set your minimum payout threshold in /dashboard/settings. Default is $20.

We send 3 transactional emails on your behalf:

• Welcome — when an affiliate signs up, with their dashboard URL and referral link.
• First commission — when an affiliate earns their first conversion, prompting them to add payout details.
• Payout sent — when you click Mark paid in the admin.

Emails are sent from affiliates@usesled.com with your program name in the From field — affiliates see “acme · affiliate program” as the sender.

See full pricing & FAQ on the pricing page.

Sled is open source under AGPL-3.0. You can self-host it for free — including for your business — instead of using usesled.com.

Quick start

git clone https://github.com/ardakaano/slend
cd sled
npm install
cp .env.example .env
# edit .env (see below)
npx prisma db push
npm run db:seed
npm run dev

Open http://localhost:3000. Sign up at /signup — if email is unconfigured, the magic link prints to your terminal.

Required env vars

Deploy options

• VPS + Caddy/nginx — cheapest, full control. SQLite or Postgres both work. ~€4/mo Hetzner runs many apps.
• Railway / Render — git-push deploys, Postgres add-on one click. ~$5-10/mo.
• Fly.io — supports persistent volumes, so SQLite works without switching DBs.
• Vercel — needs hosted DB (Turso for SQLite, Neon for Postgres) because filesystem is read-only.
• Cloudflare Workers — not supported out of the box. Sled uses Node crypto, which Workers replaces with Web Crypto API. PRs welcome.

Production checklist

1. Switch from SQLite to Postgres: change provider in prisma/schema.prisma, update DATABASE_URL, run npx prisma migrate dev --name init.
2. Set RESEND_API_KEY and verify your domain in Resend.
3. If you want to charge customers (running your own SaaS): set up Polar billing env vars. Otherwise leave empty.
4. Put a reverse proxy in front (Caddy is simplest) for HTTPS.
5. Set up DB backups. With SQLite that's a daily file copy; with Postgres your provider usually handles it.

License compliance (AGPL-3.0)

You can use Sled in your business for free. The catch: if you modify the code AND offer it as a network service to others, you must publish your modifications under AGPL-3.0 too. If you just run unmodified Sled (or modify it for internal use only), this doesn't apply.

If AGPL doesn't work for you (e.g. you want to embed Sled in proprietary software), email hey@ardakaanozcan.com for a commercial license.