How to Set Up an In-App Referral Program: The Full Implementation Guide

Q: Which should you pick?

Pick the embed if you want to be live this week: near-zero design work, prebuilt sharing and reward tracking, translations included. Go fully custom if the referral flow must match your design system exactly, or you want referral prompts woven into specific product moments. Budget a few developer days instead of a few hours. You can also start with the embed and go custom later; the tracking and reward data carry over, because the engine underneath does not change.

referral programin-app referral

Your happiest users are already recommending you in Slack messages and calls you never see. An in-app referral program captures that word of mouth: users share a personal link from inside your product, their contacts get a reward for trying you, and the referrer gets a reward when it converts. No third-party signup, no friction, and a viral loop that makes your product stickier while it grows.

This is the full implementation guide we share with customers: the two ways to build it (the embedded widget or a fully custom build on the API), the setup steps, double-sided rewards, and the practices that separate programs that produce referrals from programs that just exist.

The Reditus in-app referral widget showing a personal referral link, sharing options and reward tracking — The embedded widget: referral link, sharing options, and reward history, rendered inside your app.

Two ways to build it: the embed or fully custom

Both paths run on the same engine: the same tracking, the same reward logic, the same payouts. The difference is who builds the interface.

Option 1: the embedded widget (live in hours)

The widget is a prebuilt referral interface that renders inside your app. Integration is three steps, documented in the developer guide:

Load the widget where your frontend has user data, passing your product ID and the user details.
Authenticate with a JWT generated on your backend, so your product secret never touches the browser and referral activity is tied to the right account.
Show the modal from any button with a single call, or automatically via a URL parameter, which is handy for opening it straight from an email campaign.

The widget supports multiple languages and needs essentially no design work. This is how most customers start.

YouCanBookMe referral program rendered with the embedded Reditus widget inside their dashboard — The embed in production at YouCanBookMe: their branding around it, reward terms visible inline, sharing via email, WhatsApp, LinkedIn and X.

Option 2: fully custom on the Referral Program API

If you want the referral experience to look and behave like a native part of your product, build your own interface on the Referral Program API. You create advocates, read their leads and rewards, track conversions, and trigger rewards, all from your backend, and design whatever front end you want on top.

Snitcher referral page built fully custom on the Reditus API, matching their own design system — Fully custom in production at Snitcher: their own referral page in their own design system, powered by the API underneath.

Snitcher built exactly this: a fully custom in-app referral experience, shipped in days rather than months. Read how they did it.

Reditus Referral Program API documentation showing the Create Advocate endpoint — The API surface: advocates, leads, payments, conversion tracking, and reward triggers.

Which should you pick?

Pick the embed if you want to be live this week: near-zero design work, prebuilt sharing and reward tracking, translations included.
Go fully custom if the referral flow must match your design system exactly, or you want referral prompts woven into specific product moments. Budget a few developer days instead of a few hours.

You can also start with the embed and go custom later; the tracking and reward data carry over, because the engine underneath does not change.

The setup, step by step

1. Install the tracking script in your site header (guide). It powers attribution for referral links. No cookie consent banner is needed: it is an attribution-only cookie with no PII.
2. Add the sign-up snippet at registration (guide), so referred signups are registered to the right advocate.
3. Connect payments: Stripe natively, or any other processor via the Payments API, so conversions and rewards fire on real revenue.
4. Configure the program: rewards for the advocate, the incentive for the referred user, and your terms.

Reditus referral program settings page where rewards and program details are configured — Program configuration: what advocates earn, what referred users get, and the rules of the program.

5. Add the widget or build on the API, as chosen above.

Double-sided rewards with webhooks

The best-performing referral programs reward both sides: the advocate gets their reward, and the referred user gets a welcome benefit like a discount, extra credits, or an extended trial. Rewards do not have to be cash.

Webhooks make the second side automatic. Subscribe to events like advocate.created, lead.created and reward.created, and apply the benefit in your own system the moment it happens: credits added, discount applied, trial extended, without anyone touching a spreadsheet.

Reditus webhook configuration showing referral program events like advocate.created, lead.created and reward.created — Webhook events for the referral program: use lead.created and reward.created to grant benefits automatically in your own system.

Open the widget from anywhere: deep links

The widget does not have to wait for someone to find a button. Any URL in your app can open it automatically with a query parameter:

?reditus-show-referral=program opens the Referral Program tab, where users grab their link.
?reditus-show-referral=referrals opens the Referrals tab, showing who they brought in.
?reditus-show-referral=rewards opens the Rewards tab, showing what they earned.

That turns the referral program into something you can promote everywhere you already talk to users: a link in your lifecycle emails, a chat popup or in-app message, a line in your invoice email, a banner after a milestone. One click and the sharing modal is open, pre-authenticated, on the right tab. Details in the widget documentation.

Multi-language support

The widget ships in eight languages: English, French, Spanish, German, Portuguese, Italian, Polish, and Dutch. You set the language per user with a single parameter when the widget loads, so a German user shares in German while their colleague sees English. Full list and usage in the language documentation.

Best practices from programs that actually produce referrals

Reward both sides. YouCanBookMe pairs the advocate reward with 50% off the first subscription for the referred user; Snitcher pairs a $100 gift card with 15% off. The welcome benefit is what makes sharing feel like a favor instead of an ask.
Put it where users already are. Top navigation, the settings menu, or a dedicated referrals page. Then use the deep-link parameter to open the widget straight from lifecycle emails, chat popups, and in-app messages.
Ask at moments of delight. After a completed onboarding, a hit milestone, or a great support interaction. A referral prompt at a frustrating moment does more harm than good.
Keep the terms visible and simple. One sentence covering what the advocate earns and what their friend gets, shown inside the widget, beats a linked terms page nobody reads.
Non-monetary rewards work. Credits, extended trials and extra features often outperform small cash amounts, and they keep the reward inside your product.
Announce it more than once. Launch email, in-app mention, and a line in your onboarding sequence. A referral program nobody knows about produces nothing.
Watch activation, then iterate. Track how many users open the widget, share a link, and produce a lead. If sharing is high but conversions are low, the welcome offer is usually the lever.

Frequently asked questions

How long does implementation take?

The embedded widget is typically live within hours: three integration steps plus configuration. A fully custom build on the API is measured in days; Snitcher shipped theirs in days rather than months.

Can the referral program run alongside an affiliate program?

Yes, and that is the standard Reditus setup: the in-app referral program captures your existing users, while the affiliate program recruits outside partners. One platform, one tracking engine, no duplicated tooling.

Do rewards have to be cash?

No. Credits, discounts, extended trials, or anything you can grant via webhooks all work, for the advocate as well as the referred user.

Do we need a cookie consent banner for referral tracking?

No. The tracking cookie is attribution-only and stores no personal data, so it does not require a consent banner.

Where do I find the developer documentation?

The full integration guide, including the widget walkthrough, JWT authentication examples and the API reference, starts at docs.getreditus.com/referral-program/get_started.

Evaluating referral software for your SaaS?

If you are reading this while choosing tooling rather than implementing it: Reditus runs the in-app referral program and a full affiliate program on one platform, with a network of 27,000+ B2B SaaS affiliates on top. Book a demo and we will walk through your setup, embed or fully custom, or start a 14-day free trial and have the widget live today.