Partner program
Refer Idlefy, earn 30% for four months
Built for the consultants and agencies who already run other people’s infrastructure. The commission sits on top of work you are doing anyway.
30% is the default rate. Rates are set per partner, and the Partner Terms govern.
What Idlefy does
- Managed dev, staging and test VMs stay off by default — a stopped VM burns no compute money.
- When an engineer needs a machine, they take a lease for the hours they actually need, and it starts.
- When the lease ends, the VM stops itself. The timer belongs to the person who set it.
- A stop is a stop, not a terminate: persistent disks survive.
The full lifecycle, including the access boundary, is on how it works.
What a referral pays
You earn 30% of net payments by default, for 4 months from a referred organization’s first successful payment. Each commission waits out a 30-day hold before it becomes available, and you can request a payout once your available balance reaches $50. Requests are reviewed and paid by hand; there is no fixed payout schedule. Payouts go out by Wise, or USDC on ERC20, TRC20 or SOL.
A client team on Basic pays $50 a month. At the default rate that is $15 a month to you.
Four monthly payments normally fall inside the window, so one referral is about $60. Each commission waits out a 30-day hold from the day it is booked, so the last one is available around month four.
Ten client teams on Basic is roughly $600 across their windows. Thirty client teams is thirty windows.
Estimate at current list prices. Commission is calculated on net payments, and your rate is set per partner. Current plan prices are on the pricing page.
Putting this in a client’s account? The access boundary is below.
Safe to put in a client’s cloud account
- Idlefy starts and stops only the machines you have explicitly tagged for it.
- On AWS that boundary is written into the IAM policy itself, so the automation has no permission to start or stop anything outside it.
- Machines it stops are stopped, not terminated — persistent disks survive.
- The lease timer is set by the person who took the lease. It is never inferred.
- You see a masked owner email, the signup date, whether there has been a first payment, the plan, your campaign tag and what you have earned. You never see the organization name or a full email address — but the mask keeps the domain, so check that before you refer a client you are under an NDA with.
- The access model differs between AWS and Google Cloud; the how-it-works page linked above sets out both in full. Send a security reviewer there rather than paraphrasing this list.
How a referral is tracked (affiliate link and cookie)
You get a referral link from your dashboard. A click on it sets a cookie that lasts 60 days, and an organization created while that cookie is live is attributed to you permanently. If someone clicks two partners’ links, the most recent one before signup is normally the one that counts — attribution follows the browser rather than the person, so someone who researches on one device and signs up on another may not carry your link with them.
In the partner kit
- A dashboard with your clicks, signups and conversions. Clicks measure reach only — link previews and bots can inflate them — and commissions come from payments.
- Campaign tags, so you can tell which channel actually converts.
- Ready-to-post copy and brand assets.
- Terms in writing, before you start.
Partner program FAQ
How does a referral get attributed to me?
A click on your link sets a cookie that lasts 60 days. If the visitor creates an organization while it is live, that organization is attributed to you. The most recent link a visitor clicked is normally the one that counts, and once an organization is attributed the attribution is permanent — it is never reassigned.
How long do I earn on a referral?
4 months, counted from that organization’s first successful payment. It is a defined window rather than a lifetime share. When the window closes the organization stays yours in the records, but new payments no longer earn.
What happens if a payment is refunded?
The matching commission is reversed and comes back off your balance. That is what the 30-day hold is for: a commission matures before it becomes available, so most refunds land before the money is payable.
What if my referral upgrades their plan?
You earn on what they actually pay, so an upgrade inside the window increases your commission. It does not restart or extend the window — that is fixed to the first successful payment.
What if my prospect is already an Idlefy customer?
Attribution is fixed when an organization is created and is never reassigned, so an existing organization cannot be moved to you. Worth checking before you spend effort on an outreach list.
Can I run paid ads?
Yes, with one exception: do not bid on Idlefy brand terms or our domains. The rest of the acceptable-use rules apply to ads like any other channel — no incentivized or non-genuine traffic, and no misrepresenting what the product does or what it costs. The full list is in the Partner Terms.
When can I request a payout?
Once your available balance reaches $50. Commissions become available after the 30-day hold; the requested amount is a snapshot of what is available at the moment you ask.
Who pays the transfer fees?
You do — the fee charged by the payout provider or network is not something we deduct or list as a line item. The amount shown in your payout history and in the payout confirmation email is the gross amount before any such fee, and what actually reaches your account can be less. Worth knowing for USDC in particular, where the network fee varies and can be a meaningful share of a small payout. The wording is in the Partner Terms.
Join the partner program
Joining is self-serve. The Partner Terms set out the rate, the window, the payout rules and the acceptable-use rules in full. Questions first? Write to partners@idlefy.com — we aim to reply within 2 business days.
Become a partner