JVZoo is an affiliate network with a hosted checkout. As a vendor you pay 5% of each sale, or 8.5% if JVZoo also processes the payment, with no listing or monthly fee. In return you get its affiliate marketplace (JVZoo says 1.2 million registered affiliates), its cart, funnels with one-click upsells, and a sale notification called JVZIPN.
What it doesn't give you is everything in front of the cart: the sales pages, the tests, and the link between an ad and the sale.
I'd use JVZoo for the affiliates and the cart, and keep the pages and the tracking somewhere I control.
Most JVZoo reviews are written for affiliates hunting for something to promote. This one is for vendors deciding whether to list a product there. We make ElasticFunnels, which supports JVZoo as a merchant, so every JVZoo fact below comes from JVZoo's own FAQ and help center, opened on 19 October 2026, and each section links the page it came from.
JVZoo review at a glance
The vendor's view of JVZoo in one table.
| What you're checking | JVZoo, for vendors |
|---|---|
| Fee per sale | 5%, or 8.5% with JVZoo payment processing. No setup or monthly fee |
| Your payout | After the 30-day refund period; first payout needs a $100 balance |
| Affiliate payouts | Every 3 to 21 days, by the affiliate's JVZooPay level |
| Product approval | Reviewed by JVZoo's Compliance Team against FTC-based guidelines |
| Affiliate approval | You approve each one, or auto-approve chosen and premium affiliates |
| Upsells | Funnel Builder with one-click upsells, downsells and up to 3 order bumps |
| Sale notifications | JVZIPN v1 and v2, signed with your secret key |
| Tracking IDs | vtid on your buy buttons, tid on affiliate links |
| Checkout | JVZoo's own order page, in one of five templates |
| Sales pages | Yours to build and host. JVZoo can split test pages that sit at separate URLs |
JVZoo fees
JVZoo's fee is 5% of every sale, taken before the affiliate's commission is paid. If JVZoo processes the payment for you, it's 8.5% per sale. There is no setup fee and no monthly fee (JVZoo FAQ).
| A $100 sale, 50% commission | Your own processor | JVZoo processing |
|---|---|---|
| JVZoo fee | $5.00 (5%) | $8.50 (8.5%) |
| Affiliate commission | $50.00 | $50.00 |
| You keep, before processor fees | $45.00 | $41.50 |
The first column is JVZoo's own worked example. On your own processor, that processor's fee comes on top: JVZoo's help center uses an estimate of 3.49% + $0.49 for PayPal in its 100% commission example. Refunds cost something too. A refunded sale reverses the commission, and JVZoo deducts its 5% fee (JVZooPay refunds).
Next to ClickBank's 7.5% + $1, the fee is low. The fee is rarely what decides a launch, though. The commission you set and the upsells behind the front end do, and those are covered below.
JVZoo payouts: when the money arrives
Vendors pick one of two payment set-ups (JVZoo FAQ):
- Your own processor (JVZoo names Stripe and PayPal): the money reaches you after the refund period.
- JVZoo's processing: paid out on JVZoo's schedule, and tax forms and verification may be required before the first payout.
Either way, payouts account for a 30-day refund period, and the first one needs a $100 minimum balance.
Your affiliates are paid through JVZooPay, on a schedule set by their own level, which JVZoo recalculates daily from their recent performance.
| JVZooPay level | Paid every | Requirements | Rolling reserve |
|---|---|---|---|
| Diamond | 3 days | 1+ year, 2,000+ sales, under 5% refunds | Not stated |
| Platinum | 5 days | 9+ months, 1,500+ sales, under 7% refunds | Not stated |
| Gold | 7 days | 7+ months, 500+ sales, under 9% refunds | Not stated |
| Silver | 2 weeks | 6+ months, 250+ sales, under 11% refunds | 20% |
| Bronze | 3 weeks | New, or under 6 months and 250 sales | 25% |
Payouts go to Payoneer, Trolley (bank or PayPal) or Wise, and new accounts stay on probation until JVZoo reviews them. The refund rate limits in that table are the affiliate's. A launch with heavy refunds can push the affiliates who promoted it down the ladder, which gives them a good reason to skip your next one.
Product and affiliate approval
Getting a product approved
Every product is reviewed by JVZoo's Compliance Team before it can sell (JVZoo, product approval). You need:
- a sales page with a JVZoo buy button the system can verify, and the JVZoo tracking pixel;
- a thank-you page or delivery file that gives the buyer what they paid for;
- the product set to "Available to be purchased".
The review follows JVZoo's FTC-based product approval guidelines. The ones that catch direct-response pages most often:
- Earnings and result claims need substantiation, plus a typical-results disclaimer when they aren't typical.
- Countdown timers must actually do something when they hit zero. Static scarcity ("only 3 left") counts as deceptive.
- An advertorial designed to look like an independent news article or review site is called deceptive.
- Exit pop-ups are discouraged, and must close in one click if you use them.
- Refund terms must match on the sales page, your terms and JVZoo's order page.
Rejections come back in the seller dashboard with the list of changes. JVZoo's help center doesn't give a turnaround time.
Approving affiliates
Affiliates request to promote your product and you approve or deny each one under Sellers → Manage Affiliates. You can also auto-approve named affiliates, or switch on automatic approval for JVZoo's "Premium Affiliates", which JVZoo rates on sales, refund percentage and traffic quality. An affiliate approved for a funnel's front end is approved for every product in that funnel (JVZoo, premium affiliates).
I'd keep manual approval for anyone you don't know on a new launch. One affiliate on junk traffic can lift your refund rate for the whole product.
Upsell funnels on JVZoo
JVZoo's Funnel Builder connects a front-end product to upsells and downsells, then generates the buy buttons and "No thanks" links for each page.
- One-click upsells are a switch on the funnel. Every product in it must be approved and must use the funnel's buy buttons, or the buyer drops out of the funnel after the first purchase.
- Order bumps: up to 3 per product, on products that are already in a funnel. Each one gets its own receipt and can be refunded on its own.
- Lock Affiliate After Initial Sale keeps the first affiliate credited through the whole funnel.
- Test Purchase Mode runs the funnel at test prices like $1.00 on your device only, and switches itself off after an hour.
The pages behind each step are still yours. JVZoo moves the buyer between URLs you give it, and after the last offer the buyer lands in their JVZoo customer account, not on a page of yours.
JVZIPN and tracking
JVZoo has two tracking IDs (JVZoo, tracking IDs):
vtidgoes on your own buy buttons, so you can see which of your promotions sold.tidgoes on an affiliate's link. It belongs to the affiliate, and the JVZoo affiliate guide covers how they use it.
JVZoo itself "tracks clicks, but not referral pages". It knows which affiliate sent the buyer. Which ad, page or headline did it is your job.
Sales reach your server through JVZIPN, JVZoo's IPN (instant payment notification): a form POST for each transaction, signed with a cverify hash of your secret key. There are two versions, and they behave differently in ways that matter.
| JVZIPN | v1 | v2 |
|---|---|---|
| Events | SALE, BILL, RFND, CGBK, INSF, CANCEL-REBILL, UNCANCEL-REBILL | SALE, BILL, RFND (a chargeback arrives as RFND) |
| Amounts | In cents | In dollars, with a payout breakdown per party |
| Signature | Every field, sorted | 5 fields |
| If your server is down | Resent once an hour for 72 hours | Lost. JVZoo emails you and does not retry |
Sources: JVZIPN v1, JVZIPN v2. On v2, each funnel step sends its own notification and none of them carries the funnel ID, so tying an upsell to its front-end sale is your code's job.
The v2 retry rule is the one I'd plan around. If your endpoint has a bad hour on launch day, those sales never reach it, and JVZoo's advice is to reconcile through its API or ask support to resend. JVZoo can also post abandoned checkouts (product and email) to a URL of yours, or run its own recovery emails, which is the default (JVZoo, abandoned cart).
What JVZoo leaves to you
None of these are flaws in JVZoo. They're the parts of a funnel JVZoo was never built to run, and you'll have to run them somewhere.
- The pages. JVZoo needs a sales page URL and buy buttons. It offers five templates for its own order page, and its help center doesn't describe a page builder, so the sales page, the upsell pages and any presell live on your own hosting.
- Testing beyond whole pages. JVZoo's split test compares two or more sales pages, and each one needs its own URL. A headline, a price block or a presell in front of the sales page is a split test you run yourself.
- The ad that sold. You can paste a retargeting pixel and a conversion pixel onto JVZoo's order form and receipt page (JVZoo, retargeting). Its reports still show the affiliate and the tracking ID, while your ads, UTMs and page versions live elsewhere.
- The buyer after the sale. The JVZIPN carries name, email and the product. What you do with it (a CRM, emails, a call) is your system's job.
Picture a launch with three affiliates and your own Facebook traffic, all landing on one sales page. JVZoo will tell you each affiliate's sales and refunds. It won't tell you that your second headline sold better on phones, or that one of your ad sets bought nothing but refunds. That's the gap the next section is about.
Where ElasticFunnels fits with JVZoo
In ElasticFunnels you add JVZoo as a merchant, and ElasticFunnels sits in front of its checkout. Your pages, tests and tracking run on your domain in ElasticFunnels, the buy buttons send the buyer to JVZoo, and JVZoo reports every sale back. JVZoo keeps its cart, its affiliates and its upsell sequence.
- Pages on your domain: a visual builder, an AI page builder that builds any page you describe, and a page cloner for the sales pages you already run.
- JVZoo buy links built for you. A
[BUY=]tag turns into the JVZoo link for the product you mapped, with the visitor's click code asvtid.[UPSELL=]tags do the same on your one-click upsell pages, with your JVZoo funnel ID. Tick one box and the JVZoo sales pixel is added to each page for you. - Affiliates credited: with JVZoo's "Pass Affiliate ID to Sales Page" on, the affiliate's ID is kept on the visit and put back on the buy link, so JVZoo credits the sale.
- Every JVZIPN checked: v1 and v2, verified with your secret key. Sales, rebills, refunds, chargebacks, cancellations and reactivations each land on the click, the ad's UTMs and the page variant that sold.
- Split tests of up to 5 variants under one URL, judged on JVZoo sales. Whole pages, single elements or presells, and the ad, the affiliate links and the JVZoo listing keep pointing at the same address.
- Per-affiliate reports: revenue, refunds and EPC for each JVZoo affiliate, from the affiliate on each order.
- Buyers in your own customer list, where a purchase, refund or chargeback can start an automation.
Setup is a JVZoo merchant, its JVZIPN URL in your JVZoo product settings, and your product IDs mapped. The steps and screens are in the JVZoo merchant guide, and the page on how to connect JVZoo to ElasticFunnels sums up what it records. If you also promote other vendors' products on JVZoo, that's the affiliate side of the integration, a separate setup.
Is JVZoo worth it for vendors?
For a digital product aimed at the make-money-online and marketing-tools crowd, usually yes. The fee is low, the affiliates are already there, and one-click upsells are built in. For a product that needs a different crowd of affiliates, compare it with ClickBank first: how JVZoo compares with ClickBank covers fees, IPN and upsell funnels side by side.
- Plan for JVZIPN v2 losing a notification on a bad day. Either keep v1 running next to it for the retries, or reconcile against JVZoo's reports after every launch day.
- Don't build your upsell pages so they can only be edited inside a JVZoo funnel setup. Point the funnel at URLs you can change, so a better page doesn't mean new buttons.
- Refunds hurt twice on JVZoo: once on your own numbers, and once on the payout level of every affiliate who sent them. A launch with a 20% refund rate makes the next launch harder to recruit for.
- Put
vtidon every buy link you control. A sale with no tracking ID is a sale you can't learn from.
JVZoo is a good cart with a crowd of affiliates attached. It's not a funnel, and it doesn't pretend to be one. Treat it as the place the money changes hands, own the pages and the tracking in front of it, and you get JVZoo's reach without guessing which page or ad earned it.
