Partner Agreement
Last updated 21 July 2026
The agreement between CoreShift and partners who build and sell websites on the Upwind platform.
This Partner Agreement (Agreement) is between CoreShift Limited (NZCN 9343042), trading as Upwind (we, us or our), and the person or organisation that registers as a partner (you, your or Partner). The partner programme is open to partners anywhere in the world; you are responsible for complying with the laws that apply where you and your customers operate. This Agreement sits alongside our Platform & Hosting Agreement, which governs the relationship between CoreShift and each customer. Where anything here appears to conflict with the Platform & Hosting Agreement about the customer relationship, that Agreement prevails for that relationship.
How you accept this Agreement
You accept this Agreement electronically by ticking the acceptance box when you register as a partner. If you are accepting on behalf of a business, you confirm you are authorised to bind it. There is no paper copy to sign and no other party details are collected to form this Agreement. If you do not agree, do not register as a partner.
Key terms
- Partner — you, once you register for the Upwind partner programme.
- Customer — a business or person whose website is built or sold by you on the platform, and who subscribes to CoreShift.
- Platform — Upwind: CoreShift's website-building, editing and hosting service.
- Platform Agreement — the Platform & Hosting Agreement between CoreShift and the Customer.
- Build Fee — the one-off fee you set for building a Customer's website.
- Subscription — the Customer's hosting subscription to CoreShift (US$49/month or US$499/year).
- Commission — the amounts we pay you under clause 4, recorded in your Ledger.
- Ledger — your running record of Commission accrued, matured, clawed back and paid.
- Active Subscription — a referred Subscription that is currently paying.
1. Your role and status
CoreShift is the principal, the seller and the merchant of record for the Platform, the Subscriptions and any Build Fees. You take part as an independent contractor and referral / sales agent. You are not our employee, our partner in the legal sense, or a party to a joint venture with us.
You do not sell the Platform in your own right, and you do not collect payment on our behalf. CoreShift collects all Customer payments directly and pays you a Commission for the Customers you refer. You have no authority to bind CoreShift, to make representations or promises on our behalf, or to vary the Platform Agreement. The programme gives you no guaranteed income, no exclusivity and no territory.
2. How the programme works
- You build a Customer's website on the Platform, from their existing site or public information.
- You set your Build Fee and send the Customer a branded (white-label) email inviting them to claim their site.
- The Customer logs in and pays CoreShift — the Build Fee and the first Subscription payment — in one secure checkout. You never handle Customer money.
- The Customer accepts the Platform Agreement; their contract for the website and hosting is with CoreShift, not with you.
- The site goes live. You may keep edit access to help the Customer, and your Commission begins to accrue.
3. What you may build
You may build simple, information-style websites using the Platform's templates, sections and themes. The Platform does not provide custom development, third-party integrations, or the ability to apply the editor to a website hosted elsewhere, and you must not represent otherwise. You must build sites only for genuine Customers, keep to what the product can actually do, and not over-promise features, performance or results.
4. Commission and Build Fee
For each Customer you refer, we pay you Commission on the hosting revenue we actually collect from that Customer (net of payment-processing costs), at the rate in the ladder below. Your rate is set by the number of your currently-Active Subscriptions, so it grows as you keep Customers active.
| Currently-active referred subscriptions | Commission on hosting revenue |
|---|---|
| 1–5 | 10% |
| 6–10 | 12% |
| 11–20 | 15% |
| 21–39 | 17% |
| 40–59 | 20% |
| 60+ | Premium / bespoke — agreed with you |
On the Build Fee, you receive the Build Fee you set, less payment-processing costs and our platform admin fee of 5%. No admin fee applies to the hosting Commission. We may vary the ladder, the rates or the admin fee on reasonable notice; changes apply to amounts accruing after the change.
5. Your Ledger and payouts
Commission accrues to your Ledger when a Customer's payment actually clears, not at the point of sale. Amounts are recorded in United States dollars. Each accrual has a 14-day maturation period before it becomes payable.
We pay matured, unpaid Commission fortnightly, through Wise, once your balance is above the minimum payout of US$50.
The only payout detail we ask you for is an email address. When we send a payment, Wise emails you at that address and you enter your own bank details directly with Wise. We do not ask for, receive or hold your bank account details. You must keep that email address current and make sure you can receive mail at it; we cannot pay you without it. Wise's own terms and identity checks apply to the payment itself, and Wise may convert into your local currency at its rates. We may hold your first payout, and any payout following a change to your payout email, for a reasonable review period.
6. Clawbacks
If a Customer's payment is refunded or charged back, or a Customer cancels or churns, the related Commission is reversed and offset against your future Commission. Your Ledger balance may go negative until future Commission clears it.
7. GST and tax
You must tell us your tax residency and GST status when you register, and give us your GST number if you are registered.
- If you are registered for New Zealand GST, you authorise CoreShift to issue buyer-created (self-billing) tax invoices for your Commission, and you agree not to issue your own tax invoices for the same amounts. You must tell us if you become required to register for GST (broadly, if your turnover exceeds NZ$60,000 in a 12-month period).
- If you are not registered for GST, no GST applies to your Commission.
- If you are an overseas (non-resident) partner, your services are performed outside New Zealand and New Zealand GST does not apply. You are responsible for any tax that applies to you in your own country.
You are responsible for your own income tax on what you earn. This clause describes how the programme is set up to work; it is not tax advice, and you should get your own advice if you are unsure.
8. How you must conduct yourself
In everything you do with your Customers and prospects, you must comply with all laws that apply to you, including consumer-protection and privacy laws (in New Zealand, for example, the Fair Trading Act 1986 and the Privacy Act 2020, and their equivalents in other countries). You must not:
- send spam or make unlawful marketing contact;
- misrepresent CoreShift, Upwind or the product, or make false or misleading claims about pricing, features or performance;
- publish or upload illegal, infringing or harmful content to a Customer's site;
- hold yourself out as CoreShift, or make any promise or commitment that would bind CoreShift.
9. Customer information, privacy and retention
Because you may keep edit access to a Customer's site, you may be able to see personal information the site collects — for example, enquiry or contact-form submissions from the Customer's visitors. You must handle that information in accordance with the privacy laws that apply (including the New Zealand Privacy Act 2020 where it applies, and equivalent laws in other countries), keep it confidential, and use it only to help that Customer.
You must not copy, download, export or otherwise keep a Customer's or their visitors' personal information beyond what you genuinely need to help that Customer, and you must delete any copies you do make when your access to the site ends or when the Customer or we ask you to. The copy held on the Platform is retained and deleted under CoreShift's retention policy; your own copies are your responsibility. The Customer owns their content; CoreShift is the merchant of record and hosts the data under the Platform Agreement.
10. Intellectual property and white-label
You get no rights in the Platform. You may present your own brand to your Customers (white-label), but CoreShift remains the merchant of record and the Customer's contracting party, and a “powered by Upwind” attribution must remain as we specify. You may use any partner or white-label materials we provide only in line with our brand guidance.
11. Confidential information
Each party must keep the other's confidential information confidential and use it only to take part in the programme, except where disclosure is required by law or made to a professional adviser under equivalent obligations of confidence.
12. Our rights
We may, at our discretion, suspend or terminate your partner account and take down sites where there is a breach of this Agreement, fraud or abuse. We may withhold or forfeit unpaid Commission where there is fraud or a serious breach. We may change or discontinue the partner programme on reasonable notice.
13. Liability and indemnity
You indemnify CoreShift against any claim, loss or cost arising from your conduct or from any representation or promise you make to a Customer or prospect. To the maximum extent permitted by law, and mirroring our Platform Agreement, neither party is liable to the other for consequential loss, and our aggregate liability to you under this Agreement is limited to the total Commission we paid you in the 12 months before the event giving rise to the liability. Nothing limits liability that cannot be limited at law. Where you are not acting in trade, nothing in this Agreement excludes rights you have under any consumer-protection laws that apply to you and that cannot be excluded.
14. Term, changes and ending the arrangement
This Agreement is open-ended. Either party may end your participation on reasonable notice. On ending, matured unpaid Commission remains payable subject to clause 6 (clawbacks) and clause 12 (forfeiture for fraud or serious breach); Customers you referred continue under their own Platform Agreements with CoreShift. We may update this Agreement on notice, and continuing to take part after a change takes effect means you accept it.
15. General
This Agreement is governed by the laws of New Zealand, and the New Zealand courts have exclusive jurisdiction, being the home jurisdiction of CoreShift Limited. Nothing in it creates an employment, partnership or joint-venture relationship. You may not assign it without our consent; we may assign it to a related company or a successor in a sale or restructure, on notice. Notices may be given by email or through the app. This Agreement, together with the Platform Agreement (which governs the Customer relationship), is the entire agreement between us about the partner programme.
16. Contact
Questions about the partner programme or this Agreement? Email hello@tryupwind.com.