DotMoose pays 20% recurring on shared hosting plans

What DotMoose is

DotMoose is a Canadian shared hosting provider that opened for business in August 2026. It sells three plans, Starter, Plus and Pro, at the budget end of the market, alongside domains, VPS and dedicated servers. The affiliate program is explicitly framed as a launch programme with a deliberately narrow scope, which is an unusually candid way to describe it and sets the tone for everything below.

The program at a glance

What 20% actually pays, in money

This is the section that matters, and it is only possible because DotMoose publishes its prices. Twenty percent sounds standard. Applied to these plans it produces this:

Read the last column carefully, because it is the whole story. A single referred customer on the most expensive commissionable plan takes roughly three years to generate one withdrawable payout on their own. The threshold is not unreasonable at C$25; the commission per customer per month is simply measured in cents.

Recurring changes the shape of this rather than the size. Ten Pro customers produce about C$7.20 a month, so a first withdrawal arrives in month four and then roughly every four months after. Fifty Pro customers produce about C$36 a month, which clears the threshold monthly. That is the level at which this program starts behaving like income, and hosting customers do stay for years, so the balance genuinely accumulates rather than churning away.

How it sits against the rest of the hosting category

Hosting is one of the larger categories in this directory and one of the best paid, which makes the comparison unavoidable.

Bluehost pays C$65 equivalent as a flat bounty per sale. SiteGround and GreenGeeks pay $50 to $100. WP Engine pays $200 minimum. Liquid Web reaches up to $1,500. Against those, a single Bluehost referral is worth roughly ninety months of a DotMoose Pro referral.

That is not an accusation of stinginess. Those competitors charge many times more per month, and a percentage of a C$1.19 plan cannot produce a large number no matter how generous the percentage. It does mean the programs are not substitutes, and anyone comparing them purely on the headline rate will misjudge this badly. Twenty percent recurring reads better than a flat $65 right up until you multiply it out.

What is excluded is half the hosting basket

Commission applies to Starter, Plus and Pro shared hosting. Domains, VPS, dedicated servers, backup, software licences and product add ons are all explicitly excluded.

That matters more in hosting than the exclusion list would suggest elsewhere, because a domain is very often the first thing a new customer buys, and VPS is where a growing customer upgrades to. So the commissionable window is the middle of the customer lifecycle: not the first purchase, not the upgrade. If your referral registers a domain, hosts a site on Starter for a year, then moves to VPS as they grow, you are paid on the middle stretch only.

What is not published

Two gaps, and we asked about both before listing.

The cookie window is not stated anywhere, not on the affiliate page and not in the terms document. For an in house program with its own dashboard that is a real omission, because attribution length decides whether slow converting content can earn at all. We have recorded it as not published rather than guessing.

The payout method is not detailed either. The terms describe requesting a withdrawal from your available balance once it passes C$25, and note that DotMoose may review activity before processing, but they do not say what the money arrives as or how long it takes. Ask before you build anything.

Credit where it is due

Having been direct about the economics, it is only fair to be equally direct about how this program is presented, because it is better than most.

The terms document is specific rather than boilerplate. The exclusions are listed plainly instead of buried. The 30 day validation hold and the C$25 threshold are both stated up front rather than discovered later. The rules ban self referrals, duplicate identities, circular purchases, cookie stuffing and trademark bidding, and require affiliates to disclose the relationship. The affiliate page even carries a commission calculator described as a way to model scenarios without turning the maths into an earnings promise, which is a more honest sentence than most programs in this directory manage anywhere on their site.

A launch programme that tells you its scope is narrow, publishes what it excludes, and refuses to dress up the maths is doing the things we ask larger companies to do and rarely get.

Who should promote it

Canadian audiences first, since the pricing is in Canadian dollars and a Canadian host is a genuine preference for people who care about where their data sits. Beyond that, budget hosting content, first website and first blog guides, and student or hobby project audiences where a C$1.19 plan is the actual right recommendation rather than a compromise.

Volume is the only model that works here. If you publish a hosting comparison that sends a handful of referrals a month, the balance will take a year to clear and the effort is better spent on a flat bounty program. If you run a high traffic budget hosting resource that can send dozens of signups, the recurring structure compounds quietly in a way flat bounties do not.

It is a poor fit for agency, developer and ecommerce audiences. Those readers buy VPS and managed hosting, both of which are excluded, so the traffic converts into nothing commissionable.

The honest read

Ungraded, and for once that is the finding rather than a placeholder. Our Program Score follows cleared payments observed over time, and this company opened in August 2026. Nobody has a payout history with them yet, including us.

Three things to weigh against it. The commission per customer is cents per month, so the C$25 threshold takes serious volume or serious patience to reach. Domains and VPS, a large share of what hosting customers actually buy, earn nothing. And a hosting provider whose entire product is continuity is asking you to recommend it before it has demonstrated any, which is a fair thing for a reader to want and a fair thing for you to disclose.

In its favour, the disclosure is genuinely better than most of this directory, the recurring structure suits a product people keep for years, the exclusions and holds are stated rather than sprung, and 20% is a fair percentage honestly applied. If you have a Canadian or budget hosting audience and the patience for a slow accumulating balance, it is a reasonable early bet. If you are choosing one hosting program to promote, the flat bounty programs in this category pay many times more for the same work.

Common questions

How much does the DotMoose affiliate program pay? 20% recurring on qualifying Starter, Plus and Pro shared hosting charges and eligible renewals. On their published prices that is about C$0.24, C$0.40 and C$0.72 per customer per month.

What does DotMoose not pay commission on? Domains, VPS, dedicated servers, backup, software licences and product add ons are all excluded. Only shared hosting is commissionable.

How long is the DotMoose cookie? Not published. Neither the affiliate page nor the terms document states an attribution window, so ask before relying on one.

When can I withdraw? Once your available balance reaches C$25. New commission sits pending for 30 days first, so refunds, cancellations and invalid referrals can be resolved before it becomes withdrawable.

How long does the recurring commission last? The terms say you earn while the referral remains eligible and active, and do not state a month cap, so treat it as uncapped but unconfirmed and ask if a long tail matters to your decision.

Is DotMoose worth promoting? It suits high volume budget hosting and Canadian audiences with patience for a slowly accumulating balance. It suits agency, developer and ecommerce audiences poorly, because those readers buy VPS and managed hosting, which earn nothing.