Grin vs Upfluence vs Onlure for Canadian small businesses (2026): price, contract and what each one measures. Three platforms read from their own pricing pages on October 28, 2026: what each costs and on what billing basis, the contract it asks for, the store it needs and whether it counts a store visit, an order or a video. Grin, Upfluence and Onlure are three different shapes of influencer marketing platform, and the right one depends on how many creators you run and what you need counted. Grin is month-to-month software for a brand that runs its own creator program, priced in US dollars from $0 to $1,500 a month plus a management fee on the money you deposit. Upfluence is an enterprise contract: custom-quoted, a fixed platform fee, twelve months minimum. Onlure is a Toronto marketplace for local businesses, free to browse, C$29 a month for Plus in Canadian dollars, with every result priced before you pay. The prices below were read from each company's own pricing page on October 28, 2026. * Grin: $0, $200, $500 or $1,500 a month in US dollars, plus a 20%, 10%, 7% or 5% management fee on what you deposit to pay creators. Month to month; Enterprise is an annual agreement. Best for a brand running dozens of creators on its own (pricing). * Upfluence: no public price; a fixed platform fee quoted by module, 12-month minimum, no free plan. Best for a team that wants discovery, outreach and payouts in one contract (pricing). * Onlure: Free to browse and message, C$29 a month for Plus, zero commission on a creator's fee, and the walk-ins, sales and views each creator brings counted and priced before the campaign starts (pricing). * Pick by the count you need: Grin and Upfluence count posts, engagement and tracked online sales. Onlure also counts the customers who walk into a store, which is the number a café, salon or shop is paying for. What does each platform cost? Grin. Grin's pricing page lists four self-serve plans and prints "Prices are monthly in USD." Free is $0 a month with a 20% management fee on deposits. Starter is $200 a month with a 10% fee, Growth $500 with 7%, Scale $1,500 with 5%. Enterprise is custom and an annual agreement. Starter carries a 30-day free trial; the page says "Free, Starter, Growth and Scale are month to month and self-serve." The management fee is the part to read twice: it is charged on the money you put in to pay creators, on top of the plan, so a $2,000 deposit on Starter carries a $200 fee before any creator is paid. Grin states that it "takes nothing from creator earnings." Grin's Shopify App Store listing says the app is free to install, that a subscription is required for platform access and to complete the install, and that charges are billed in US dollars. Upfluence. Upfluence's pricing page prints no number. It says pricing is "custom-quoted based on the modules you select," that "every plan is a fixed platform fee," and that "our minimum contract is 12 months." There is no free plan; a free trial is set up after an initial call. Upfluence states it "takes no percentage of sales," and its Scale plan lists store integrations with Amazon, Shopify, WooCommerce, Magento and BigCommerce. No currency is shown and Canada is not mentioned. The fastest way to learn the price is a demo, which is the page's own advice. Onlure. Onlure prints its prices in Canadian dollars on one pricing page. The Free plan lets a business browse creators and send one message per creator. Onlure Plus is C$29 a month, month to month, and adds unlimited messaging, an AI matcher, escrow, a Toronto-based account manager and a refund guarantee, with zero commission on the creator's fee on every plan. A campaign is priced in the builder before anyone pays: a fixed content fee per creator by tier, then performance pay at rates the product bills with, C$6 per verified walk-in from a creator, C$2 per 1,000 views, and a commission you set between 1% and 50% on online sales. Grin Starter, in US dollars, plus a 10% fee on deposits Upfluence's minimum contract, price by quote Onlure Plus, a month, in Canadian dollars Which contract are you signing? Grin's four self-serve plans are month to month, which suits a brand that wants to try a program for a season. Grin's custom-quoted top tier is an annual agreement. Upfluence asks for 12 months from the first invoice, so a small business is committing a year's budget before the first creator posts. Onlure Plus is a monthly subscription that can be cancelled from the dashboard, and the Free plan has no term at all; a campaign's cost is set when it is published and paid from a reserve the brand sets, so no campaign runs up an open-ended bill. The currency matters too. Grin bills in US dollars; Upfluence shows no currency on its pricing page; Onlure bills in Canadian dollars, which means the price a Toronto business sees is the price on its statement. What does each one measure? Grin's pricing page describes posts "found and tracked automatically, with impressions and engagement," plus paid partnerships and affiliate commissions on every plan. Upfluence's page lists "Affiliation and discount" and "Generate & track sales" on its Scale and Autopilot plans. Both are built around online outcomes: a post went live, it was seen, a tracked order followed. A physical business needs a third number. A customer watches a Reel on Monday and comes in on Thursday without clicking anything; Instagram records a view, the till records a sale, and nothing joins the two. Onlure has solved that for local campaigns. Each walk-in is verified in store and credited to the creator who sent the customer, so a campaign report shows the customers each creator brought in, beside views and any online sales. That is how World Soccer Party counted 173 walk-ins from seven creators and Simi African Foods counted 37 from creators and flyers. How the verification works is proprietary. It is live today for beta brands and Shopify stores; any other brand sets it up on a founder demo. Online, Onlure tracks sales through a creator's link and the store's own order record, on WooCommerce, BigCommerce, Squarespace, Wix or Stripe stores; Shopify online stores follow once Shopify approves Onlure's app. Which one fits a Canadian small business? Choose Grin if you already run a creator program with a marketing team, sell online and want software that finds, pays and reports on dozens of creators a month; budget the management fee on deposits, in US dollars. Choose Upfluence if you want the same at larger scale, with discovery and outreach handled inside one 12-month contract, and a demo before a price is acceptable to you. Choose Onlure if you are a local business, or an online store selling to Canadians, that wants to book a few creators at a published rate, pay in Canadian dollars with no commission on their fee, and see which creator brought each customer in or each order through. The guide to performance-based marketing explains how Onlure prices each result, and the platform comparison for small businesses covers the marketplaces and UGC tools this page leaves out. Frequently asked questions. Is Grin free? Grin has a Free plan at $0 a month, but it adds a 20% management fee on the money you deposit to pay creators, and the Shopify listing says a subscription is required to finish the app install. Starter is $200 a month in US dollars with a 10% fee on deposits, after a 30-day trial. How much does Upfluence cost? Upfluence publishes no price. Its pricing page says plans are custom-quoted by the modules you pick, that every plan is a fixed platform fee, and that the minimum contract is 12 months. There is no free plan; a free trial is set up after an initial call. Can a business outside Toronto use Onlure? Onlure's creator community is in Toronto and the Greater Toronto Area, so a business there has the most creators to book. A brand elsewhere can still run online-store campaigns through creator links, and should check creator coverage in its city before booking a walk-in campaign. Your brand dashboard - manage bookings, messages, and creators in one place. Simple pricing One plan. Everything included. Onlure Plus sends real, vetted creators to shoot for you. No commission, no agency markups. Keep every dollar you earn. C$49 C$29 /month First 7 days free Get started with up-and-coming creators. 2000+ verified creators available in Toronto What Plus includes Everything in Free, plus: * | Campaign briefs that write themselves using the latest market trends - send them straight to creators * | Browse all 2000+ creators * | C$30 credit your first month, then C$20 every month - campaign balance added with every paid month billed through Onlure, and it carries forward month to month. Want it during your trial? Start Plus early and use it on your first campaign * | Unlimited creator bookings - no monthly cap * | AI creator match - describe your brand, get 5 shortlists instantly * | Verified walk-in analytics - real foot traffic from every post, live for beta brands and Shopify stores * | Video approval & dispute support - 72 hours to review every video before the final 30% is paid * | Personalized support from the Onlure team * | Live Meta & Google Ads support C$30 credit your first month Cancel any time 100% refund All plans include 0% commission - you always pay the creator directly. Cancel any time. Onlure · Made in Toronto

5 best influencer marketing platforms for 2027. Influencer and creator marketing has grown from a nice-to-have into a core growth channel, especially for ecommerce brands. But running a program well means juggling a lot of moving parts: finding the right creators, managing outreach and content, tracking what actually drives sales and paying everyone correctly. That is exactly what an influencer marketing platform is built to handle. The right platform pulls all of those stages into one system, replacing spreadsheets, scattered inboxes and separate payment tools. This guide breaks down five leading influencer marketing platforms, what each one does well and who it suits, so you can match a solution to your own goals rather than the loudest marketing. What an influencer marketing platform actually does. At its simplest, an influencer marketing platform is software that lets a brand find creators, run campaigns, measure results and pay creators in one place. It turns a messy, manual process into a single, trackable workflow. Most platforms cover the same core stages: creator discovery and vetting, outreach and relationship management, campaign and content coordination, performance analytics and creator payments. The differences lie in how deep each area goes, how well the platform connects to your existing tools and whether it can tie creator activity to real revenue rather than just reach. What to look for before you choose. A few factors separate a platform that genuinely helps from one that adds overhead. Weigh these before committing. Look at the size and quality of the creator database, the integrations with your ecommerce and email stack, whether payments and tax compliance are built in, the depth of analytics and sales attribution and how much the platform automates through AI. If measurable sales matter to you, prioritise a platform that attributes revenue to each creator and connects to your store, not one that reports impressions alone. 1. Upfluence. Upfluence is an AI-powered, end-to-end creator marketing platform aimed at ecommerce and DTC brands and the agencies that serve them. Rather than combining several separate tools, it runs discovery, outreach, content approval, performance tracking and creator payments within a single system. A notable feature is its built-in AI co-pilot, Jaice, which recommends creators and drafts outreach; the company says this shortens campaign setup from hours to minutes. Upfluence also leans toward revenue over reach, integrating with Shopify, WooCommerce, Amazon and Klaviyo, matching creators to your product catalog and attributing sales to each creator to track ROI per partner. Brands can also recruit creators from their own customer base and pay them via flat fees, affiliate commissions or promo codes. Upfluence says its ecommerce customers selling through affiliate creators see an average of 6.5x ROI, and pricing is custom, scoped to the program. It suits ecommerce and DTC brands and agencies that want a measurable, revenue-focused program in one platform. 2. GRIN. GRIN is a creator management platform aimed at direct-to-consumer and ecommerce brands. Rather than operating as a rented marketplace, it is designed to help brands build and manage their own long-term creator relationships, which appeals to companies that treat creators as an extension of their community. It covers the full lifecycle, from discovery and product seeding through content, payments and reporting, and it integrates closely with ecommerce systems such as Shopify. Because it centers on owned relationships rather than one-off sourcing, it works best for brands that want to nurture an ongoing roster of creators over time. GRIN also provides tools for managing product gifting, tracking content and consolidating creator communication in one place, which suits teams running continuous programs rather than occasional campaigns. It is a strong fit for DTC brands that prioritise deep, lasting creator partnerships and prefer to keep those connections in-house. 3. Aspire. Aspire, formerly AspireIQ, is an influencer marketing platform popular with ecommerce brands that want both proactive discovery and inbound creator interest. Alongside search tools, it offers a marketplace where creators can apply to campaigns, which can speed up sourcing considerably. The platform pairs that discovery with campaign workflow management, user-generated content tools and affiliate features, plus ecommerce integrations. It is built to add structure to recurring campaigns, handling briefing, content collection and tracking in one flow, which helps brands that run frequent programs stay organised. Because creators can come to the brand as well as the other way around, it can also reduce the manual outreach load for busy teams. Aspire is a solid choice for mid-sized to larger ecommerce brands that run frequent, structured creator campaigns and value a mix of outreach and inbound applications. 4. CreatorIQ. CreatorIQ sits at the enterprise end of the market and is widely used by large brands and agencies running creator marketing at scale. Its emphasis is on data depth, governance and measurement, which matters when programs span many markets, teams and campaigns at once. Expect rich discovery and audience data, campaign management, detailed reporting and a broad set of integrations, along with the permissions and controls larger organisations require. It is built to handle high volumes of creators and to standardise reporting across complex, multi-team operations, and it typically adds fraud detection and audience verification that large advertisers increasingly expect. That capability comes with the complexity and cost associated with enterprise software, so it is generally more than a smaller brand needs. CreatorIQ is best suited to large enterprises and agencies that manage high volumes of creators and need serious data, governance and reporting. 5. Modash. Modash takes a discovery-first approach, built around a large database of creators across Instagram, TikTok and YouTube. If your main challenge is finding and vetting the right creators, this is where it concentrates its strengths. Its core features are powerful search and filtering, audience analytics to check for fake followers and audience fit, and campaign monitoring, typically with accessible, self-serve pricing and no heavy contracts. It does less on full end-to-end management and payments than some rivals, so brands often pair it with other tools for the later stages of a campaign. That narrower focus also makes it straightforward to adopt and easy to trial without a large commitment, and its detailed audience metrics make it a common first stop for teams building a creator shortlist. Modash is a good fit for smaller teams, and for anyone who prioritises discovery and vetting on a flexible budget. How to choose the right platform for you. The right platform depends entirely on your size, your goals and how much you want automated. Start by being honest about what you actually need. If you want an all-in-one, revenue-focused program for an ecommerce brand, Upfluence, GRIN and Aspire are the natural places to look, with Upfluence leaning heaviest into AI and sales attribution, GRIN into owned relationships and Aspire into a campaign marketplace. If you are a large enterprise or agency managing programs at scale, CreatorIQ is built for that level of data and governance. And if your priority is finding and vetting creators without a large commitment, Modash is a flexible, discovery-led option. Match the tool to the job rather than the reputation, and confirm it connects to the systems you already use, since integrations often make or break the day-to-day experience. The bottom line. There is no single best influencer marketing platform, only the one that fits your program. Ecommerce brands chasing measurable sales tend to lean toward revenue-attributing, all-in-one tools, enterprises need scale and data governance, and smaller teams may simply want strong discovery. The most reliable approach is to match the platform to your size, goals and existing stack rather than to reputation or marketing. Whichever you choose, prioritise clear attribution, solid integrations and a workflow your team will genuinely use, and your creator marketing will be far easier to run and to prove.