Honey: A Case Study in Dishonest Affiliate Practices

In recent months, the Honey project, backed by PayPal, has sparked widespread debate in the online and affiliate marketing world. At Dognet, we see Honey as a textbook example of exploiting the affiliate model—a practice that tarnishes the reputation of the entire industry. In this article, we’ll break down why we hold this perspective and how Honey is actively harming the affiliate marketing ecosystem.

A must-see video to fully understand the issue

MegaLag, a well-known Youtuber, produced a fantastic video that dives deep into this subject. In just over 20 minutes, it explains exactly what’s going on and how Honey functions. As an experienced investigator, MegaLag has been exposing various scams for years, both online and offline. During our analysis, we reviewed multiple sources, all of which aligned in confirming Honey’s practices.

How Honey works

In essence, Honey is a browser plugin that tracks which website a user is currently visiting. If the user is shopping on an online store where Honey has discount codes available, a notification pops up, letting them know they can save money. Users can also earn points on their purchases, which work like a type of cashback. However, these points tend to have very little real-world value.

In principle, there’s nothing inherently wrong with this approach. The problem arises when you click ‘Use Coupon.’ Instead of redirecting you to the Honey site to browse and select coupons or complete a purchase, nothing of the sort happens.

Promoting Honey has cost millions, if not tens of millions of dollars

The Honey app has been promoted by countless influencers worldwide, with the biggest YouTuber and internet sensation, Mr. Beast, at the forefront. They’ve marketed it as a ‘free browser extension’ and a way to earn ‘free money,’ emphasizing how the Honey plugin can help users save on their purchases.

Honey (or PayPal) must have invested millions of dollars in this promotion. The question is whether the influencers truly understood how Honey operates and whether they realized that, in the end, it was taking advantage of influencers like themselves.

Last-click cookie at any cost and taking advantage of other publishers

So, what happens when a visitor clicks ‘Apply Discounts’ or simply tries to close the Honey pop-up?

1. Even if the visitor doesn’t visit the e-shop through Honey, the plugin still creates a cookie and earns a commission on the sale.
2. When a visitor visits the e-shop through a different publisher, Honey replaces the original cookie, meaning the publisher who originally referred the visitor generally doesn’t earn a commission (unless the affiliate program divides the commission among affiliates, which most do not).
3. Honey doesn’t show the top offers as it suggests and what users might actually expect. Instead, it displays coupons that e-commerce retailers want to promote to their customers.
4. It creates or overrides cookies without delivering any coupon or benefit to the visitor, simply through clicking a button that initially appears to turn off the Honey plugin.

Honey serves as a quintessential example of how an affiliate project should not operate. It fails to provide any real value and merely parasitizes on conversions. While it functions effectively and generates profits, those benefits are solely for Honey’s owners. As a result, both e-shops and affiliate publishers incur losses.  Štefan Polgári, Managing Director

Honey undermines the essence of affiliate collaboration

At Dognet, we view ourselves as a professional affiliate network dedicated to the CEE and Balkan regions. Therefore, we see no reason to equate projects like Honey with other publishers. Unlike standard coupon or cashback aggregators that serve an important role in the affiliate market and are recognized by advertisers worldwide, Honey does not fit this category.

We’ve established a long-term, fair working relationship with coupon publishers and cashback providers. They understand that they don’t deliver significant added value, which is reflected in both the campaign approval process and commission rates. Our experience enables us to offer added value for advertisers—e-shops—even when working with these partners. Zuzana Riglerová, Relationship Manager

Dognet, along with other affiliate networks, partners with coupon aggregators and cashback services. In our network, we have implemented specific processes and quality controls to deliver the highest added value to advertisers. In contrast, Honey functions differently: it not only forcefully installs cookies on browsers but also actively overwrites cookies from other publishers, particularly those that are most beneficial to the program.

Honey is not part of the Dognet affiliate network

The Honey project has been in existence for years; it’s not something that emerged in 2025 or 2024. It mainly operates in Western Europe. We have not encountered Honey within our Dognet network and do not have it on file. This is primarily due to its tendency to exploit e-shops that use PayPal as a payment option. According to the participating e-shops, Honey operates in 11 markets, none of which align with Dognet’s primary areas of operation.

What makes Honey exist, flourish, and be accepted by the market?

1. Global affiliate networks feature hundreds of thousands of partners and tens of thousands of advertisers. In such a large-scale system, a project like Honey can easily be “overlooked,” and many advertisers may not even be aware of it. This is not the case in smaller, local, and specialized affiliate networks.
2. The e-shops involved often don’t realize that they’re paying commissions for sales that would have occurred anyway, and at a dramatically higher rate than with regular publishers. Honey represents a different type of partner compared to typical cashback or coupon projects.
3. Advertisers might not fully understand how Honey works on a technical level. They may be unaware that it steals revenue from other affiliate partners, thus diminishing their efficiency and disrupting the operations of their own affiliate programs.
4. E-shops make the most of the fact that Honey users don’t look for or find better discount codes. They rely on Honey to provide them with a lower discount than they might receive by manually searching for the code.

The future of projects like Honey

There’s no denying that Honey has generated millions for its owners. What’s particularly striking is that it is backed by PayPal, a large and respected technology company. This raises concerns that fraudulent projects like Honey will continue to emerge in the future.

Affiliate network Dognet has long been focused on ensuring the quality of its partners and the transparency of its system. This year, we will take significant steps to enhance the system’s transparency. Our clients can rest assured that we will not allow partners like Honey to operate within the Dognet network, and we won’t simply “wait for someone to notice.”