ReferOn: “2025 was the year ReferOn moved from building a strong product to leading a smarter category”

ReferOn’s leadership team looks back at the platform’s evolution in 2025, from scaling operations and earning industry recognition to launching Refie as a new human layer for affiliate management.

Exclusive interview.- As affiliate operations become more complex and demanding, ReferOn’s 2025 focus was on mastering the basics to provide a platform experience that provides clarity, transparency, and ease of use. In a conversation with Focus Gaming News, Alex Bukin (General Manager), Vlad Bondarenko (Head of Product), and David Harris (Operations Lead) reflect on the milestones that shaped the year, from major rollouts and upgrades to industry recognition, and what those changes mean for the future of affiliate tech. The team also discusses the recent launch of Refie, the platform’s human layer, which revolutionises how teams interact with their day-to-day operations.

Looking back at this year, what would you say was the biggest shift for ReferOn as a product and as a team — and which milestone best captures that progress?

Alex Bukin: The biggest shift that ReferOn experienced as a team was transitioning from rapid product build-up to operating at scale with confidence. As adoption grew, the priority became execution. We needed to consistently deliver in product development, migrations, support, and partnership management, all at the same time. 

The milestone that best reflects this shift was near the end of the year, when we handled complex migrations and significant product rollouts like Refie without a hitch in normal day-to-day operations. That’s when it was clear to me that we successfully transitioned from a fast-growing and ambitious platform to a mature product built for sustainable growth and ready for mass adoption.

From a management perspective, what are you most proud of when you look at ReferOn’s progress this year — beyond numbers and awards?

Alex Bukin: From a management perspective, what I am most proud of this year goes far beyond numbers or awards.

I am proud of the team behind ReferOn. A team of talented, hard-working, and deeply passionate people who care not only about what they build, but why they build it.

Throughout 2025, the team consistently showed ownership, curiosity, and the courage to challenge assumptions. They didn’t just execute tasks; they thought critically about problems, questioned existing patterns in affiliate technology, and pushed for better, smarter solutions. That mindset enabled us to transition from shipping features to shaping a more intelligent and human-centric product.

What stands out most is the level of commitment across departments; everyone stayed focused on delivering real value to users, even when the work was complex or required rethinking established approaches. That kind of dedication cannot be measured on dashboards, but it defines the long-term strength of the company.

ReferOn has grown significantly with personnel additions, such as Camila Beatriz da Silva, our new Senior Sales Manager, and Hristiana Stefanova, Senior Account Manager. Their vast experience and expert knowledge have provided us with additional strengths that have bolstered our capabilities.

Seeing people grow, take responsibility, and follow a shared vision is the real achievement of 2025. With this team, I am confident not only in what ReferOn is today but in everything we are about to build next.

“Throughout 2025, the team consistently showed ownership, curiosity, and the courage to challenge assumptions.”

Alex Bukin, general manager at ReferOn.

ReferOn received multiple industry awards this year. What do these recognitions mean internally for the team after such an intense year of work?

Alex Bukin: We won the “Rising Star Provider of the Year” and “Best Affiliate Software 2025” categories from the AffPapa iGaming Awards 2025 and SiGMA Central Europe B2B Awards, respectively, while being nominated for several other key awards throughout the year. Although they’re a proud reflection of our hard work and efforts to be the best affiliate management possible, internally, we viewed these wins as important checkpoints rather than a finish line. Additionally, receiving recognition confirms that our persistent work on delivering a product that relentlessly strives for transparency, clarity, and usability is something that genuinely resonates with the industry.

Winning these awards was also a moment of alignment for us. Those long meetings and difficult decisions weren’t just for nothing. They represented meaningful progress that has put ReferOn in the spotlight and is resulting in growth. At the same time, we’ve now raised our expectations. Being crowned the best affiliate software comes with responsibility, and we’re more ready than ever to continue improving our product and service to achieve that title year after year.

Refie quickly became one of ReferOn’s most recognisable elements this year. What kind of feedback did you receive after the launch, and what did it confirm about where the product is heading?

Vlad Bondarenko: Initial feedback was positive and more in-depth than expected. What stood out to us was how seamlessly our users understood what Refie represented and that it’s more than just a visual element or “companion.” We had plenty of discussions pre-launch, but it became even clearer that modern affiliate managers don’t want to interact with a cold and industrial platform that simply calculates and displays data. They want an ecosystem that they can meaningfully engage with, which assists them with everyday tasks, so they can focus on what really matters for their business. These affiliate managers spend so much time on their software — having a human layer that they can connect with completely transforms the experience and makes operations warmer and more enjoyable.

The feedback also confirmed something important for us: the future of affiliate tech isn’t just about functional improvement, it’s about awareness. 

Vlad, you represented ReferOn on several industry stages this year. What recurring themes kept coming up in discussions with the market?

Vlad Bondarenko: Across stages and private conversations, the same pattern kept surfacing: the market is no longer impressed by feature density and is actively pushing back against tools that do a lot but don’t allow teams to control outcomes predictably. 

Trust has become the central fault line — affiliates question tracking, operators question traffic quality, and payouts are assumed guilty until proven otherwise, which turns transparency from a “nice to have” into a basic condition for scale. At the same time, automation is no longer blindly celebrated. Auto-flows and AI sound appealing until they can’t explain why a decision was made, and that lack of governance is now seen as a real operational risk. 

UX came up not as a design topic, but as a business one — poor interfaces lead to mistakes, disputes, and lost revenue, because managers don’t want dashboards, they want answers. This ties directly into a broader frustration with data overload. Reports exist everywhere, but insight is almost nowhere. There’s no real-time capability, and no proper postback functionality. The recurring demand is for systems that surface trends, cohort behaviour, and early signals, rather than raw numbers. 

With that context in mind, AI is met with cautious curiosity and a near-zero tolerance for hype. The expectation is a quiet assistant that’s embedded into existing workflows, judged immediately by whether it provides real solutions to existing problems. Put together, the message from the market is consistent: less clutter, fewer gimmicks, and far more emphasis on clarity, trust, and control that actually works at scale.

Operationally, what changed the most for ReferOn this year as the platform and partner base grew?

David Harris: Operationally, the year began with the release of ReferOn Assist, a support package that offers a range of benefits in each tier to cater to the diverse needs of clients of varying scales. The end of the year saw a flurry of new operational updates and changes, and we added a new account manager to our ranks, helping us cover more of the commercial and invoicing aspects as our client base grew.

The platform also began including its release notes fully within the system, creating automated communication rather than maintaining an email list that could quickly go out of date and not reach its intended audiences efficiently. This automation could also send updates to affiliates, which was not an audience we would typically send updates to until recently. The various changes throughout the year helped us grow sustainably, maintain positive relationships with clients, and establish ourselves as a reliable platform.

As ReferOn scaled this year, what helped the operations team stay reliable and responsive rather than reactive?

David Harris: Without any bias whatsoever, we, as a support team, pride ourselves on our quick response times and in-depth knowledge of niche topics and the industry as a whole. I believe that the support team reflects the product, and we’re a modern team that constantly adapts. Therefore, we must stay informed about key developments that help prop up our platform and ensure our clients stay ahead of the game. If we were to have a reactive approach, we would quickly fall behind in terms of product development, support capabilities, and client-facing services.

“We pride ourselves on our quick response times and in-depth knowledge of niche topics and the industry as a whole.”

David Harris, operations lead at ReferOn.

If you had to describe this year for ReferOn in one sentence, what would it be and why?

Alex Bukin: “2025 was the year ReferOn moved from building a strong product to leading a smarter category.”

In 2025, we shifted our focus from solely emphasising feature depth to shaping how affiliate management should work going forward. We strengthened the platform’s foundation, introduced intelligence through Refie, and laid the groundwork for predictive analytics and AI-driven decision support. That shift positions ReferOn not just as a solution in the market, but as a reference point for where the category is heading.