Run! Not to be trusted.
We hired Surge in April 2026 to build and manage our affiliate program and paid them thousands of dollars a month for four and a half months. Before we signed, they committed in writing to specific recruitment targets. By the end, I could not point to a single publisher they had actually brought us. The volume in the program came from networks that get switched on with a few clicks and from partners we already had before they arrived.
The reporting we were promised barely materialized, and what did arrive came only after I escalated in writing. Calls were scheduled and pushed. Meanwhile the basics went unmanaged: when we took the account back, hundreds of publisher applications were sitting untouched, and I worked through them myself in an afternoon. A rule we asked them to implement was confirmed as done and then kept costing us money for another week until I caught it in the data. A partner we had specifically asked them to keep out was let in without telling us.
When we asked at the end for a record of the outreach they had done on our behalf, we got a long list with no dates, no contacts, and nothing that could be verified by anyone.
The saddest part is the time. Had they been upfront and said they were still figuring this out, we could have made an informed decision about whether to work with them. Instead they presented themselves as experienced operators, put numbers in front of us, and did not come close. Missing a target is one thing, that happens. Failing to execute the basic minimums, the reports, the application queue, the rules we asked for, is a different thing entirely, and to me that reads as negligence.
They were polite throughout, and they did refund our final month when we parted ways. But my honest opinion is that we paid for four months of work I cannot demonstrate happened. If you are considering hiring them, insist on dated proof of outreach and hard reporting deadlines, and verify everything yourself.
July 31, 2026
Unprompted review