It’s no doubt that 2011 is the year of the coupon, you only need to look at the trend for coupon related searches (via Google Trends) to see how savvy the average online consumer is becoming.

Coupon Searches for 2011

With the number of searches increasingly dramatically more & more coupon websites are starting to pop up, but which ones can you trust to come through with the goods – working coupons that will save you money. In this post today we’re going to look at some of the popular coupon websites, highlighting their strengths & weaknesses (from the viewpoint of someone who also runs a coupon website). We will cover deal & reward websites in a  separate post!

RetailMeNot –

Started: 2006

Popular Merchants: Victoria’s Secret, Lands End, Kohls, Gap, L.L. Bean, The Childrens Place

RetailMeNot is the Grand Poobah of coupon sites in terms of number of visitors & reach. Created by two guys from our hometown (Melbourne) in 2006 they have grown the site to almost 8M unique visitors per month. The site was recently sold to WhaleShark Media for a rumored $91M.

How Many Users:

Pros:

  1. The site design is simple yet functional, very easy to navigate & get the coupons you need, this has been a major factor in their success
  2. Very large range of merchants (over 65,000) & coupons. They display coupons from any merchant under the sun
  3. Large userbase & active community – many advocates of the site

Cons:

  1. Moderation of coupons is hit & miss. There’s quite a lot of stores with non-working or bogus coupons
  2. They have caused a bit of upset amongst competitors for posting exclusive coupons from other websites

CouponCabin –

Started: 2004

Popular Merchants: Sears.com, Target.com, Lord & Taylor, Shoes.com, Eastbay, Bluefly

CouponCabin is one of the major players who have been around longer than RetailMeNot, they have over 33 employee’s on Linkedin & have been in the INC 500 (fast growing companies).

How Many Users:

Pros:

  1. They negotiate a large number of exclusive coupons you can’t find anywhere else (probably the most out of all the coupon websites)
  2. They mark specific coupons as ‘guaranteed to work’ or they’ll buy you dinner

Cons:

  1. They have an annoying captcha that you have to enter every time you visit the site (not sure how many users this puts off)
  2. They only seem to list coupons from stores they make money from, which means there’s a large number of merchants missing

Coupon Chief –

Started: 2005

Popular Merchants: Dell, Bath & Body Works, The North Face, ULTA Beauty

Coupon Chief takes the RetailMeNot model and adds a twist, paying users to share coupons on the site. Everything is then moderated by the users via coupon feedback. They were sent a Cease & Desist letter last year from CouponCabin for using their exclusive coupons without permission.

How Many Users:

Pros:

  1. You can make money by submitting coupons with their ‘Pays2Share’ scheme
  2. You can also choose to donate money to charity for certain merchants

Cons:

  1. The monetary incentive seems to cause a lot of spam coupons that don’t actually work, therefore the quality is low
  2. They don’t offer anything too unique – bit of a mishmash of features from other coupon websites

CouponMountain –

Started: 2002

Popular Merchants: Target.com, Kohls, Ann Taylor Loft, KMart, Dicks Sporting Goods

CouponMountain has been around for a long time, they have a solid following of loyal users & are pretty close in size to CouponCabin.

How Many Users:

Pros:

  1. Good clean navigation, coupons are split nicely into categories
  2. CouponMountain splits out user submitted coupons as “Unverified” so you know they might not work

Cons:

  1. If you’re a merchant you can get featured higher in the listing on a CPC basis, this means that search results might not be impartial (and could reduce quality)
  2. Expiry dates aren’t visible on the coupons

MyCoupons –

Started: 2002

Popular Merchants: Expedia, Old Navy, Indochino, Drugstore.com, Harry & David

MyCoupons is one of the oldest online coupon websites, having been around since early 2000′s. They have a bit of a rocky past within the affiliate community (which seems to have been cleared up).

How Many Users:

Pros:

  1. Decent amount of exclusive coupons
  2. They have individual staff members dedicated to specific merchants
  3. Good stats on coupons so you can see the popularity over time

Cons:

  1. The coupon activation (click to show) using flash is a bit flakey at times
  2. They seem to double up on coupons quite a bit
  3. Fair amount of coupons with strange expiry dates or coupons that don’t work

Savings.com –

Started: 2008

Popular Merchants: Barnes & Noble, H&R Block, ProFlowers, NFL Shop, 1800-Flowers

Savings.com has some big backers in Silicon Valley & they have a considerable investment behind them. The site is clean, usable & has some good community features.

How Many Users:

Pros:

  1. Clean design, pretty easy to navigate & find what you need
  2. Coupons are ranked by the community with “votes”
  3. They do a good job of getting the community involved with their DEALPRO program

Cons:

  1. You have to click to open a new window to see the code before you can use it (then it might not work)
  2. Comments on Coupons are quite hidden away – they fail to really show how active their community is or not
  3. Lots of coupons posted as coupons that are really deals on products or “sales”

Offers.com –

Started: 2008

Popular Merchants: Buy.com, The Limited, Reebok, Rocawear, FTD Flowers

Offers.com is in a similar bucket to Savings.com but they put a specific twist on coupons. The site revolves around specific offers & comparing the best products or services for that specific offer (i.e. antivirus software). They have a traditional coupon model over the top of the offers model.

How Many Users:

Pros:

  1. Get specific email updates from your favourite merchants
  2. Browse offers around a specific range of products (i.e. Desktop Computers)
  3. They specify whether a specific deal is Sitewide or not

Cons:

  1. Site can be hard to navigate, there’s a sense that it’s made a bit too much for SEO with the depth of categories & pages
  2. They only seem to work with merchants they can make money with, therefore there’s quite a large number of offers/deals missing

Buxr –

Started: 2006

Popular Merchants: Coldwater Creek, Esprit, New York & Company, Aeropostale, Banana Republic

Buxr is a side project started by Yan from ProBargainHunter & the owner of CheapStingyBargains. It revolves heavily around the community submitting deals & coupons, but they have quite a nice unique system to reward members for the best deals/coupons each day.

How Many Users:

Pros:

  1. Simple design, no flashy bells or whistles but it works well
  2. Fantastic community, very vibrant & respond well to the daily prizes on offer
  3. Good mix of coupons & deals being submitted every day
  4. Decent quality control from the moderators

Cons:

  1. Still quite small, therefore missing some of the depth of the bigger sites (in terms of volume of coupons)

StoreCrowd –

Started: 2010

Popular Merchants: Fabric.com, Amazon.com, Macy’s, FreshDirect, Vet Depot, Lands End, Pizza Hut, Papa John’s, GoToMeeting

StoreCrowd is our own website, the reason we’re listing it here is that we believe we have something to offer that’s different than the other coupon websites out there. And over time, we hope you’ll join us.

How Many Users:

Pros:

  1. Simple, functional design – Autocomplete on search, clean tabs for navigation
  2. Easy email notifications for the stores you love (fans)
  3. Strict quality control for user submissions
  4. Live monitoring of non-working coupons
  5. Impartial – Coupons from any merchants are listed provided the quality is high
  6. Consumer reviews of stores

Cons:

  1. Lacks exclusive coupons that some of the larger sites can negotiate
  2. Breadth of coupons is smaller than the larger sites
  3. Overall user base is smaller

Tjoos –

Started: 2007

Popular Merchants: 6PM, Best Buy, Otter Box, ProFlowers, Walmart, Chegg, CafePress

Tjoos is another Australian born coupon website, created by Bart Jellema in 2007 then sold to Internet Brands last year. No real new features have been added since the acquisition, however the number of ads has dramatically increased.

How Many Users:

Pros:

  1. Very fast site with a low footprint – loads quickly
  2. Large number of merchants & coupons
  3. Good additional options for merchants to manage their own coupons

Cons:

  1. Low quality – large numbers of pages with non-working coupons or no coupons at all
  2. No real quality control for user submitted coupons
  3. They make their Google advertising look like coupons to improve revenue on pages without coupons – not a good user experience

What’s your favourite Coupon Website & Why? Let us know in the comments!