5 Awesome Alternatives to Groupon
Don’t get me wrong. I love Groupon. Unfortunately for them (and “yay” for me), the market for this kind of daily deal offering is opening up, resulting in more deals, on more sites, and in more cities.
If glancing at one good buy a day is leaving you wanting for more, check out a few of the attention-worthy sites we mention in our latest My Life Scoop article — all destined to give the original a run for its money.
Living Social
This is perhaps one of the most established of the wannabes giving deals on the same kind of offerings as Groupon. Hair salons, golf packages, food, and entertainment are the core deals to this rapidly expanding site. Living Social has been a front-runner in the female audience, being advertised on many women’s lifestyle sites and Mommy Blogs, and why not? The deals rarely see out, and many of them are extremely family friendly. Mini-golf, anyone?
Hot tip: Feel like seeing the site without dropping a dime? Check the bottom of the deal page for exciting places you can visit in your area. Some won’t cost a thing!
BuyWithMe
If the 24-hour deal makes you feel rushed (and caters to your weakness for making impulsive buys), BuyWithMe may be more your speed. The deals offered on this site usually last seven days, giving you time to chew on the purchase before you decide. While the cities offering deals are limited, they are growing quickly!
Hot tip: Don’t count that deal chicken before it hatches. Unless there is a minimum number of buy-ins for any group deal, it won’t be valid for anyone. Watch the progress of any deal you’re interested in to see if it’s popular enough to succeed. (And definitely don’t make concrete plans around any deal that hasn’t reached its goal.)
8Coupons
Many of the competitors that were researched require an email subscription before they’ll even show you a deal, and worse yet, some of them bait you to enter your email, select a city, and then tell you that your city will be “added soon.” If the idea of giving out your email or cluttering up your inbox for the promise of a deal doesn’t appeal to you, consider the user-friendliness of daily deal aggregates: 8Coupons. Not only does it list all the deals from the top sites (including Groupon, Tippr, BuyWithMe and others), it lets you search via map or zip code.
Hot tip: Some places in this world (like my town of 1,800) will never be on a daily deals site. 8Coupons gives us suburbanites some retail therapy with the sharing of deals at national franchises and small shops in the places we live. They aren’t daily 50% - 90% off bargains, but it sure beats paying full price!
Dying to see the other sites that made our "hot list?" Read about them all at My Life Scoop! Do you have a daily deal site that’s changed your life? Let us know why it’s earned a top spot in your email box!
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Also ethicalDeals and GreenDeals :)
I use Groupon, along with a few other coupon sites. Even my "moms" group has gotten local coupon offers and sends out a special email. I use LivingSocial and Juice in the City (San Francisco)
This is probably being super nitpicky, but where are the other two alternatives? It mentions 5, but I count 3? I was definitely excited to hear about more options, as I love Groupon and Living Social.
Others I use: BabySteals (pretty much geared to parents, obviously), Tippr (only in a few cities), and Eversave.
I had a blog entry about this a few months ago with a few other alternatives: http://leanwithgreen.blogspot.com/search/label/group%20buying%20sites
Thanks for your comment! The other 2 options are at the full article (this is simple an excerpt).. you can read it at http://mylifescoop.com/featured-stories/2011/02/5-awesome-alternatives-t...
Happy shopping ;)
There are a ton of daily deal sites out there now, and a lot of them offer demographic specific deals, which makes it easy to find what you want to save on. The market is exploding, so now we have a lot more ways to save money!
A great way for consumers to find the best deals and sales in their area is by going to http://www.dailydealpool.com. They'll email you the best buys daily, ensuring you won't miss out!
That is actually very confusing. I was looking all over the page for some explanation why there were only three. You may want to consider right aligning the italicized text at the bottom and making it shorte with a clearer call to action, like "Continue to full article at My Life Scoop."
I've been using Groupon recently and it's great. The only problem I've had was with a particular deal I bought and the service turned out to be complete rubbish! Of course this wasn't Groupon's fault and it could have happened to any of the alternatives!
I'm a Co-founder of Peekadso, a deals website much like Groupon, Living Social, or any other deal website. I can proudly say that we are way different than any other deal website. Our difference is that we do not tap into any portion of a company's profit; consumers pay directly to the merchant at time of service. We created our company to give business owners a chance to be able to create deals, and also have full control of these deals while keeping the full profit from each of the deals claimed.
We've basically taken out the negativity businesses part that businesses don't like about other deal sites. We've heard way too many horror stories about businesses operating at a loss because of running deals with other deal sites.
We launched our site, www.peekadso.com on June 22nd, 2013, only in the Miami/Fort Laurderdale areas for now. We will be extending our services to the entire country soon. We just wanted to have a limited release of our site so we could control the growth of our website. We've made a deal website where consumers can go to look for deals and businesses can create deals without losing out on their profit. Wish us luck! We're entering into the domain of some big players that have a whole lot more people backing them. Hopefully people will realize that although Peekadso is an underdog now, we have the best interest of businesses and consumers in mind.