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Daily Deal Sites: A List of The Best Daily Deal Sites

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When someone talks about daily deal sites, they are usually talking about one of two different types of daily deal sites, sites like Groupon, and sites Like Woot.  See our list below for our selection of the best daily deal sites in each category.

The sites like Groupon primarily offer daily deals to local businesses like restaurants, spas, home services companies and more.  The deals to these local businesses are usually in the form of discounted “gift certificates” (e.g. $15 for $30 worth of food at a restaurant).   When Groupon first became popular, most of their deals were only available for a single day, thus the moniker daily deals.  As this local daily deal business has evolved, almost all of the deals are available for longer than a single day.

The second category of daily deal sites are the sites like Woot.  These daily deal sites don’t typically offer discounted certificates, but instead sell products at discounted prices.   Most of the most popular sites in this category, including Woot, continue to offer the deals for only a single day.

Here’s our list of best daily deal sites by category – updated though January 2013

Best Daily Deal Sites (Local)

When Groupon became popular and started making tons of money, literally hundreds of sites like them were created.  As it turns out, creating a daily deal site like Groupon is quite easy, but creating one that makes a profit is much more difficult.  Many of  the sites that popped up in the last 3 years have already shut down.  Although there are still a ton of these type of sites out there, most of them do not offer very compelling deals. We have selected what we think are the best daily deal sites that not only offer good deals, but can be trusted to offer quality customer service.

Groupon – The Granddaddy of them all.  They have deals in virtually every market.

LivingSocial – The clear number two to Groupon.  They also have a great selection of deals.

Amazon Local – Initially, this was a partnership with LivingSocial (in whom Amazon invested $175m), but I’m not sure what percentage of the deals are still sold by the LivingSocial sales team.  Nevertheless, the daily deals on Amazon Local are consistently high quality and of course you can rely on Amazon for customer service.

SweetJack– SweetJack is owned and operated by Cumulus Media – owners of hundreds of radio stations.  They are expanding rapidly and are now in about 100 cities.

TravelZoo – While their main focus has been travel for many years now, they have successfully transitioned into local daily deals.  There deals are often to upscale local destinations.  If you like upscale local deals, you can also try out Gilt City – available in a handful of large markets.

Deal Chicken – Deal Chicken is operated by Gannett (The company that owns the USA Today).  If they are available in your town, they usually offer good deals and they can be trusted.

Half Off Depot – Based in Atlanta, this daily deal site is not in a bunch of cities, but if they are in your city they are well worth checking out as they consistently have some of the best deals in town.

Depending on what town you live in, there may be one or two other locally run sites that offer quality deals.  At DailyDibs.com, you can pick your city and see all the daily deals in one place.  See our full list of daily deal sites like groupon here.

 

Best Daily Deal Sites (Products)

Woot – Founded in 2004 and acquired by Amazon in 2010, Woot is the top dog in daily deals for products.  They have expanded into several categories of daily deals (wine, t-shirts, home products, and kids)

1 Sale a Day – Not nearly as big as Woot, but nonetheless very successful.  They also have numerous categories of daily deals. (watches, wireless, family, jewelery, and now flash sales)

Yugster – A Woot clone that has been around for a while and consistently has good deals on a wide range of products.

Daily Steals – Another Woot copycat that offers great daily deals.   They too have expanded their deal of the day product suite.  They now have a deal of the day in the following categories – toys, mobile, home goods.

See our more complete list of daily deal sites that offer product deals here.

Google Offers: Coupons and Daily Deals in Your City

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Google Offers is yet another local deal of the day coupon site.  They join a long list of sites like Groupon.

They initially launched in Portland, but are rapidly expanding to other cities.  You can currently get Google Offers coupons in the following cities:

Google offered to buy Groupon for $6b and were turned down, so they have decided to launch their own program instead.

Sites Like Groupon: List of Top Daily Deal Sites Like Groupon

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If you are looking for all the sites like Groupon in your city, go HERE and pick your city from the drop-down selector.

How many daily deal sites like Groupon are there exactly?  Well nobody knows for sure because there are new sites popping up and closing every day – mostly closing lately.  Below we have put together a list of all the top sites like Groupon and a list of some others that have deals in multiple cities.  There are also lots of successful sites that only operate in one city.  Since Groupon launched in November 2008 and soon thereafter started minting money at unprecedented rates,  literally hundreds of Groupon like sites have been created to copy their very successful formula.

At Daily Dibs we attempt to bring all the BEST daily deal sites like Groupon in each city together in one place.  If you want them all delivered in a single email, just subscribe.

Top Sites Like Groupon:

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Amazon Local – The Amazon local deals are often sold by LivingSocial, but doesn’t stop them from having great local deals that are not available on LivingSocial.  They also usually have a good selection of deals for national online retailers.

LivingSocial  – These guys are going toe to toe with Groupon in over 100 markets nationwide.  LivingSocial is to Groupon as Pepsi is to Coke.  You can also check for a Living Social Promo Code before you purchase.  They just started to offer them.

SweetJack – A venture between radio behemoths Clear Channel and Cumulus.  Rapidly expanded in 2012 and well positioned for 2013.  The deals are usually excellent as they have some leverage with their advertisers through their radio connections.

DealChicken.com – A Gannett company that has recently expanded to over 20 cities nationwide.  You can expect good customer service because these deals are offered by a large media company in the area.

Half Off Depot – Promo Code – Currently live in six cities: Atlanta, Charlotte, Knoxville, Nashville, Orlando, and Tampa.  Though they aren’t in tons of cities, they are have consistently great deals in the cities they are in.



Plum District  – Promo Code -The leader in family focused daily deals.  If you are looking for family deals, you should try out FamGrab.com an aggregator of family deals.

TravelZoo Local Deals – The popular discount travel website has run local deals in over 20 cities nationwide.  They do a great job of getting deals at desirable destinations like upscale restaurants and spas.

Dealfind – Grew rapidly in 2012 and was considered #3 independent behind Groupon and LivingSocial, but their deal quality and volume has fallen off in most American cities.  They are number one in Canada.

Gilt City – Part of the Gilt brand.  Focus on discounts to upscale establishments

GetMyPerks.com – In 20 plus markets through radio station partnerships with parent company Entercom.

Eversave – Promo Code -Currently running daily deals in 12 cities and growing.  They are based in Boston with their biggest audience in Boston and Philly.

KGB Deals – KGB deals is in 12 cities and is continuing to expand.

ScoutMob – Initially known for their mobile app.  They have expanded from local deals to offer deals from the best independent makers & merchants. You can buy handmade goodness / explore local deals + under-the-radar events near you.

CBS Local Offers – Part of the CBS interactive family, CBS Local is now running deals in over 15 cities.   Each of the sites is partnered with traditional local CBS media properties like radio and television.

We think that these are the local daily deal sites with the greatest footprint and influence in the local markets.  As you can see, LivingSocial and Groupon are by far the biggest sites – nobody else is really even close.

More Sites Like Groupon:


In addition to the top sites listed above, there are several others worth mentioning that have deals in multiple cities:

Mamapedia Sweet Deals – An extension of the existing Mamapedia website.  Deals are focused on the parent audience.

Seize the Deal (website) – In 20+ cities – most of which are small cities.

Tippr – Merged with Crowd Savings and now part of nCrowd.  They don’t appear to have local deals any longer

Crowd Savings – Merged with Half Off Depot to form nCrowd.  I think their local deals are now offered through Half Off Depot

CLOSED – Yollar (website)- A Belo Company brand that is partnered with Belo traditional local media properties.

CLOSED – DailyDealster (website)- Recently merged with Half Off Depot.  Live in over 4o cities, DailyDealster initially partnered with Adility for most of their deals.  Adility supplies to several other similar deal site not listed here.

CLOSED – YellowPages.com Deals

CLOSED – Dealswarm (website) – A Cox Media Group Company – in multiple cities

CLOSED – OpenTable (website)- They run one restaurant deal a week in approximately 10 cities.

CLOSED – BuyWithMe (website)- BuyWithMe is currently in 11 cities and continuing to expand.  They are based in New York City and are venture backed.

CLOSED – BoomSteet (website) – Currently in 3 cites

CLOSED – ValPak Deals (website) – Part of the Valpak company

CLOSED – DealPop (website) – Associated with WhitePages.com

CLOSED – AOL – wow.com – Have been live for several months now, but are only offering deals in 3 cities.

It should also be noted that in virtually every city the local newspaper is now also part of the daily deal economy.

Again, to see all the top providers in any city, just go to Daily Dibs and pick the city you want to see.

We know there are lots more sites like Groupon that could be added to this list.  Hopefully we have gotten all the best ones and a few more you may not have known about.

If you like daily deals you can check out a couple other of our lists.  All the best daily deal sites (like Woot and Groupon).  And just the list of sites like Woot.

Valpak Deals Launching Soon

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In an email we received today, Valpak announced that they will have live deals starting November 3.

Valpak had previously announced that they would launch in Omaha, Long Island, New Haven, Las Vegas.  Their annnouncement does not indicate if they will launch their deal of the day product in all those markets simultaneously.

Beginning Wednesday, November 3, Valpak Deals will offer you daily deals and savings offers to be used at a top-rated business in your area. Save up to 90% on dining, shopping, entertainment, professional services and more. From cupcakes to disc brakes, adventure sports to posh resorts, pet foods to import brews, home goods to goodies, it’s all in the Pak!

Valpak has one very clear advantage in launching daily deals – selling to merchants.  Valpak has not only a significant number of merchant relationships, but also feet on the street in many of their markets.  They should have no problem lining up quality advertisers, which is probably becoming more and more difficult in some markets.

Interestingly, Valpak is not launching in any major markets.  Although there are less potential subscribers, there is also less competition for selling to advertisers and the cost of acquiring customers will also be lower.  We think this will probably serve them well.

Depending on the size of the email lists they already have access to in these markets, we expect that Valpak will probably be successful with this deal product.  We’ll check back on their progress after they launch – and of course we will add their deals to Daily Dibs.

TravelZoo Local Deals – Better Than Most Daily Deals

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A couple of months ago, TravelZoo announced that they were going to join Groupon and get into the local deal game.

Their CEO, Chris Laughlin said this:

“Local Deals fits well within our strategy of alerting our 21 million high-quality subscribers worldwide of the very best deals.  With Local Deals, we are able to further our coverage of local entertainment and lifestyle content and make it more relevant for our subscribers. For example, we can now cover more local spa and restaurant deals.”

Well it has been almost two months since they launched so we thought we would check in on how they are doing.

How Does The TravelZoo Daily Deals Program Work?

  • For starters, their deals aren’t necessarily daily.  Each deal they offer seems to vary between 1 and 8 days.  Additionally, they don’t always have an active deal in each city.  For instance, they have done deals in New Orleans, but their last New Orleans deal sold out over a week ago.
  • They seem to be targeting high-end local services.  These guys aren’t messing around with just the local Mexican restaurant.  They are hitting the top-rated restaurants, spas, and local tours

How Are They Doing?

  • They are selling a lot of deals and making a lot of money.   Today for example, for their 10 active deals they have sold a total of over 3,500 deals at an average deal price of $62.  In New York alone, they have a deal that has sold over 1,400.   The New York deal has a price tag of $125, so that deal alone has grossed over $175,000.  There is probably one happy sales guy somewhere right now.
  • You can check out all their latest deals on our TravelZoo Local Deals page.  You can also check out our list of all the TravelZoo Local Cities.

TravelZoo is clearly kicking butt right away with these deals, and the reasons should be obvious.  First they claim over 21 million subscribers. Subscribers that are already pre-qualified deal hunters.  Second, they have lots of existing business relationships that they can leverage.  There are lots of companies that have either an existing large audience or existing business relationships, but only a few have both, and TravelZoo is one of them.

It will be interesting to see how aggressive TravelZoo gets in this space.  Do they stick with the high-end deals, do they increase the frequency of deals?  We think that long-term the successful deal sites will develop an identity around their deal offerings.  High end businesses might be a great niche to claim, but it will probably require that they don’t substantially increase their frequency.

Of all the new entrants to the daily deal space, we think that TravelZoo is among the best.  We are looking forward to their arrival in Atlanta (as long as they keep targeting the high end businesses).