Geizhals
Comparison shopping website
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Geizhals, known in English as Skinflint Price Comparison,[1][14][15] is a feature and price comparison website,[14][1] focusing on, but not limited to, the German-speaking area.[14] The product filters are managed by an editorial board.[16] For notebooks it has 150 filters,[17] and offers for the most common products more than 100 different sellers for the identical product.[17]
| |
Type of site | E-commerce[1] |
|---|---|
| Available in | English and German |
| Founded | 1996[2] |
| Headquarters | Vienna,[1][3][4][5][6][7][8] Austria |
| Owner | Preisvergleich Internet Services AG, Vienna, Austria (part of Heise group) |
| Founder | Marinos J. Yannikos[1][3][9][10] |
| Industry | Internet |
| Products | 2.4 million[11] products (mostly hardware[1]) |
| Services | Comparison shopping website[1] |
| Revenue | € 14.2 million[11] |
| Operating income | € 1.5 billion[12] |
| URL | geizhals.eu, [4][7] geizhals.at,[1][7] geizhals.de,[3][4][7] cenowarka.pl[4][7] |
| Launched | 1996[1][3][13] |
Scope
Usage
The database of products is set up by editorial members. Consumers can find hardware (e.g. notebooks, smartphones, cables, printers), software, electronics,[3] household appliances, sports goods, and drugstore wares.[1][18] It offers filtering for technical features, such as number and version of USB-ports or version of the operating system, specification sheets, test reports,[19] product ratings,[19] price historiy, warehouse stock, shipping costs and rating of the traders.[19] Geizhals is an intermediary between consumer and traders,[19] helping consumers find products and vendors for it.[12]
Importance
Geizhals is an Austrian company focusing on the Austrian, German, British and Polish customers. Geizhals.at has monthly about 3.5 million[11][19] unique clients,[1][3][20][21] 2.4 million[11][19] products, 280000[11][19] traders.[1] Geizhals.at together with Geizhals.de has 12 Mio. visitors.[22][23] In July 2019 Geizhals.at was on the 41 Position in the Austrian Alexa Rank.[24] Alongside Herold (white pages and yellow pages) and GMX (Mail) – Geizhals is one of the most commonly visited Austrian service providers,[9] and is the marked-leader for price-comparisons in Austria.[9][14]
History
Geizhals was founded in 1997 by Marinos J. Yannikos, who was a scientist at TU Wien,[2] under the name Hardware-Preisvergleich[25][26] and focussed on traders around Vienna. Since 2005[2][4] Geizhals has a cooperation with heise,[3][27][7] and in 2013[7] and 2014,[7] Heinz Heise bought 75%[4][7] of Internet Services AG shares, and since June 2021 it has indirect 100% of the shares.[2]
Since June 1999 Geizhals provides price comparisons over the website geizhals.at,[14] and is a trademark since 2001.[14] Preisvergleich Internet Services AG was founded in June 2000[2][10] together with e-Matrix Online Business Development AG.[28][27] Preisvergleich Internet Services AG bought 30% of compera.at,[29][11] a Gas-,[29] Energy and Internet[11]-comparison-website. In 2003 Geizhals wanted to acquire geizhals.de, which was owned by another site,[30] gaining an unknown seven-figure price. In 2012 Geizhals bought Geizhals.de, which belonged to a competitor.[30] In 2009 Geizhals extended to the British market and created skinflint.co.uk,[31][10] and one year later Geizhals started developing the Polish branch cenowarka.pl.[32][33] Since August 2013 Heise manages the marketing of Geizhals.de.[2][4] In 2021 Geizhals incurred, for assumed 5 Mio€. ,[29][23] Tarife.at,[29] a website for comparing tariffs of 35[29] different phone-companies for Austrian mobile-phone-number, conveying 50000[29][22][23] customers per month to companies. Tarife.at was founded in 2010[29] by, at that time 18 year old, Maximilian Schirmer,[29] who is committed to the website for at least 5 years[29][23] and also the Trademark "Tarife.at" should be kept.[29][23]
WIPO
In June 2005 WIPO decided the request of Geizhals gaining geizhals.com, however since 2018 geizhals.com redirects to https://geizhals.eu/,[34] which is owned by Geizhals.
metashop.at
2004 a cooperation of the Austrian Economic Chamber with Geizhals offer metashop.at.[11] metashop.at is a rented-online-shop-system[35] and should give traders an easy possibility to online-trading.[36][37]
ISP-Comparison
From 2002[38] to 2017 Geizhals offered a comparison for the yearly costs of internet provides (including modem/router,...).
Features and services
An editorial board feeds the product database with product-features, data sheets, price histories, price alarms, shipping times and more.[16] Geizhals offers filters relating time since marked launch.[16]
Geizhals-Forum
Geizhals manages a Forum[39] since 2000,[40] which can be used for problems with products and traders. In 2019 the gossip-channel was closed, due to provocations & insults.[41]
Cooperations
Geizhals has Cooperations with Heise online, ComputerBase, PC Games Hardware, Computec Media und winfuture.de,[42] allowing them to embed Geizhals in their websites[43]
Mobile app
Since 2011 Geizhals offers a mobile app for Android[18][44] and iOS.[45][44] It has features such as Barcode-Scan,[45][44] to find the cheapest offer or finding the route to the nearest offer,[45] which are not available for the Browser-version.
Revenue
Traders pay either by (i) Pay-by-click, paying for every user visiting the website from Geizhals, or by (ii) Pay-by-order, paying for every sale.[46]
Geizhals also gets money by advertisements,[47] however this income is inferior.
Critics
According to Format Geizhals leaded in Austria to a "price war",[9] that troubles big companies,[9] and lead 2013, according to Format, to insolvency of Niedermeyer,[9] an Austrian electronics trader with a revenue of more than 100 Million per year. Because of the price drop, he faced hatred from the industry.[9] However, according to the founder Marinos Yannikos, his only interest was to find for himself a way to save money and time, and did not wanted to withhold it to others.[9]
bepixelung.org
Manufacturers exerted price-pressure on traders.[48] Some manufacturers provoked Geizhals with withdrawing product-image-rights.[48] In autumn 2008, therefore Geizhals established bepixelung.org for Users sharing their own product-photos, however in August 2017 the website is closed and is now used by someone else.[49]