Car Insurance Comparison Sites – The Best Sites To Compare

To help buyers make the right decision, we’ve scoured the data to put together our list of the best Car Insurance Comparison Sites.

How Does Car Insurance Comparison Sites Work?

There are two main types of insurance comparison websites: quote comparison sites and lead generation sites. Car quote comparison websites present users with rates based on information submitted during the buying experience. You can then decide which quote to pursue, and the data you enter is transferred to the agent or company website, significantly shortening the purchasing process. These sites do not sell your information to car insurance companies or agencies.

Unlike quote comparison sites, lead generation sites often sell your information to their advertising partners—typically insurance companies. These sites are not built to provide you with personalized quotes and are not much help when trying to compare car insurance rates. Avoid these sites unless you’re eager to receive tons of cold calls from insurance phone banks and desperate agents.

Insurance comparison websites can be broken down further into sites that provide real-time insurance quotes and those that provide estimated ones. Estimated quotes are derived from historic data and are often out of date. To get the most accurate information, you should use a site that provides real-time quotes generated by the insurance companies.

What Makes A Good Car Insurance policy?

There are several factors you should consider when looking for car insurance; doing so will help you see past prices and better understand the true value that different providers can offer you.

However, unlike other insurance lines (which might have one key element of cover that differs between providers), the core coverage with car insurance is almost identical between different insurers. For example, pet insurance often has a vet fee limit that varies from provider to provider, while travel insurance can have medical cost limits that differ by millions of pounds, but car insurance is largely confined to three levels of cover that are standard across the board: comprehensive, fire and theft, and third-party cover.

This means that consumers will need to look at other policy features, reviews and price to make a decision.

Not all policy features we’ve highlighted might be relevant to you but they’re a good guide to start with. Others might be things like vandalism cover, cover for medical expenses or a fair claim commitment.

It’s also worth looking at review sites to see the experience of other car owners and whether their claims are being paid in a reasonable time.

And unlike other insurance lines — where you often get what you pay for — factors like price and rewards (such as Nectar points) might play more of a role in deciding which company is best for you.

Here are some key things to look out for:

  • Levels of excess — The excess is the amount you need to contribute towards a claim before your insurer will cover the rest. Some cheaper policies come with a high level of excess, which can be costlier than paying a higher premium. You can mitigate these costs by insuring your excess.
  • Windscreen cover — Pays for your windscreen to be repaired or replaced if it gets damaged. It’s included as standard with premium insurers such as John Lewis, but you’ll have to pay extra on most cheap policies.
  • Driving multiple cars — Many people assume that if they have comprehensive insurance they are automatically covered to drive other people’s cars, but that is not necessarily the case. Read the terms of your policy carefully to make sure you are insured for driving cars other than your own.
  • Accelerated No Claims — Some companies offer what they call Accelerated No-Claims. This means you can claim a 12-month no claims discount after only 10 months on the road. However, the catch here is that often this only applies if you stick with the company for another year. For some, this will work out well, but it’s worth doing your research. In most cases, loyalty is not rewarded when it comes to car insurance, so, even with the no claims discount, you may be better off elsewhere.

But Which Is The Best Car insurance comparison Site?

Purchasing car insurance can feel like a more difficult decision than purchasing your car. Trying to determine who will give you the best rate for your situation can be a weeklong search if you are visiting individual companies one by one. Insurance comparison websites can help provide you the top quotes for your car insurance in one easy location, not only putting money back in your pockets each month, but saving you time and stress while doing it.

But that doesn’t mean all comparison sites are the same. Each has its own set of pros and cons, but some are easier to use and provide more accurate and cheaper quotes than others.

So, which one is best? Read on to find our rankings of the 8 best comparison tools.

1: ValuePenguin

ValuePenguin could very well be the most recognizable name on this list, but it doesn’t mean it’s the best option to compare car insurance.

The company claims to offer an easy and reliable way to compare car insurance quotes in your area, but it ended up being the lowest ranked site on our list.

Founded in 2013, it ranks well in the Google search engine and is typically one of the first options available to anyone searching for insurance quotes online.

When we used ValuePenguin, we received only one quote from Progressive Insurance. And it didn’t even have a price next to it.

If the disappointment of only having a single option was not bad enough, when we clicked the link to see our quote, we were redirected to Progressive’s website, where we needed to enter information all over again just to obtain a quote.

While ValuePenguin rated very high with employees, it rated the middle of the road with users. Many users reported disappointment with the insurance choices and the redirection and redundancy in getting a quote. They also would prefer a mobile app to make using the website more user-friendly.

Our overall experience using ValuePenguin was worse than expected. We were hoping to be able to choose from at least a couple insurance quotes. Instead, we only had one, and it didn’t even have a price. If we ended our search here, we would believe that only one company would agree to insure us.

2: EverQuote

EverQuote was founded in 2011 with its headquarters in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The company claims to provide insurance quotes in one spot for many of the major insurance providers.

The site requires you to answer the basic questions regarding your driving record, age, and location. Once you load your results, EverQuote provides your quotes for coverage. In our experience, EverQuote only provided two options for auto insurance coverage. Not a single price was offered, only ads for other companies. Even then, one company wanted to redirect us to its website to obtain coverage, where we’d have to re-enter all of our information.

The other company wanted us to call their agents to get a quote. This process required us to complete the quote during normal business hours and took quite a bit of time to complete before we were offered an actual quote.

The reviews for EverQuote were mixed across the board. Some users rated their experience well. Customers like the mobile app. They also liked how easy the website is to use. Others didn’t like the lack of actual quotes available on the site.

Employees were overall happy with their experience working for EverQuote. Most claimed a positive and energetic working environment. Of course, one or two employees complained about their experience, but the complaints were limited.

Reviews aside, EverQuote offered very little in the way of insurance quotes. It offered two options for insurance coverage, which required a redirect to the insurance company’s website or a phone call. The mobile app makes it easy to use the site. However, the site does not offer much benefit for someone looking for insurance options.

3: SmartFinancial

SmartFinancial, much like EverQuote, is a lead generation company. This means that their sole purpose is to feed your information to other insurance companies, so don’t expect to get any actual quotes by using SmartFinancial.

Much like the others, the site requires basic information to provide insurance quotes. However, once we entered our information, we received only three options for coverage. Two options required us to get a quote from their website. On each carrier website, we re-entered our information and answered some additional questions before obtaining quotes.

The final option required us to request a call from an agent through SmartFinancial’s affiliated insurance companies. Much like the others we mentioned, it’s not the most efficient process possible.

SmartFinancial has little online presence. However, its sister company, Contactability, had a presence found on Google My Business and other websites. Both companies maintained strong reviews from users and employees. The reviews from employees were all high, boasting a fun and energetic work environment. Customers mostly claimed the lead generation and insurance quotes were helpful.

At the end of the day, reviews aside, SmartFinancial operates as more of a lead generation website than a comparison quote website. The website continues to direct you towards providing a phone number to receive an agent call several times via distracting pop-ups. It only offered two insurance quote options, which are from well-known providers. Neither of those two options provided prices. Both were just ads for other comparison sites.

4: The Zebra

The Zebra claims to give you a cut and dry overview of car insurance. Their tagline is “Insurance in black & white.” They also claim to provide insurance quotes in one place for your comparison.

When we entered our information, we found this fact to be half true. Our search surfaced 13 available insurance companies, but only a few companies provided quotes on the webpage, with several options showing ads that just said “get quote” and redirected us to other sites.

We chose to review one company that provided the quote on the site, and one that did not. The companies were Clearcover and Allstate. Clearcover provided a quoted price on The Zebra. When we clicked on the quote, it redirected us to the Clearcover website. There, most items were pre-filled. However, we needed to provide additional information.

The good news? Once we completed the process, we received a quote from Clearcover.

The bad: The quote was more than double the price of what was given to us on The Zebra. This was shocking and left us feeling like we’ve been ripped off.

Allstate did not provide a quote. We clicked on “get a quote” and were redirected to Allstate’s site. We filled in all information as nothing transferred. Allstate finally offered a quote once we refilled everything.

Overall, outside customer reviews echoed our own findings.

Employees enjoyed working for The Zebra. As for customer reviews, many were disappointed with the inaccurate quotes or lack of quotes completely.

Our experience with The Zebra started out promising. However, once we got the actual quote from the insurance provider, we were left a little underwhelmed. The Zebra completely missed the mark of the actual cost of insurance coverage and proved untrustworthy.

Even though it had a quick process that provided us with some actual quotes, these reasons cause The Zebra to come in as runner-up in our review.

5: Insurify

Insurify provides insurance quotes in one place, claiming a “quick, easy, and free” process.

When using Insurify, you must enter your name and address, as well as driving history and other standard information. You are also asked to choose the coverage options you wish to buy. The website provides several quotes for numerous companies to fit your needs.

However, when you click on any of the links, you must agree to receive a phone call from the provider to confirm the insurance premium, adding an extra step that you won’t find with the top two sites on our list.

It’s not a bad option, and the reviews support that. Insurify’s employees seem very happy with their jobs. The overall customer reviews are mixed. Some call the site a large waste of time. Others say it was a wonderful experience and helped in the process of finding insurance coverage. You be the judge (but also remember there are better options).

Insurify appeared to provide more accurate quotes. However, we had to agree to speak with an insurance agent for any quote that seemed promising. In the end, the process became more time consuming than expected. It seemed tedious and required more from us than we wanted to give to get a quote.

We also ended up receiving some junk mail from Insurify a couple months after submitting our quote, which will surely be annoying for most customers.

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Car insurance is a must if you own a vehicle, and you’ll be glad you have it after an accident. But you don’t want to spend a penny more than necessary on a policy, and you shouldn’t have to. By knowing exactly what affects your auto insurance rates, you can figure out how to save on car insurance and get good coverage without breaking the bank. Continue Reading..

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