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Type of site | E-commerce [1] |
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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(s) | 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, skinflint.co.uk, [4] [7] geizhals.at, [1] [7] geizhals.de, [3] [4] [7] cenowarka.pl [4] [7] |
Launched | 1996[1] [3] [13] |
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 each product type up to more than 100 different offers from online stores. [17]
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]
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]
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]
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.
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]
From 2002 [38] to 2017 Geizhals offered a comparison for the yearly costs of internet provides (including modem/router,...).
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 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]
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]
Since 2011 Geizhals offers Smartphone-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.
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.
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. According to Format the branch confront the founder of Geizhals with uninsulated hate, [9] because of the decline of prices. [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]
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]