9malls.com is an online coupon/shopping website. From its About Us page:

9malls.com online shopping mall is dedicated to providing its visitors with coupons, coupon codes, special offers, discounts, and shopping information that will save users money and enhance their on-line shopping experience.

From its “About Us” page, it also details what sets 9malls.com apart from many other online coupon/shopping websites on the Internet today. Basically 9malls.com’s goal is to be “the top coupon and most informative coupon shopping site on the Internet”, and unlike many of its competitors it is willing to list websites and coupons that are not affiliated with them, i.e. they will not get a kickback if you click through a link on their site and then make a purchase.

The goal of 9malls.com sounds great — to be as unbiased as possible to provide great bargains and coupons to its users. In this review I will review whether 9malls.com is what it claims to be.

Site Presentation

Your mom is right — first impression matters! How does 9malls.com perform in this category? Not very good. It feels like an amatuer site put up in the late 90’s. Information is scattered everywhere when you step into its front page. If you are a determined bargain hunting coming here asking yourself, “where can I find the best deals?” it will take you a while to figure out how exactly the site worked.

Another problem I have with it is its use of hostname in URLs — some links say “9malls.com”, and some links say “www.9malls.com”. Looks like it not only try to confuse humna visitors, but also search engine bots.

The only thing I like about its site design is the logo — hmm that’s about it. However, these are minor issues as long as it lists great coupons and deals, right?

Where to Find Coupons & Deals?

There are basically two ways to browse stores on 99malls.com — by category and by store names. You can either click on the category links near the top of the page (Apparel, Books, Clearance, Computers, etc), or go to store listing directly by clicking on the alphabet listing.

Take the Electronics category for example, it lists out all the major online stores that sell electronics and gadgets (Amazon, BestBuy, etc), and links to their coupons and in some cases reviews.

Do note that 9malls.com does not host its own coupons, instead these are just links to coupons hosted elsewhere (DealNews, CouponCabin, FatWallet, etc). Some shop reviews are written and hosted by 9malls.com, but many are just links to other sites who happen to have a review on those online stores.

And there are… Affiliation Links!

Store-by-name listing is a different story — in fact I figured it out that the category-based lists and alphabet-based lists are totally independent. In here you have stores of A to Z, and most (if not all) the links are in fact affiliation links! No discount / coupon are stated on these pages, so basically they are just there to get affiliating clicks.

There are other deals posted on the front-page, but I think the only thing news-worthy are the ones taken directly from SlickDeals forum — where you can get the deals directly from SlickDeals yourself.

Conclusion

Overall I did not find 9malls.com offering anything I need.

If you are a serious bargain hunter, you might already have good sources of great deals, and there is no point adding 9malls.com into your bookmarks. If you do not yet have any website to check for coupons and deals, I shall recommend RetailMeNot for easy-to-search coupon listing. Also check out ProBargainHunter’s links, especially the price comparison sites and bargain hunting sites.