If you’ve been meaning to get around to printing coupons for Triple Paste, HoneyWorks, NuAloe or other brands you might never have heard of or didn’t know you needed, it looks like you’ve missed your chance. Those offers were among the few stragglers that remained on Hopster’s printable coupon site for the first few days of this year, a bit beyond the date when the site’s owner planned to pull the plug.
And now it appears that the plug has been pulled.
As promised, albeit a few days after the originally announced end-of-2018 shutdown, Hopster owner Inmar has removed the remaining offers from the six-year-old printable coupon site. Visitors now see a notice that “there aren’t any coupons available at this time. More coupons are being added every day, so come back a little later to see what new savings are available!”
But don’t hold out hope for any “new savings” showing up “a little later”. Inmar announced last summer that “due to steadily declining shopper usage”, it would discontinue Hopster’s printable offers and wind down the site’s operations by the end of last year.
In the six months since Inmar’s announcement, printable coupon fans haven’t exactly been loudly lamenting Hopster’s demise. Most recognized that the site was already long past its prime, offering coupons for mostly smaller, natural and organic brands that were far from the mainstream offers it had once featured.
Before getting out of the printable coupon business, Inmar had tried to revive the Hopster brand by reinventing it as a rebate app. “Hopster Rebates” was soft-launched in 2017 and coexisted with the Hopster printable coupon site. Early adopters found that it had a few things going for it – you’d get cash back immediately, for example, instead of having to wait to build up a $20 balance first. But brands were slow to sign on, and the app was never formally announced before it was mothballed.
When asked about a potential future for Hopster Rebates last year, Inmar Senior Director of Product Management Jess Walker told Coupons in the News that the app was considered a “test” of the mobile rebates space. “We continue to work on creating seamless mobile experiences for shoppers to get rebates on everyday products in a way only Inmar can,” she said.
That “test” now appears to be continuing. While Inmar is leaving the Hopster name and branding behind, perhaps for good, it’s dipping its toe back into mobile rebates with a brand new cash-back app.
The Swizl app was launched back in October. Like Hopster Rebates, it hasn’t been publicly announced or promoted just yet as early users help work out the kinks. It’s an alcohol rebate app, similar to the former bevRAGE, which offers cash back for purchases of wine, beer and spirits.
Unlike bevRAGE, though – or Hopster Rebates, for that matter – Swizl isn’t solely a rebate app. It’s a spinoff of the Swizl website, which launched in 2017 as a recipe and lifestyle destination. So under the hood, the Swizl app may operate the same way that Hopster Rebates did. But on the surface, it’s part of a larger brand – the idea behind Swizl seems to be to draw you in with recipes, party tips and product recommendations, then offer you a rebate on a relevant product to help close the deal, as opposed to positioning Swizl as a straight-up savings destination where you only go to search for discounts.
Hopster itself once had a greater focus on interactivity over mere commoditized deals. When it started, the idea was that you could print a coupon as is, or “boost” its value by interacting with the brand. If you followed the brand on social media, shared the deal with friends or signed up for an email newsletter, you could get a higher-value version of the coupon to print.
Over time, though, Hopster ended up becoming another standard discount destination with a static gallery of printable coupons. That made it look like a me-too effort that couldn’t compete with more established sites like Coupons.com, SmartSource or RedPlum. Similarly, Hopster Rebates was a late entry into a space that was already dominated by Ibotta and Checkout 51.
So maybe Swizl will hit, where Hopster and Hopster Rebates missed. It may not mean much for printable coupon fans who might be disappointed about another printable coupon site’s demise. But with any luck, being able to save some bucks on your booze, through the convenience of an app, may turn out to be Hopster’s most lasting legacy.
