Between taking advantage of online sales, combining coupons and rewards, and not having to hit the stores to find everything you need, online Shopping can be incredibly convenient (and money-saving) for most of us. Who doesn’t love a great online deal or two?

When shopping online becomes even better is when you can save even more money than with just discounts or sales from the retailer. I’m talking about online shopping portals. If you haven’t shopped with them yet, then you’re probably not saving the money you could be.

Maybe you’ve tried a few but haven’t yet experienced Shopathome, a portal that partners with retailers all over the web to give you cash back on your purchases. This review of ShopAtHome will fill you in, so you’ll know what it does, how to use it, and whether it’s worth your time. Here’s the link to check it out for yourself first:

What is ShopAtHome?

ShopAtHome is an online shopping portal similar to Ebates and TopCashback, which you might have heard of and/or used. The company started back in 1986 as a catalog, offering consumers a convenient way to shop from home.

Since more and more people are now shopping online, the company’s transitioned to the online marketplace by creating a catalog of sorts on the internet.

When you log in to your ShopAtHome account, you can browse its list of partnered retailers, click their links, and start shopping. When you make a purchase, you’ll get cash back on that purchase in your ShopAtHome account. The amount you get depends on the retailer, but you’ll see how much cash back you’re eligible for when you click the retailer’s link.

Where Can I Shop?

ShopAtHome has a wide range of retailers in almost any industry you can think of, making it an excellent place to not only find your favorite places to shop but also discover some new ones. There are currently over 4,000 merchants on the site in industries like Baby, Food & Wine, Home & Garden, Pets, and Travel.

These are just some of the online merchants you can shop with:

• Ann Taylor
• Bath and Body Works
• Dell
• Gap
• Kate Spade
• Kohl’s
• Lowes
• Microsoft Store
• Nutrisystem
• Old Navy
• Pier 1
• Priceline
• Sears
• Staples
• Ticketmaster
• Ulta Beauty
• Zales
• Zenni Optical

Why Does ShopAtHome Do This? What’s In It For Them?

ShopAtHome is a business, so it needs to make money too, but you might be wondering how. Online shopping portals act like a middleman between consumers and retailers they shop with. Retailers partner with these portals to get more traffic to their sites and more sales, potentially.

Retailers pay ShopAtHome to advertise their sites, which is essentially what the company does when it places their links on the portal. By offering cash back for shopping with a retailer, ShopAtHome is enticing consumers to head to those online stores and buy things, so retailers pay the company for their help.

Then, you’ll get some of the profits when you shop!

Pros and Cons of ShopAtHome

Online shopping portals like ShopAtHome are helpful in saving the average consumer cash on shopping trips, but none of them are perfect. Here are a few of the pros and cons of ShopAtHome to help you decide if it’s a good choice for you:

Pros:

• $10 sign-up bonus
• More ways to earn cash than just shopping online
• Over 4,000 retailers to choose from
• Amazon, PayPal, and check payment options
• Members can save more money with promo codes in addition to cash back
• Partnered with Swagbucks, a leading rewards site

Cons:

• Some members haven’t gotten cash back for their big-ticket purchases
• Payments can take a while to receive, especially via check
• $20 minimum payout
• Payments take a while to schedule and send
• Surveys can be tough to qualify for

Earning Cash Back From Shopping with ShopAtHome

The following tasks on ShopAtHome will help you make money just from shopping online:

Using the Portal

The most common way to earn here is, of course, using the shopping portal. The portal lets you find your favorite retailers (or discover new ones), click their links to go to their websites, and shop how you normally would to get cash back.

You’ll do this either by searching for the retailer with which you want to shop or browsing the categories or alphabetized list of retailers. Click the one you want and ShopAtHome will redirect you to that site. Make your purchase and you’ll receive the percentage of cash back shown to you on ShopAtHome.

Be sure to buy the correct type of items, if applicable, to receive that cash back percentage. For example, Amazon you can get up to 4% cash back on Amazon, but that’s only for specific types of items, like Amazon devices and apparel. Other items there yield between 1.5% and 3% cash back.

Most purchases take up to 10 business after they ship to credit to your ShopAtHome account, so you won’t see your cash back right away. Continue to check back once you receive notification from the retailer that your purchase has shipped.

Coupons

I love that, in addition to the shopping portal, ShopAtHome also offers grocery coupons for you to save money with. ShopAtHome partners with Coupons.com for this section.

You won’t get anything for redeeming coupons, but you can clip as many as you want, print them, and save money at the grocery store.

Local Deals

ShopAtHome also has a Local Deals section that can help you save money at stores near you. Many of these come from Groupon and Restaurants.com, and ShopAtHome is just the messenger. Still, it can make it easier for you to visit one place to find local deals for dining, fitness, entertainment, automotive services, and more.

It seems like this service works best for those who live in populated areas rather than for those who live in rural areas, but you can always plug in your zip code to see what’s available.

Savings Button

The ShopAtHome Savings Button is, in my opinion, one of the best things about the site. I’m forgetful when it comes to visiting my favorite online shopping portals before visiting the retailer to get my cash back.

A few of my favorites, like Swagbucks, offer a browser extension that lets you know when a retailer you’re visiting is one you can get cash back with.

That’s how the Savings Button works, and it’s invaluable for us forgetful people. Download and install it into your browser. The next time you visit a partnered retailer, the button will pop up an alert letting you know you can activate your cash back before your purchase.

You’ll never have to remember to visit the ShopAtHome site first again to see if a purchase is one for which you can get credited.

Other Ways to Earn with ShopAtHome

Unlike some other shopping portals, ShopAtHome has several ways for you to earn money in addition to shopping with your favorite retailers. For those who want more of a one-stop place for making some extra cash online, these additional money-makers can be helpful.

Surveys

ShopAtHome lets you earn more by completing online surveys. They work exactly the same as other popular survey sites: You connect with surveys that match your interests and demographics, answer questions honestly and get paid for your opinions.

ShopAtHome rewards you with cash back for completing surveys just as it would for shopping.

One issue with surveys, though, is that it can be tough to qualify for them here. Unlike sites devoted to surveys, ShopAtHome only offers them as a side gig, so it doesn’t have the same qualifying process and detailed profiles that help you match with surveys.

Instead, you could spend several minutes answering questions only to get disqualified because you don’t match well with it.

Offers

If you have an account with reward sites like Swagbucks and InboxDollars, you know that they have free and paid offers where you can sign up for services or make a purchase and get cash for doing so.

ShopAtHome offers work the same way and give members an opportunity to make money faster than from shopping alone.

The site has several offers available at any time, but there usually won’t be any free or trial offers. Instead, they’ll be offers for things like a discounted subscription or promotion for a service that also gives you cash back when you make a purchase.

You’ll still be saving some money and making some money, but you’ll also need to spend, so be sure to only use offers when there’s something available that you’d buy anyway.

Referrals

ShopAtHome once had a referral program, but it seems that links pointing to it no longer work and I can’t find any referral information in my own account. Previously, members could earn $5 for each friend they referred that made a qualifying purchase with their ShopAtHome account within 30 days.

The friends they referred would also earn $5 for doing so. Let’s hope that the program is only temporarily suspended since making money with referrals is one of the most popular ways to earn at different reward sites.

ShopAtHome Rewards

ShopAtHome currently offers Amazon gift cards, PayPal cash, or a mailed check for its rewards.

You’ll need at least $20 in your account to cash out with any method. Once you request your money, ShopAtHome will schedule your payment at the end of that month. You’ll then get paid about 60 days after it’s scheduled. If you request a payment on June 15^th, for example, ShopAtHome will schedule your payment around June 30^th, and you’ll get paid August 30^th.

Amazon and PayPal rewards will usually come quicker than a check, which you may have to wait a few weeks for after ShopAtHome sends it.

Before you cash out with PayPal, you should make sure you have the correct PayPal information entered. The site states that you have up to 30 days to sign up for PayPal after requesting your payment, but it’ll definitely make things less complicated, and you likelier to receive a payment if you have this all set up first.

How Does ShopAtHome Differ From Other Cash Back Shopping Portals?

Instead of signing up for every cash back shopping portal on the web, it’s best to stick with two or three that work best for you and feature your favorite retailers. The below portals are some that are most similar to ShopAtHome, so here are some of their key differences to help you decide:

Ebates

Ebates is like the parent of all the other cash back shopping portals and probably the most famous and popular. It’s also one of the oldest, hanging out on the web since the 1990s. Interestingly, it doesn’t have the most partnered retailers (over 2,500), but it does have some of the most popular online retailers, like Amazon, Kohl’s, eBay, LEGO, HSN, and more.

Ebates gives you $10 to sign up but, unlike ShopAtHome, you can choose to put that money toward a Walmart Gift Card or use it as a cash bonus in your account. Ebates consistently offers some of the best cash back percentages on your purchases, like up to 10% at Walmart, up to 7% on Expedia, and 25% on Magazines.com.

One area Ebates stands out against its competition is its special days through the year when cash back offers are doubled or tripled. When you become a member, you’ll receive emails telling you when they happen.

You can read our full Ebates review here.

MyPoints

MyPoints is another long-running shopping portal from the 90s that started as mostly just a portal but has since transformed into more of a rewards site. Unlike ShopAtHome and Ebates, MyPoints pays in points for rewards.

On MyPoints, you can take surveys, complete daily bonus tasks, play games, watch videos, take polls, and more, in addition to shopping. Then, turn your points in for one of several gift cards.

One of the downfalls of this site is that many paying tasks are capped, meaning you’re only allowed to get a specific number of points each day doing those tasks. Your points also expire if you don’t stay active, so make sure you’re logging in monthly to be safe.

Read our full MyPoints review here.

Swagbucks

Swagbucks is more closely related to MyPoints than Ebates and ShopAtHome because it’s a rewards site with a variety of money-making tasks and it pays in points, known as SBs. I believe it has one of the best online shopping portals, though, so it’s a fair contender against ShopAtHome.

Swagbucks partners with hundreds of retailers and always has featured partners that pay more than usual, sometimes 4x’s cash back and more. Currently, Restaurants.com is one of them and shoppers can earn 20% cash back compared to the usual 5%.

Swagbucks shopping trips remain pending for about a month, but you can see the amount set to clear, and when, in your account when you view “Shop Activity.”

Here’s our full Swagbucks review.

TopCashback

TopCashback is the most like Ebates and ShopAtHome because its focus is mostly on online shopping. The site has thousands of partners and works the same way: Find the retailer you want to shop with, click the link from TopCashback, and get paid.

One of the best things about TopCashBack is it offers a variety of shopping types, like travel and gift cards. You can use discounted gift card sites to save money on gift cards you want to purchase, combine your shopping trip with TopCashback, and get cash back in addition to your discounted card. The site also has several excellent coupons and promo codes to help you save more money on your purchases.

Check out our full TopCashback review.

Drop

There are even cash back shopping apps that let you use your mobile device to shop online and get paid! Drop is one of those apps and it’s one of my favorites. Instead of signing onto a website to do your shopping, you can use the Drop app on your phone or tablet, which is great when you need to do some shopping but you’re away from the computer.

To start, you’ll connect your credit and debit cards to the app. When you make a purchase with them, Drop credits your account.

The app is simple to use and clean, so it makes shopping and earning a breeze.

Read our Drop review to find out how it works.

Is ShopAtHome Legit?

From my experiences with ShopAtHome, the company is legitimate. Is it my favorite cash back portal? No. I’d reserve that title for Swagbucks or Ebates. I have gotten paid from ShopAtHome, though, and haven’t yet had any issues with not receiving cash back for my purchases, no matter how big or small they are.

There are a few complaints circling online for this site, but you’ll find that with anything. Some of the complaints about not receiving cash back are likely due to members not following instructions or not making eligible purchases, which is why it’s always important to read all the fine print connected to an offer before clicking through to the retailer’s site.

How to Sign Up for ShopAtHome

Are you ready to sign up for ShopAtHome and try it for yourself? Great! Here’s how to get started:

1. Visit the ShopAtHome website.
2. Enter your email and a password and click the Sign Up button (or sign up with Facebook).
3. Verify your email address.
4. On your homepage, you’ll see featured retailers to shop with (usually, these are ones with high cash back bonuses or special promotions) but you can also browse the list of retailers or categories to find what you need.
5. Click the retailer you want to shop with and use ShopAtHome’s link to connect to its website and make a purchase.
6. Find your cash back in your account in a few days once your purchase has been confirmed and shipped!

Don’t forget to download the Savings Button for your browser, so you never have to miss a deal when shopping online.

Final Thoughts

I love shopping online because your money-saving abilities are virtually limitless. Cashback shopping is perfect for people who prefer to shop online rather than in-store. Combine shopping portals with promo codes and store-specific sales (be a savvy shopper!), and the sky’s the limit on how much you can save.

Have you used ShopAtHome? How about other portals? Leave a comment below and let us know your favorites!