The best Christmas Shopping Firefox extensions

Martin Brinkmann
Nov 11, 2013
Updated • Feb 15, 2014
Firefox, Firefox add-ons
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Where are you buying most of your Christmas presents (If you do not celebrate Christmas replace it with your holiday of choice please)?

Chance is, you do at least some shopping online, and that has some benefits but also disadvantages. As far as the advantages go: you can easily switch shopping sites without moving a feet, compare prices either manually or by using price comparison sites, do not have to carry the items home with you, and avoid the masses as they do their Christmas shopping.

As far as negatives go: you cannot touch or test the item in store, and there is usually also no one you can talk to if you need advice.

Browser extensions may assist you while you are shopping online. They may provide you with additional information about items, compare prices automatically on hundreds of websites, or track the price of an item for you so that you can make the purchase when it is at its lowest.

Christmas Shopping extensions

We have divided the list of extensions into different groups to make things easier for you. First, extensions that compare prices for you and highlight if a cheaper price is available on another shopping site. These usually come with coupon information as well.

Then, extensions that provide you with information, or options to track item prices, or other data that you may find useful while you are shopping online.

Price Comparison extensions

Priceblink

PriceBlink displays a small bar on top of shopping sites it supports that informs you about the best price for the item you are currently looking at, and also if coupons are available to save extra money.

Another interesting feature is the ability to look up user reviews of products on multiple sites. You can check out reviews on Amazon, Newegg and BuyDig for the product, including an overall rating on all three sites right from the main toolbar.

Works on US and UK shopping sites only.

Ziftr Alerts

ziftr-alerts

The extension compares prices in the background while you browse shopping sites. It displays a notification in the browser interface as soon as it finds one, so that you know how much can you save right away.

If coupons are available, those are also listed right away so that you can use them to save even more. Comes with an option to add items of interest to a list. The makers of the extension will notify you by email if the item price hits a specified target.

Other extensions worth mentioning:

  • Boo.ly Shopping is one of the better Firefox shopping add-ons. It finds best prices and coupones, uses https when it communicates with the server powering the information, and works on may sites and search engines.
  • Cuivo displays a small bar on top of the browser screen on shopping sites. Cuivo displays the cheapest available price, all other offers that it found for the item, and videos  in the toolbar.If coupons are available, they will be displayed as well by the application.
  • Invisible Hand - lists cheapest price like the other extension mentioned here. Whishlist is linked to a Facebook app. Supports shops in the US, UK and Germany.

Other shopping extensions

Camelizer

camelizer

The Camelizer provides you with price history charts and price watch options. I suggest you display the icon in the navigational toolbar or add-on bar. If you display it in the navigational toolbar, it will divide the page into two parts, displaying price information about the selected item in the lower half.

Here you can also enter a desired price for the item and an email address so that you are notified when that price target is met by the site you are on. Amazon users benefit from individual listings for Amazon and third party offers.

Other extensions

  • Converter is for users who need to convert information on the Internet. You can use it to convert time zones for example, currencies, or units. Alternative: Currency Converter
  • Coupons at checkout displays coupons to you while you are on the check out page of a shopping site. While that can be very handy, it fails to take into account situations where you would have used a different shopping site if you knew that coupons were available for it.
  • Track Packages enables you to keep track of packages that you are about to receive. This can be very interesting shortly before Christmas as packages get delayed a lot because of the increase during the season.

Tips

  1. It is still important to verify that items are identical before you head over to another shopping site. Sometimes, details make a difference. Cuivo identified a cheaper price for Samsung's Evo 840 SSD, but that was for the 128 GB model, not the 256 GB model that was on sale on Amazon.
  2. If you are using a software like NoScript, you may need to enable the domain name of the extension you have installed before information are displayed on the screen. Not all extensions require that though.

Missed one? Let me know in the comment section below.

Now Read: An In-Depth Firefox Security guide

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