The Best Groupon Clone and Email Marketing for it?

Hey Sam, there are somoe nice "ready-to-go" tools online for this sort of thing. There is a post about several online tools to create your own Group Buying site.

Here is the article http://www.the-webcoach.com/marketin...p-buying-site/

Hi all,

First of all I will not use the "best of" word for any of the Groupon clone scrips. Because all of them have negatives and positives, moreover some positives of one script for one can be negative for the other. So the major thing is to decide what You (exactly You) need from the script. To be able to chose among the functionality of different scripts you need to have some information about their work, I will try now to share the most valuable concerns of some scripts (IMO of course):

In my opinion, it is better to use already developed and acively used scrip than to deal with some web design studio and try to get the script developed from the begining; because it will cost more money, took much more time, will ned some testing period, will need some additional support time to fix the bugs (and after all will still has bugs )

So the list of most famous scripts

1. Magento Contus groupclone
   Positives: Based on Magento's script which itself based on Zend framework. Has a good looking frontend and user-friendly backend. Has many options in admin area and can be thoroughly configured. Has a good active forum.
   Negatives: The first HUGE negative is that it is not fully open sourced starting from December 2010. Some of the codes are encrypted and there is one module which is provided by the script and which should be installed to get the code working. This is one of the most negatives for me, as you are not getting the full code but the part that they allow you to change. The other thing I notice that the script is working quite slower than the others. Is the one of most expensive script in this field (500$ the base code, 1500$ the IPhone App and several modules in such manner). No demo of backend.
2. Uniprogy Couponic
   Positives: A great script working on Yii framework with intuitive frontend and backend interfaces. Actively developed. The smoothly work of functions.
   Negatives Hasn't any documentation of configuration and use. Has pure documentation for developers. The only place to get information is the forum, which is quite active but is closed for not registered users (you will be allowed to the forum only when you buy their script). It is hard to understand the codes work, because that they implement the own method of script work on Yii framework, so the developer should learn the work of Yii framework then the method of work of their own script. You are not getting all modules in the price, but you need to pay additional money for every module (facebook, discusion, etc.)
3. Agriya
   Positives: Script is based on Cake framework. Is actively developed.
   Negatives: Doesn't work with PHP 5.3, as the Cake framework hasn't PHP 5.3 compatible version. Unreasonable high price, 1000$ for a copy of the script.
4. Ndot
   Positives: Have had quite good functionality added to their last version. They have a free version which can be downloaded and used.
   Negatives: They don't use any framework, and the script is written in very odd manner (IMO). Though there are some really nice looking sites based on this script. It is not possible to have the site in different languages simultaneously, e.g. it is not possible to give an option for site visitors to choose between languages. It is not working on subfolder, so if you don't have an access to the server configurations to configure the "RootDirectory" option, you can't have the script installed in subdirectory, it should be installed in root.
5. Wroupon
   Positives: There is some useful option to specify a virtual buyers for a deal
   Negatives: Not so full-fledged admin area. Doesn't use any framework. To cut a long story short, poor functionality then the other abovementioned scripts.

The scripts on some framework have their positives of course, but it is not so easy to understand the frameworks work for a developer, thus to customize it. Also the scripts on some framework may not support some languages because of used some third party modules.

Wanted to make it shorter, but become quite a long story

By the way I tried almost all of the scripts and now selling then for significantly lower price. If anyone want them for test or work purposes please pm me or write me to grouponsale@gmail.com.
I have and I am selling:

Magento Contus - 4.3.2.6 with database installation file
Agriya 1.0a65
Ndot Enterprise 4.0
Wroupon 3.8

Thanks and good luck in choosing any of the script,
Mario