How brands pay us

Brands pay us on a plan. Starter costs nothing to start, with a monthly allowance of verified redemptions included; Growth adds a monthly fee, a bigger allowance and featured placement; Enterprise terms are set per brand. Above a plan's allowance there is a small charge per redemption, and separately, a commission, but only on the online orders a brand's own store or checkout reports back to us, never on anything redeemed in store. The first brands to join are founding partners on preferential terms for a limited time. Applying commits a brand to nothing, with no card and no contract, and once a brand is on board its plan and every invoice we have sent it sit together in its own partner portal.

Students pay us nothing, ever. There is no paid tier, no subscription and no fee at any point in verifying or revealing a code.

How brands pay us, and what we never do

Brands pay a monthly plan, and a commission on the online orders their own store or checkout reports to us. Neither one changes where a link points: when you press through to a brand, the link goes to the brand's own address directly. There is no click-tracking hop in the middle, no affiliate network, and no cookies of ours along the way. If a brand's own link happens to carry tracking parameters, they are the brand's, they were in the link the brand gave us, and the brand's privacy policy covers them.

What we do count is redemption: when a code is revealed, a pass is scanned in store, or a brand's own store reports a completed online order back to us. In-store redemptions never carry a commission; only a reported online order does. Students pay nothing, ever, at any step of this. And whatever a brand pays us, plan or commission, it never changes where that brand ranks: ranking is by featured slot and recency, as disclosed below.

How deals are ordered

We would rather explain this than let you assume it. Offers on the deals feed and on a brand's page are ordered by three rules, in this order:

The list of every brand on the deals page is plain alphabetical order, and the category filters do not reorder anything, they only narrow the list.

Being featured is a slot we control, and the Growth plan includes featured placement windows and category priority. That means a featured position can be part of a commercial arrangement rather than a judgement about which deal is best for you. We are telling you that here rather than calling it a recommendation.

What paying does not buy: it cannot change the terms of an offer once it is published, it cannot remove or bury another brand's offer, and it cannot put an offer under a category it does not belong to. A category filter shows every live offer in that category and nothing else.

No ad networks on this site

Tell us if we get this wrong

If something on The Uni Deals reads like an independent recommendation when it is a paid placement, that is our mistake and we want to hear about it. Email hello@theunideals.com. The same address takes a report about a brand that did not honor an offer, which is feedback we use when deciding who stays on the platform.