Bankrate Insurance Reviews: Quotes, Ratings (2022)

Comparing car insurance quotes used to be a slow, annoying process. Avoiding this perceived pain is why many people choose to stay with the same insurer far longer than they should. But the market for car insurance today is highly competitive, and thanks to technology, anyone can find cheaper rates quickly and easily.

Many companies, including Bankrate, offer tools to help motorists find insurance quotes online. Though all of these tools ask similar questions to build a driver profile and return relevant rates, the way different companies escort users through their process and how they deliver their results varies widely.

The Bankrate auto insurance comparison tool is one of a growing number of online AI-driven tools available to consumers who want to take control of their auto insurance. Insurify is the #1 highest-ranked insurance comparison platform in America and offers a user experience that is much different than that of Bankrate.

More: How to Compare Car Insurance

What is Bankrate?

Bankrate is a personal finance website offering advice, reviews, and tools to assist consumers in making their best financial decisions. This extensive site covers everything from refinancing your mortgage to getting the best credit card to securing the best rates on car insurance. The specific tool we’ll review is their unbranded car insurance shopping tool.

How does Bankrate work?

From Bankrate.com, scroll to the bottom of the page and click “Car insurance.” Begin by entering your ZIP code. Though the process feels like it takes a lot longer, in just a few minutes, you’ll answer a series of questions about your car, your driving record, and a little about you.

More: Auto and Home Insurance Quotes

Things get a bit personal toward the end of the process. The Bankrate tool asks you for the name of each driver, your home address, your email address, and your phone number. It’s worth noting that you will not see a quote at this point and that by submitting your phone number, you agree to be contacted by any number of car insurance providers.

Finally, after clicking “Get quotes,” you’re presented with four selections that may include not only top carriers but other insurance comparison sites as well. Actual quotes are still not visible at this point. Upon making a selection, you are redirected to another company's website and must put in much if not all of your information again.

After answering 25+ questions, you may not be in the mood to continue answering more. Overall, it's a frustrating experience, with no assurance that you’ll see an actual quote any time soon. However, the questions they ask feel thorough and most likely still point you in the right direction.

More: Car insurance quotes

More: Cheap car insurance

Bankrate Reviews: Here's what customers are saying…

While some people are complimentary of Bankrate’s tools, overall, the consensus is that people don’t like having to work too hard for their information and definitely don’t like being redirected at the moment they expect an answer. But remember, the site offers more than just tools. It offers reviews and financial information, too.

Though not everyone is happy with their experience, Consumer Affairs does recommend Bankrate as a free resource and says it’s “a good place to start if you’re interested in taking out a mortgage or personal loan, comparing credit card companies or banks, or improving your money management skills.”

Bankrate vs. Insurify: The Facts

Bankrate does an excellent job of asking the right questions, but it seems you are always waiting for a quote that never shows. After answering over 28 individual questions and giving out your phone number, email, and home address, you’re still no closer to getting a quote than when you first began, as Bankrate only redirects you to up to four insurance company sites.

Insurify leads you quickly through their questions by offering a more compact and graphically pleasing question-and-answer scenario. After far fewer screens than Bankrate, Insurify provides you with up to 20 actual, real-time quotes that come straight from the best insurance providers in America. You can edit your coverage without leaving the screen, and you can be confident in the accuracy of the quotes.

Not only does Insurify give you cheap quotes on its site in minutes, but it also saves your driver profile so you can easily take up where you left off the next time you want to edit your information or get more quotes.

How to Save on Car Insurance

Saving on auto insurance is as easy as using the right quote calculator and checking out new quotes every six to 12 months. With Insurify, you’ll never waste your time putting in the same information twice or being redirected unnecessarily to get to your quotes. Besides using Insurify to compare cheap quotes, some other ways to save on car insurance include:

• Bundling auto insurance with other insurance products

• Including both smaller and nationally recognized carriers in your search

• Experimenting with deductibles and coverage amounts

• Inquiring about discounts

More about Bankrate

From its beginnings as a print publisher for the financial industry in 1976, Bankrate has grown to become a major online destination for financial product comparison tools, calculators, and educational content help. Offering over 200 financial calculators, they connect nearly three million consumers with new financial institutions every year.

Bankrate prefers that you contact them in regards to their calculators, free content, and more through the email form found on their contact page.