December 2009
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CigarStash.com

We all know how difficult and time-consuming comparing prices at different online retailers is. I was talking about it with a friend who knows his way around PHP, and he said he could code a simple tool that would fetch results from various online cigar shops. This is how CigarStash.com was born. It’s basically a shopping comparison website limited to the “tobacco” category so it only returns relevant products. We also added a few additional features such as a page with latest cigar reviews from major blogs as well as a page with current cigar deals from those “daily deals” websites.

Please check out CigarStash.com and let me know what you think about it, your feedback is extremely important. If you find it useful, we’ll make sure to add some more nice features (tell us what’s missing).

19 thoughts on “CigarStash.com Released

  1. Iron, for some reason I was absolutely sure that was how it worked. I just checked and you are right.

    Links now open in a new window, thanks for the suggestion.

  2. The only thing I can think of right now is on your search results page, have the links open in a new window when leaving your site. That way, I can just close that new window/tab to get back to the list instead of having to use the back button, which is a pain if I’ve wandered around the other site much. Keep up the great work!

  3. Great potential. I stumbled it for you.

  4. Dale, among the dozen or so of retailers that are currently covered only a couple carry Illusione cigars. This is why the results for this brand are rather poor, which is sometimes the case for rare & boutique blends.
    I will have to see how we can include results from smaller retailers who often have nice deals on those cigars.
    Thanks for your feedback!

  5. I would rather use the comparison shopper on Cigarcyclopedia for both non-Ccuban and Cuban cigars.

    I did look at Illusione’s on cigarstash – the F9 Lonsdale on cigarstash is $200; however, I go to BestCigarPrices and find it for $152.95

  6. This is a great concept and a great tool. The only thing that comes even close is cigarcyclopedia list (Comparison Shopper). I like the idea of an online tool vs. a .pdf file. I am sure there are some things to be improved, but this is a great foundation in which to expand the tool.

    – Ed

  7. Changed.
    Also did some minor bug fixes.
    Thanks, Stephen.

  8. consider changing “Price Asc” to “Price – Lowest to Highest”.. non-computer folks get confused at “ASC” and “DESC” 🙂

  9. @MoonCatCrew

    Thank you for your comment. By default the items are sorted by relevancy. To get the lowest price, you can select “Price Asc” from the drop-down menu below the search box. For example, if you are searching for “Gurkha Shaggy Torpedo”, you will see that the lowest price is $136.60 and it goes up to $167.99.

    🙂

  10. I found the site very easy to navigate. I am not as computer savvy as my BOTLs who have responded above but whatever the glitches I hope their input brings resolutions to them.
    The general appearance of the site is welcoming. Many cigar sites are often too dark for my vision. The soft brown text on a white background is easy on my vision which,once again,needs to be checked.
    I typed Gurkha Shaggy in the search field. I received a list of the Shaggys at, evidently, the highest prices going. I trust there will be a “compare prices” component added if possible.

    All in all I think the site is a great idea and has fine potential as a useful tool especially for newbies as myself.
    ~love and gratitude~

  11. The CSS bug in IE7 has been fixed.

  12. Understandable about bizrate.

    I am using IE7 on Windows XP Pro SP3. Same issue occurs IE7 on Vista Ultimate 64 (32bit browser).

    Likely the change in CSS properties from one browser to the other. I had similar issues on CigarFriendly using position:absolute in Safari/Chrome. I had to develop browser specific CSS with different information for each.

    IE8 works fine.

  13. @Stephen

    Thanks for testing out the tool. What browser/OS are you using? I’d like to have that info as well as a screenshot because I’m not experiencing the CSS issues you mentioned.

    So far the results are from Bizrate, yes. The reason is that they are easily available and easy to integrate 🙂 There are obviously more retailers out there, but they include the biggest ones like Famous and CI. The idea was to see whether this kind of tool would become popular. If it does, more feeds will be added and in the long run the site might accept merchants’ XML feeds directly.

  14. Very nice site, I can see me using this a lot.

  15. Goin’ to checkitout… As a US kinda guy, all youse wit access to CUBANOS: Feel. My. Pain.

  16. Very useful tool, unfortunately very US centric at the moment. For non US smokers like me, who love non-Cubans as well as Cubans, it would be great if it were possible to search specifically for retailers that ship both to the US and internationally (or if this was visible in the results in some way)

  17. Concept is great, but there seems to be a few issues. I did a search and the CSS is off (I can’t read all the descriptions. I did a search for Tatuaje Black. One of the descriptions reads: “This amply-sized, 4-finger Tatuaje ashtray features fleur-de-lis emblazoned in the bowl and sides, as well as a stylized graphic of “Tatuaje.” The ashtray itself is black ceramic. If you count yourself a Tat”. I can only read half as the second line is covered up. The problem is the description is attached to a box of Cubao No. 1’s at a price of $134.99.

    The same description is also displayed for the next 6 products (Cubao No 5, CAO Cherrybomb Corona, CAO Cherrybomb Petite Corona, LFD Daiquiri, Cherrybomb Cigarillos, and Cherrybomb Tubos. The last item does not show a price.

    It actuallys seems like it just pulls everything from Bizrate.com. It could be a very useful tool, but I think it needs to find a way to pull from actual retailer sites and not bizrate. Bizrate only shows a few retailers.

  18. So far, Cuban cigars are not present in the search results.

    Hopefully we will be able to add them in future.

  19. Very good search engine lacking most Cubans. Search Cohiba you get the rip offs. Search Montecristo you get most of the Cuban ones. Ramon Allones features not a single Cuban. Hmmmm.

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