The Best “Click to Reveal” Coupon Plugin for WordPress

UPDATED for 2019: Please note that I can simply no longer recommend the original coupon plugin reviewed in this post: Coupon Reveal. As was mentioned in the original post below, while the plugin itself was pretty good, the customer support was bad right from the start.

Well, now you can amend that to completely non-existent. And while you’d hope not to need to contact support anyway when purchasing a product, in the case of Coupon Reveal, now you won’t actually receive your product at all. The download area after making your purchase will be empty… and there’s no one to rectify the issue.

IT’S A JOKE.

It’s clear the project has been abandoned but I’m giving you this warning, as the website is still live and will still happily take your payment.

The GOOD news is that I’ve found an alternative plugin that is similar in functionality but overall better anyway!

That alternative is CouponPlugin.io with their Coupon Plugin Pro. Click here to learn more about that.

It’s the best standalone coupon plugin for WordPress. CouponPlugin.io’s widget has the same functionality as described below but actually addresses the 2 problems I had with the previous plugin: affiliate links are automatically nofollow and the paid product doesn’t have a credit link to the vendor’s website.

I will leave my original Coupon Reveal review below for now in case you already happen to own that plugin and wish to make the suggested customizations. For everyone else, I suggest you avoid it and go with CouponPlugin.io instead.

Note: From here, all previous links to Coupon Reveal have been redirected to CouponPlugin.io.

My Original Post…

I thought I’d create this post because I spent a lot of time searching for the best WordPress coupon plugin for my needs, and was really chuffed when I found this particular solution. I’ve used it with success for a while now and, frankly, I have a love-hate relationship with the tool so figured I could offer some insights.

I wanted a WordPress plugin that would allow me to display coupons on my sites for affiliate offers, where the coupon is hidden until the user “clicks” to reveal it. You see this commonly on big coupon sites as it’s a great way to ensure visitors actually click on your affiliate link.

There are quite a number of WordPress coupon plugins available but very few that perform this specific function well.

A plugin that does do this well, however, is Coupon Reveal Coupon Plugin Pro.

My Coupon Reveal Plugin Review

Coupon Reveal WAS an inexpensive plugin that can do exactly what I described above. It allows you to display an attractive widget that houses a coupon code, whereby the visitor is forced to click the widget in order to reveal the coupon. Upon clicking, the target URL (your affiliate link) is opened in the user’s web browser and the coupon code is revealed.

You can see the new plugin in action on this post and How to Save Money on Drop Ship Lifestyle.

Things I Like

In terms of the product, I love Coupon Reveal. It’s a really solid little plugin.

It works! Most importantly, this plugin does it’s job well. It presents a given coupon code, only when clicked. You can also display the widget in a couple of other ways whereby a “Click to Activate” button is displayed instead (when a coupon code isn’t necessary) or where the coupon code is shown upfront without the user having to click, and a “click to copy” feature is enabled (the old skool way).

It looks great. The design of the coupon box is well thought out and makes for an attractive widget that stands out for the right reasons. It’s customizable, allowing you to easily change the size and color scheme of the box. You’ll be able to incorporate it well with your site.

A similar plugin would be the JC Coupon plugin but it’s horrible! It’s ugly, clunky and you only see half the widget when viewing on a mobile device, without the option of a smaller version. Coupon Reveal is much better.

It’s easy to use. The admin panel for Coupon Reveal is very straight forward and intuitive. Simply fill out the information for your coupon box and click “save”. You’ll then be given a shortcode which can be pasted wherever you want it to show up on your site. Any changes you later make to a specific coupon will automatically be reflected in the widget.

Things I Don’t Like

It’s a shame that I do have a bad thing to say about this plugin because the product itself is great, but it is what it is.

Bad customer service. The customer support behind this product is awful, unfortunately. I emailed them a couple of times regarding a couple of non-critical issues and was straight up ignored.

At one stage, I actually purchased this plugin a second time because I wanted to use it on another website but had only purchased a single domain license, originally. After my second purchase, the plugin wasn’t available to download in my client area and I couldn’t generate a license key. Knowing that I’d been ignored previously, I wasn’t very hopeful about getting this sorted. Eventually, I did get a response from the support staff and they were able to sort out my problem but it took a number of emails and the response was way too slow. It wasn’t a great experience.

Incidentally, the reason for my issue was because they were updating to a new server and had encountered some errors. So it was a genuine issue which is fair enough – these things happen – and my issue was resolved, but not in a timely manner.

Note: As mentioned above in the update, it seems this is now an ongoing and permanent issue that since hasn’t been resolved.

Customizations You Should Make

I actually have a couple of simple customizations to recommend. They involve editing the source files of the Coupon Reveal plugin code but are very straightforward. You don’t have to implement these recommendation to use this plugin, I just think they enhance it. I’ll tell you why I recommend each one.

Be sure to make a backup before editing any code (you can just copy and paste the code into a text document) before editing it and, of course, implement these at your own risk.

Customization #1: Make Your Affiliate Links No-Follow

It’s simply best practice to add a No-Follow tag to any affiliate links on your website. The No-Follow tag is a way of telling Google not to follow a specific link or pass any weight onto the no-followed URL. By default, when you use an affiliate link as the destination URL within Coupon Reveal, it doesn’t include a No-Follow tag.

To add the No-Follow tag inside Coupon Reveal, when logged into WordPress, select Plugins from the left-hand side navigation, then Editor.

In the top right corner, you will see the the ability to select what Plugin you wish to edit. Select Coupon Reveal.

You will now see the source files for the Coupon Reveal plugin. The default file that shows up (wp-coupon/wp-coupon.php) is what we want to edit.

Scroll down (or search) this file to where it says:

$output .= ‘<a id=”activeoffer_’ . $coup_display->id . ‘” target=”_blank” href=”‘ . $link . ‘” class=”activeoffer”>’;

This is where we want to add the No-Follow tag. Add rel=”nofollow” to the above line of code, like so:

$output .= ‘<a id=”activeoffer_’ . $coup_display->id . ‘” target=”_blank” rel=”nofollow” href=”‘ . $link . ‘” class=”activeoffer”>’;

Once you’ve done that, make sure to save the file by clicking “Update File”, and you’re finished.

Customization #2: Remove the “Powered By WP Coupon Reveal” Link

By default, the Coupon Reveal widget will display a small line of text at the bottom with a link back to the plugin creators website. It’s not uncommon for plugins and themes to do this but it is cheeky. I like to remove this link for a number of reasons. 1.) I’ve paid for the plugin, I shouldn’t have to advertise their site for free, and 2.) From an SEO perspective, you lose a small bit of “link juice” by having this unnecessary link on your site with no benefit to you.

To remove this link, locate the same wp-coupon/wp-coupon.php file as above (the default file that shows up when you select Coupon Reveal as the plugin to edit).

Now locate the following text in this file:

$output .= ‘<div class=“powered_by” style=“font-size:’ . get_fontsize($def_font_powered , $width, $st_width) . ‘px;” >’;

$output .= ‘<a href=“http://www.couponreveal.com”>&copy; WP Coupon Reveal</a>’;

$output .= ‘</div>’;

Highlight it all and simply delete it.

Done.

The Best Wordpress Coupon Plugin?

I really like Coupon Reveal. It’s a really solid reveal discount code plugin that performs its function well. If you need a “Click to Reveal” type coupon offer, this is the plugin for you.

It’s such a shame the customer support behind this product isn’t equally as top-notch because other wise it would be a solid 10/10 plugin.