Canine Journal is a great resource for dog parents, but are they the best option to help you find the right pet insurance for your unique pet?
Disclaimer: Pawlicy Advisor is not affiliated with Canine Journal in any way.
Let’s compare Canine Journal, a pet resource website that has been around since 2007, and Pawlicy Advisor, a modern pet insurance marketplace and comparison tool veterinarians love.
Enrolling in pet insurance is an important decision, so it’s critical to find the right plan/provider for your pet’s specific breed, age, and more. This quick run down will help you understand how to find those answers to ensure you get the best coverage at the best price.
A Quick Glance at Canine Journal vs. Pawlicy Advisor
At a glance, Canine Journal and Pawlicy Advisor both provide a pet insurance quote form to generate personalized pet insurance quotes based on specific questions about your pet.
However, there are some key differences in the number of personalized quotes generated, how much legwork you’ll be expected to do, the level of personalization, and what pet health insurance plans are shown.
Here is a quick comparison chart to check out the differences between Pawlicy Advisor and Canine Journal.
The comparison chart
| Features | Pawlicy Advisor | Canine Journal |
|---|---|---|
| # of pet insurance partners | 5 | 4 |
| Generates quotes based on questions about your pet | Yes | Yes |
| # of pet insurance brands that generate quotes simultaneously | 5 | 10 |
| # of quotes generated from search | 191+ | 4 |
| See top recommended plan based on coverage, price, breed, zip code, and more | Yes | No |
| See coverage highlights for each plan side-by-side | Yes | No |
| Personalized ranking for coverage level and lifetime price | Yes | No |
| Personalized comparison charts | Yes | No |
| Lists types of coverage for each plan | Yes | Yes |
| See in-depth coverage details for each plan | Yes | No |
| See real emergency examples for specific types of coverage | Yes | No |
| Copy/pastes insurance provider reviews from other websites | No | No |
| Provides a Buyer's Guarantee | Yes | No |
| Real human support | Yes | No |
Beginning to spot some differences? Let’s break down each of these points.
Pet Insurance Partner Companies
Canine Journal has an exclusive deal with Healthy Paws Pet Insurance and promotes their discount link with them. It is clearly stated that they receive affiliate commissions when these discount links are used, but that it doesn’t affect the insurance search ranking. Canine Journal also lists affiliate discount links for Figo Insurance and Pets Best Pet Health Insurance.
The biggest difference between the two is that Pawlicy Advisor provides highly personalized quotes (from multiple providers) that are ranked specifically to your pet's needs.
In contrast, Canine Journal lists the exact same four affiliate links for pet insurance quotes, regardless of the details you enter about your pet - even though breed, age, and loaction have a massive impact on which plan is best for you.
With Canine Journal, you must research and purchase pet insurance through other companies' websites, making the process of finding great pet insurance time-consuming.
Pawlicy Advisor, on the other hand, displays personalized quotes from five top-rated insurance companies, including ASPCA, Petplan, PetsBest, PetFirst, and Hartville. Additionally, instead of an affiliate link that takes you to another website, pet owners who use Pawlicy Advisor complete thier pet insurance purchase without ever leaving the marketplace.
Most importantly, Pawlicy Advisor makes sure each experience is completely personalized based how many pet's you have, their breed, age, location, and more.
Pet Profiles
To start, both Pawlicy Advisor and Canine Journal have you fill out a questionnaire about your pet. These questionnaires help them to generate personalized pet insurance quotes based on your pet’s age, breed, location, and more. The questionnaires are comparable in terms of the questions asked, but the level of personalization of your pet insurance quotes is significant.
Canine Journal does not provide breed-specific information or custom rankings from their search. They do not personalize their recommendations, whereas Pawlicy Advisor clearly breaks down why a specific plan is their top recommended pick for your pet.
Pawlicy Advisor provides you with breed-specific information and highlights plans with certain coverage policies that are specific to your dog.
For example, boxers are more prone to dental issues. As a result, you wouldn’t want a plan with a long waiting period on dental problems. Pawlicy Advisor automatically sorts through the fine print and analyzes what plans will cover your dog’s breed-specific risks best.
The key difference between Canine Journal and Pawlicy Advisor’s pet profiles is the extent at which they are used to generate quotes.
Canine Journal relays the information to their partnered pet insurance companies. You can then visit each individual pet insurance company’s website to see your personalized quote. They do not provide additional information about your dog’s breed and which plans are best based on the questionnaire.
Canine Journal lists Healthy Paws Pet Insurance as their top recommendation and has a webpage dedicated to why they partner with Healthy Paws Pet Insurance, but this breakdown is not specific to your pet and their needs.
Pawlicy Advisor uses your dog’s breed and location to provide quotes from a much larger variety of pet insurance companies and expands upon why a plan is their top recommendation. The quotes are also compiled on one web page. This prevents you from needing too many tabs open as there's no need to flick back-and-forth - with Pawlicy Advisor you can instantly comapre pet insurance plans side-by-side.
Number of Quotes Generated
Canine Journal who generated 4 pet insurance quotes, or rather links to 4 quotes. using the exact same search parameters.
Pawlicy advisor, on the other hand, offers over 190+ personalized pet insurance quotes all on one page with real-time acurrate prices. Instead, of visiting each individual pet insurance provider’s website to see your personalized quote, you can fill out one form on Pawlicy Advisor and see tons of policies across top providers all on one page.
Coverage Details
Coverage details are crucial to picking the best pet insurance plan specific to your pet. The difference between Pawlicy Advisor and Canine Journal’s coverage breakdowns is key.
Canine Journal does not provide coverage details for plans specific to your pet. They have a pet insurance comparison chart, but these are not custom to your pet’s personalized plans. An individual would need to visit each pet insurance company’s website to look up the details of each plan.
They do have a web page detailing their ranking of pet insurance companies, where they rate the companies based on policy coverage, customer service, pricing, and timeliness of claim payment. But there's no mention of what specific factors are being evaluated.
Canine Journal does not breakdown how/why a specific policy would effect your pet's breed.
Pawlicy Advisor breaks down each coverage point of every pet insurance policy their search function generates. Helpful examples of when each coverage aspect would be used are also provided. It’s easy to see at a glance what is and isn’t covered due to the checklist-style formatting and further information is available if you click on any of the listed benefits.
The primary difference in coverage details between Pawlicy Advisor and Canine Journal is personalization and depth.
Pawlicy Advisor offers a thorough breakdown of every individual pet insurance plan that comes up in your search, whereas Canine Journal only ranks three pet insurance companies on their overall performance.
Pet Insurance Plan Comparisons
Canine Journal does provide a top-level comparison table, but unfortunately it's not particularly helpful becuase each row presents nearly the same information over and over again.
As you can see, it merely lists deductible variations, reimbursment options, and limits... which for the most part are not very different across providers. Inmy opinion, the chart lacks helpful info around pricing, what's covered/exclusions as related to breed-risks.
Pawlicy Advisor has a comparison tool that allows you to easily compare any two pet insurance plans. The side by side comparison is easy to scan and lists every coverage point.
One of the most loved features of Pawlicy Advisor's pet insurance marketplace is the ability to create instant, personalized comparison charts. It truly makes the shoping experience 100x easier.
Customer Service
Both Pawlicy Advisor and Canine Journal offer online quotes, but human customer service is still incredibly helpful if you run into any questions along the way.
Canine Journal does not have a customer service phone number or online chat feature. Instead, they direct you to their ask a reader question forum for advice or to fill out their email contact form.
Pawlicy Advisor, however, does have a responsive online chat feature and customer service phone number.
Insurance is tricky, and sometimes the best help comes from a real human conversation.
What Customers are Saying
Canine Journal has been around since 2007 and is considered a leading dog lifestyle website, and has ben featured in the like of People, Entrepreneur, and more. Canine Journal has a comments section on many pages, some of which are saying "thank you," other are seeking clarity.
Here's one comment on Canine Journal that really speaks to the problem of relying soley on reviews, rather than real data-driven analysis:
I think that when you write this in the future, you should take into account the rating on other sites such as yelp. For example, you give Trupanion an honorable mention, but it has a 2 star rating on yelp, and the reviews are horrific. Healthy Paws has a good rating there, but seems to be going downhill since they were acquired by a larger company last year. It would help to know percentage of denied claims, and annual premium rate increases. I was looking for a plan for my mixed breed manx kitten, but I’m really skeptical that these policies will cover genetic conditions despite their aggressive marketing.
NOTE: See why Pawlicy Advisor is the best tool for comparing and buying pet insurance.
Pawlicy Advisor has 5-star reviews on both Google and Facebook.
Bianca reviewed Pawlicy Advisor on Facebook noting it as, “super seamless and detailed everything that I needed to know, and then some.”
Other Facebook reviews wrote that Pawlicy Advisor is “Great for comparing options/pricing” and as having “quality pet insurance plans”
In addition to their great customer reviews, Pawlicy Advisor is loved by the veterinary community and is the only pet insurance marketplace to be endorsed by veterinarians.
Which Is Best For Comparing Pet Insurance Plans? CanineJornual.com or Pawlicy.com
While Canine Journal is well reviewed and offers a wealth of canine information, their pet insurance quote information is not as comprehensive as Pawlicy Advisor.
Canine Journal only generates links to four quotes that you then have to click and visit each individual pet insurance company’s website to view the personalized quote for your pet (which can make the process of finding pet insurance tedious).
Pawlicy Advisor was built specifically for comparing pet insurance plans.
Pawlicy Advisor simpifies the pet insurance shopping experience, generating many personalized quotes for you to compare side-by-side, and providing a data-driven recommendation based on your unique breed, age, location, and more.
Pawlicy Advisor surpasses Canine Journal in the number of personalized quotes available, the coverage breakdown, and the ability to compare pet insurance plans with a single click. (You can view a complete breakdown of each pet insurance policy without ever leaving Pawlicy Advisor’s website.)
Pawlicy Advisor does the work for you and allows you to easily compare pet insurance policies side-by-side. In addition, their service offers a detailed breakdown of what is included in every policy and breed-specific information that allows you to make the BEST choice for your pet.
In less than 5 minutes, Pawlicy Advisor’s analysis will provide you with the best pet insurance options personalized to your pet.
