Frequently asked questions

Site customization

Okay, I have created my site. How can I access its backend?

As soon as it is created, you are automatically redirected and logged in to it. You should also have received welcoming e-mail to the address you used for registration. Just sign into your site with your email and password. As you are the site owner, your account is granted all admin permissions. You may access all the backend features via “Admin section” at the top-right corner of the page.

If I buy a domain name from third party company, will I be able to replace it, so that it does not have "getsocio"?

Absolutely! Getsocio offers white-label deals websites, so you surely can have your own domain instead of the standard one. It takes only two steps to setup your own domain name. Please take a look on our guide for more information

Can I link my getsocio website to a subdomain like deals.mydomain.com?

Yes, the process is similar to common domain, just create a host record for that subdomain and follow steps from the guide.

Can I add links and pictures to my pages?

Sure. Every custom page of your site and deal creation/edition pages have built-in WYSIWYG-editor, which makes it very easy to adjust the content, add pictures or videos, etc.

Can I translate my site to another language?

In Getsocio all the text visible to users is stored as editable “messages” or pages and is ready for customization and/or translation at any time. Just add the language you need at Languages page and then go to Messages page in Admin section and translate the text. Spanish, French and German translations are already available. See for more info. Please note that if you are adding the language, which translation is not available in Getsocio, then the standard text in English will appear. You would need to translate it through Messages page in the Admin section.

How do I change links in the header and footer?

All this and a lot more can be done using Menu Items. Please see our guide for more details.

What is the difference between Active deals page and New deals page?

Active deals page shows all running deals on your site in the chosen location/category. New deals page is supposed to show the featured deals of your site that you prefer your customers to pay attention to. Each deal has in its settings Add to new deals, which controls whether the deal will be featured on New deals.

I want to build deals site, not specific to any city. Is it possible to disable the "city" functionality?

Sure. Locations in Getsocio do not have to be bound to geographical coordinates, so you can simply name your location "National", "Worldwide", etc.

How can I hide the amount of items left that is on the deal page? I do not want my users to see it.

You can simply uncheck option Show purchase count in a deal managing section, then your website visitors will not know what are the real sales of the deal.

Is it possible to disable the referral button?

Sure. You can turn off the option "Referral program" at Bonus program tab in Settings page of Admin section.

Is it possible to appoint an admin with limited authority on my website?

Yes! There are several user roles available that give limited access to Admin section. You can check the list here.

I would like to change the admin email to the new one. How do I do that?

You can change your e-mail address, name and password in My info section of the user menu (appears when the mouse is over "Hello, Your Name") on the front-end of your site.

Is Getsocio available only in English?

The backend of the website (admin section) created with Getsocio is provided in English language only, however the front end (user area) can be multilingual. See Languages guide for more details.

Where do I setup an e-mail address for messages from visitors to be sent to?

E-mails sent through Contact us and Suggest a business forms are being delivered to website administrator e-mail address. So your admin account e-mail address is the address where messages from visitors will be delivered to. If needed, you may change it in My info section.

Deals

Is a deal always required to last one day (24 hours)?

No, it’s not a rule. Your deals may last several days or even months, In Getsocio you can adjust the deal duration for each deal individually.

What is the “extra payment” field at deal form?

Extra payment is for split payment functionality, it can be very handy for settling up with merchants. For example, you have the deal of $50 worth and you sell it at 50% off i.e. for $25. You set the price $10 and extra payment $15, so the client pays $10 online when buying the coupon and $15 he will be paying at the merchant’s place.

How can I increase the number of items sold?

When editing a deal you can see an Extra purchases field in additional parameters section. It can be used to artificially increase amount of items sold, so just type into it the preferred number.

How can I delete a deal?

The deals, which have orders (or the newsletter for it was sent) cannot be removed, this is essential for accounting. But the deal that has no orders and no newsletter on it may be deleted via the Delete link at Deals page.

I made a test deal and no longer need it. How do I close it?

You can forcefully “end” the deal by editing it and setting the “end date” to the past.

Can I include more than one photo for a deal?

Yes! The deal slideshow feature is available, so you may add several pictures per deal.

Can I offer different types of deals with your platform?

There are four types of deals that can be created at your website: services (coupons to brick-and-mortar establishments), events (coupons to be exchanged for real tickets to some event), goods (tangible items to be shipped) and electronic vouchers (codes to get a discount at 3rd party online shop).

I can not change the deal price. What do I do?

It looks like you are editing the deal which is already published. And some of deal parameters (e.g. price) cannot be changed once the deal is created. However, you can copy the deal, edit it and post once again with new price. Do not forget to end your previous deal with incorrect price.

Do the deals have to be a certain percentage off?

Discounted deals website are supposed to give savings. For your customers to benefit from your website, the discount percentage should be attractive enough to engage them to buy your offers.

Can I have multiple products in one deal?

Sure. Getsocio allows to create multi-options deal with no limit on the amount of products per deal. Please refer to this guide for more information.

Can my customers purchase multiple items in one order?

Yes! Getsocio has shopping cart built to the system, so you can let customers to purchase several products simultaneously.

Payments

How do I get paid? Do clients pay to you and then you send me the amount with already subtracted transaction fee?

No. Money from your customers are never collected by Getsocio. You are the one who receives funds from your clients to your account with the payment system. We apply our fees to your website balance - monthly fee in the beginning of a period and transaction fee right after the order is placed on your website.

Can customers pay with credit cards at my website?

Yes! Getsocio has several payment gateways integrated and most of them support payments with credit and debit cards. For more info on payment process see here.

How secure is the credit card information?

It is totally secure. By design, credit card information is never stored on Getsocio server. When using an “external” payment processor the credit card data are entered by the buyer directly on payment processor site, so they are never seen by Getsocio server. Though, with an “internal” payment processor, the data are entered by the buyer on the payment page of your website, later they are sent to the payment system server and then are discarded. Your site is protected by an encrypted SSL connection, but if you plan to change SSL certificate for any reason, learn how to purchase it for your domain here.

I don't wish to charge my users in USD. Can I get paid in another currency?

Sure. You may change your site currency on the “Currency” tab of Settings page in the Admin section. See the guide for screen shots.

How do I setup the payment gateway?

You can get instructions on setting up default payment systems on your site in our guide. For other payment systems, please refer to the guides in help centers of the payment processor website.

I have set up my payment gateway. How can I run a test transaction to see if it works?

Create a test deal (with a small price, say $1) and then purchase it yourself.

What is the difference between Getsocio pricing plans?

Monthly and transaction fees vary between pricing plans and each plan gives some privileges, though the functionality is same in all plans. Please check our prices page for more information.

My transactions will be in different from USD currency, will they be converted to dollars for transaction fees?

Yes, correct. Getsocio applies actual exchange rate for converting deal currency into USD, so you can be sure that the transaction fee charged is accurate.

Is transaction fee taken from the total amount sold or is it from my share only? Say, I get $10 for $50 deal, do you apply transaction fee to may share of $10 or is it applied to $50?

The transaction fee is applied to the total sum of the order at your website. So if someone buys a deal with $50 price, then transaction fee with Bronze plan will be 5% from $50, which is $2.50

I added new currency and set it as default, but the website balance displayed in $. Why is so?

No matter which currencies you sell deals in, Getsocio bills you in USD. So your website balance and the transaction history are in USD.

Can I change my pricing plan at anytime as my sales increase? How long does it take for the change to take effect?

Yes, you can. If you are upgrading the plan – the changes will propagate immediately.

How can I issue a refund to the customer through my website if needed?

Each of the orders can be refunded through your website within 30 days – there is a "Refund" button available. Some payment systems support refunds through the API, which means that when you click the "Refund" – money will be returned to the customer's card automatically. And if the gateway does not support this functionality, then "Refund" will add funds to the customer's balance at your website.

Is it possible to get down the commissions from 5% to 2%?

Sure. The transaction fee can be as low as 1% with Diamond pricing plan, so once you decide do upgrade the plan, you should go to Billing page of Admin section and change the pricing plan.

What is the payout period (Do site owners pay Getsocio the 5% with each deal sold)?

Getsocio uses a pre-paid commission system i.e. your balance should not become negative and if it does, the website can be suspended.

What if my site gets suspended?

All active deals will be closed and you will not be able to manage the site. To resume the normal operation, you would need to make a payment and subscribe for the payment plan.

Site promotion

Does my site have a referral program?

Yes. By default the referral program is enabled on your site. Each user gets a referral link available at “My Info” page. Users may share their referral link by whatever means they prefer — post it on their blog or social network profile, tweet or email it. When someone clicks the link and then makes a purchase within the activity period, the referral bonus will be created and then website admin can accept it to credit the funds to user's balance on the site. You may adjust program's settings at Bonus program tab of Settings page in Admin section. See Referral program guide for more details.

How can I track my traffic with Google Analytics?

You can easily set up GA on your site using our guide.

I have a blog and I'd like to put a link to it on my daily deal website.

You can add any link either to the top or to the bottom menu of your site. Create new menu item at Menu items page in Admin section and choose External link type.

What are the SEO facilities?

Getsocio provides proper robots.txt and sitemap.xml files, uses search-engine friendly deal URLs and page titles. You can add meta keywords and description to your website pages for better SEO at Pages in Admin section.

Vendors

Can vendors login to my site?

Yes! They can. You can promote any user to vendor, so they can login and view/download/print the coupons sold. See our guide for more info.

How to pay vendors/merchants?

There are few ways to settle with merchants: you can sell free deals at your website and then get money from vendor, you may collect money from customers at your website and then share profit with the vendor and there is also possible to use split payment method – when a customer pays a part of the sum at your website and the rest is payed at the merchant office. Please take a look on our blog post for more information.

Other questions

I can't sign in. What do I need to do?

There are 3 trouble-shooting steps for you to take: check whether CAPS Lock is on on your keyboard (turn it off if that was the case), check cookies in your browser (you will not sign in if they are off), if neither works, use password reset. Just follow the link of that kind: yoursite.getsocio.com/password/new (don’t forget to replace “yoursite” with the name of your site) and check your email for the link to reset the password.

All e-mails from my site come from mail@mydomain.com How can I change it?

Such email address is signed with DKIM signature, which is needed for e-mails delivery, that is why it is not possible to change it.

I need secure https on the purchase page and user login area. How do I go about it?

You don't need to buy SSL certificate as it is provided for free. Check information in our SSL certificate guide.

Who will own user data on my site?

Website admin owns all the data collected by the site. He/she may download the data any time from the “Data export” page in Admin section. The data are exported in CSV format which can be easily imported into any database or simply opened for analysis.

How do I add another site administrator?

You can grant administrator permissions to any user of your site. See for more info.

I got my friend signed up for my site. Can I grant him some funds, so he can get a coupon for free?

Yes! You can raise your friend’s balance. In the Admin section go to “Users” page, click his user name, then enter some amount into “Add balance” box and hit “Add” button. See our guide for screen shots.

I have a custom feature in mind. How can I add it to my site?

Getsocio is a quite flexible platform and we are constantly adding new features. Just let us know and we will discuss it.

I have a database of emails. Can I upload them to my daily deal site?

You cannot upload emails in bulk. Each user should sign up (“opt-in”) directly on your site, or else your deal newsletter would be considered “unsolicited email” (i. e. spam). But you may run invitation campaign via some mass-mailing service and engage those people to turn to your subscribers.

How can I delete a user at my website?

Users cannot be deleted, they can only be disabled, so this way they can’t sign in.

What if I need to cancel my site?

You can cancel your account with one click via Billing page of Admin section – simply click the link “Deactivate my site” (if your website is already deactivated, then no need to click anything, as the website will be automatically closed in 60 days after deactivation). No cancellation fee. Note: all payments made are non-refundable, so if you have some funds on your balance, they will remain until you decide to resume the operation of your site.

How do I prevent a customer from buying a deal once, printing the voucher, then copying it hundred times and giving it to his/her friends?

Getsocio provides several tools to make sure that each coupon will be used one-time only. Please take a look here for more information.

What your policies on adult content are?

Getsocio has only one restriction on the deals you sell – they have to be real, so nobody of your customers is scammed. For the websites with age sensitive content we recommend to enable "Disclaimer screen" option to make sure that visitors turned 18 (or 21) already.

Is Getsocio also available as a stand-alone version?

Getsocio is constantly being developed platform and for now we do not have any specific plans of releasing a standalone version.

Does Getsocio offer website hosting?

Yes. Hosting is included into our services and no additional fee is taken for the hosting.

Where will be hosted my deal site?

When you create your site, it's hosted on our main server. However, when your site gets a lot of traffic, it'd be good to move it to dedicated server. Please contact us if you are interested in this solution.

Is there a demo version of your software?

There is a 14-days free trial. Simply create a site, try everything out and subscribe for a pricing plan if you are ready to go for Getsocio.

What about website's security? How do you prove it? It is very important matter if a serious attack would happen.

There's a wide range of measures we take ranging from data encryption to employee access restrictions, you can read more about them in our privacy statement.

Do you have a fixed lock in period when we sign up or can we terminate the service any time?

No lock-in period, you may terminate the service any time.

Where can I access the email mail@mysite.com?

Such e-mail address is used to send newsletter and other automated e-mails to the users of your site. We do not give any access to it, but you can still use it as, for example, contact e-mail address (you should register this address first, so your customers will be able to contact you with it).

Is there a feature to automatically detect user's current city?

Yes, when creating a location enter coordinates, so the visitors will be forwarded to the right location based on their IP address. You can read more here