The mattress industry is hundreds of years old. We have always found it odd that most mattress review sites list rarely contain any of the actual top ten mattress manufacturers. Are we to believe that only newly hatched start up brands are the only companies that can build a top ten rated mattress? In our research, we were only able to find one legitimate mattress review website. This website offers direct consumer input alongside their professional opinion. They review both bed in a box brands as well as most of the current top ten mattress manufactures. You will also notice they DO NOT provide a Top Ten List. We find this approach to offer the most honest input with no brand bias.
The mattress industry is very competitive and brands are paying HEFTY commissions (up to 20% of the total cost of the mattress) to third-party reviewers and affiliate websites in order to be relevant. You will notice a lot of the same brands on various websites with top ten ratings. By viewing these websites and YouTube videos, one can almost get a sense of a mattress company’s advertising budget. It’s important to note these listings come with a financial bias based on their potential cut of the sale as stated above. The real question is, what is the mattress company sacrificing in the actual product to afford such generous advertising budgets? Affiliate link disclosures are mandated by the FTC. It is highly recommended that you make note of any review websites offering any arranged ranking lists such as top ten mattresses, top twenty mattresses for side sleepers, etc... It’s reasonable to assume that the brands closer to the top of any list directly correlates to that brand’s generosity in terms of kickbacks. The world is changing and you should consider these websites to be nothing more than a new kind of mattress retailer. In this new world search engines and review websites have simply replaced the cost of maintaining a physical storefront. Mattress review websites are a “place” of business, just one without a physical storefront.
Most may not know unless one has scoured reddit countless hours that some, if not most, of these review websites and affiliate websites are owned and operated by the actual mattress brands themselves. It’s true as seen on that famous episode of Adam Ruins Everything.
The list may shock you… Buyer Beware. See for yourself below.
Magnuson, Michael. “Review Sites With Ties to Mattress Companies.” Good Bed, Goodbed.com, 2021, www.goodbed.com/guides/biased-mattress-review-websites/.
Sleepopolis sleepopolis [dot] com Notes: Casper financed the acquisition of this site by lending $5 million to the owners of Mattress Clarity in 2017. After an ownership change in 2020, this site is now part of the same company as Mattress Advisor, which has ties to Leesa (see below). |
Mattress Clarity mattressclarity [dot] com Notes: The owners of this site borrowed $5 million from Casper to acquire Sleepopolis in 2017. After an ownership change in 2020, this site is now part of the same company as Mattress Advisor, which has ties to Leesa (see below). |
We believe mattresses can be purchased on-line as well as off-line. We encourage consumers with a more discerning comfort or firmness preference to try before they buy. Our over 40 years experience in this business has assisted a great deal in developing this purchasing guide. Our priority is to eliminate our customers hassle, frustration, buyer remorse and waste. In the end we believe this will be better for both our customers and our environment.