iBegin Source: Local Business Directory for Everyone

ReviewMe gave me an opportunity to write a paid review of iBegin Source. In short, iBegin Source is a “wiki for local business data (YellowPages)”. Currently available for local business in US only, this site lets you access essential information about any company, retail outlet or corporate office along with the address, phone number on Google Map.

While the information is freely available on their site, you can also download this business data from their website. License for non-commercial use is available for free. However, if you want to make some profits out of this data you’ll have to pay for the commercial license. They will give full business data for 1000$ per state or if you purchase business information for the entire United States, you’ll get a 20% rebate, making it just 40,000$. In total, they claim to have over 10,820,479 business listing, which are already cleaned up (no duplicates). Commercial license get geocoded address, which means all address like 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. NW, Washington DC will be converted into appropriate GPS coordinates.

If you are running a business in United States, you can submit it to iBegin Source free of cost. To maintain the quality of the business data, they have wiki style editing for all members, you can edit any business data, if you find it incorrect.

There is no much use of iBegin outside United States. Although, they’ve  quality information, the navigation is quite hard. They need to work on improving their overall usability of the site. I had a hard time finding what they really offered! Their homepage contains nothing more than what they have opened up recently.

John Chow has also post a similar paid review, check it out. Also check out the 15 things iBegin Source does better.

This is a paid review. However, the views expressed are completely honest and my own.