Available to almost anyone looking for the best homeowners insurance, Allstate - as its name might suggest - covers every state in the US, including Alaska. This national coverage is complemented by a network of local agents, who provide the local knowledge you need to make an informed decision.
Allstate is a big player, the second largest homeowners insurance provider in the country. Its size means Allstate is able to offer a wide range of attractive discounts, and its selection of online tools and educational resources is as good as anything we’ve come across in the sector. Allstate also sells its own policies (rather than outsourcing them to a third-party underwriter) which should ensure consistency across the country.
Allstate boasts an excellent mobile app, which is extremely useful for creating inventories of belongings, and a range of customizable extras. If there’s a minor niggle here it is decent, but not great, customer satisfaction scores. In the latest annual JD Power Home Insurance survey, Allstate scores three out of five for overall customer satisfaction: not a bad score, but not a leading one. All in all though, Allstate is a solid and dependable option for anyone looking for home insurance.
Allstate Homeowners Insurance review: Features
- Industry leading online tools
- Good customizations
- A range of discounts
Information support: Allstate’s website features an excellent resource center.
Customer support: Telephone, email, and postal support available, though no live chat. You can also tweet the company.
Interface: Browser and mobile app.
Allstate’s standout feature is its comprehensive range of resources. In fact, Allstate is something of a one-stop-shop for basic insurance information, making it a good choice for home buyers looking for their first insurance package. Does home insurance cover storm damage (or, for that matter, pet damage)? What is hazard insurance? Are you better off renting or owning? All these questions, and many more, are asked and answered here.
There are nice, simple, informative guides, answering many of the queries home insurance customers might have. Allstate provides some excellent tools, too. We were particularly impressed with its GoodHome tool, which provides personalized tips for specific locations, based on local records. Having a comprehensive inventory of your belongings is crucial if disaster strikes, and Allstate lets you achieve this through its Digital Locker app, which stores photos of your belongings in the cloud. These are genuinely useful resources.
Allstate also stands out with its range of policy add-ons. On top of standard cover, you can add flood insurance, identity theft protection, sports and musical equipment cover, and many more. You’ll pay for them, of course, but it is hard to imagine a reasonable homeowner-based circumstance that couldn’t be covered by Allstate if you wanted it to be.
Finally, Allstate offers a very good range of discounts. You can get money off for bundling your home and auto insurance, for fitting home safety equipment and for simply signing up for an Allstate policy. If you don’t claim for a while, you open up another potential source of savings.
Allstate Homeowners Insurance review: Interface and usability
- Easy to use and navigate
- Very useful mobile app
- Customer service above average but no more
Allstate is designed to be easy-to-use. As already mentioned, its comprehensive suite of resources is among the best in the sector, and its huge network of agents makes it easy to talk to a real person. As the company states: “Whether you need to protect your car on the streets of New York City or your cabin in the Rockies, Allstate has an agent in your neighborhood that will help you get covered.”
Allstate homeowners insurance policies are highly customizable, so working alongside an agent to get the very best cover for your location and circumstances is important. The Agent Finder tool helps you get straight to the agent who can best serve your needs.
You can manage your account online through Allstate’s intuitive interface, and if you need to make a claim, there are four ways in which to file and track. Contact your local agent, file and track the claim over the phone, use your online account or do everything through the useful mobile phone app. However you like to do things, Allstate offers a solution.
These are excellent options, but as we mentioned above, Allstate is not perfect. According to the JD Power Home Insurance survey, the company scores slightly below its major rivals in terms of customer satisfaction - it doesn’t do badly, but the standards reached by the best in the sector are not usually met.
Allstate Homeowners Insurance review: Quality of product
- A long history and complete market coverage
- Up to date tools and resources show commitment to innovation
Allstate is a large nationwide provider with a history stretching back to 1931. It knows the market, it knows its customers and built up the best part of a century’s worth of experience.
This is perhaps best demonstrated by its hundreds strong disaster response team, one of the largest in the country.
And Allstate has moved with the times too, with a cutting edge mobile app and a complete library of online resources. These show an attention to detail that is not always present in the insurance sector, while free automatic payment is another useful tool. Essentially, Allstate has almost all the bases covered.
Should you use Allstate Homeowners Insurance?
Allstate is well known for a complete range of insurance products and its full-featured homeowners insurance is one of the most popular on the market. It’s easy to see why. Allstate’s excellent resources and wide network of agents make the company easy to deal with, and an ideal choice for new homeowners insurance customers. Those seeking something beyond a basic policy shouldn't be disappointed either, thanks to a good range of valuable add-ons.
The JD Power Home Insurance survey suggests that Allstate is not bad, but not the best, when it comes to customer service. And though prices are reasonable, you probably need to make use of its discounts to really make its offer competitive. Luckily, there are plenty of those.
All in all, Allstate offers a well-designed and dependable homeowners insurance solution, which would be even better with an improved focus on customer service and support.
