Casino deposit bonuses are a common way for the operators to attract new players. Many of the bonuses are given with impossible wagering requirements, this makes it very difficult to withdraw any winnings or clear the bonus ready to cash out.
Below are a selection of the best online casinos and full details of the deposit bonuses, wagering requirements, any bonus codes or promo codes to ensure you get the best deals.
The casinos featured are tried and tested. All comply with legislation and are fully licensed and regulated. It is vital you are playing at a safe and honest online casino, an major factor to consider before playing real money online casino games online.
A trend has developed for “casino bonus hunting” where it is actually possible to get bonuses and cash them out. In effect meeting the requirements and cashing out a bonus is seen getting paid to play casino games. This page is here to help hunters, and players alike find great casino bonuses.
Online Casino Bonuses
How we picked the best casino deposit bonuses
Not only was our mission to find best online casino bonus offers, we also wanted to provide informative details about each casino so readers can decide if it’s right for them. To do this we set off checking google and other casino review sites and tracked down mainly UK casinos to start the process.
Once we had a list which was over 130 casinos to check out we followed a simple 5 step process, which believe me took some time!
Step 1: Check the license & regulation
This is the number 1 priority for anyone looking to join a new online casino. It’s pretty easy to do as reputable casinos and those complying with the laws have o display their lience number which is issued by the UK gambling commission. You can then cross reference this to see how they have been performing.
Once on the commissions website you can check the company name. You can also check licenses they hold, the licensed activities, domain names they operate and trading names under the license. Importantly you can see if an sanctions have been imposed which is a real red flag.
If the casino did not display their license number, had any sanctions or seemed untoward in anyway we discarded it from the list and continued to step 2.
Step 2: Casino Deposit Bonuses t&c’s
As our site is all about casino deposit bonus then we looked at the casinos terms and conditions. these can be very confusing and there is a motion to make them much easier to understand. The jargon used doesn’t make it obvious what you are actually signing up for.
We came across some casino bonuses that would be almost impossible to clear, and if you won chances are you would never be able to cash out your winnings. Casinos with strange terms or unfavorable conditions were again thrown away. It is worth noting that the bigger bonuses are often not the best. There is a lot more to ranking how good a casino bonus is than looking at the money available.
Step 3: Deposits, withdrawals and banking
To test a casino thoroughly we had to make a deposit, check banking methods, claiming the casino deposit bonus. And hopefully make a withdrawal. This is essential to gauge just how good the casino actually is. The number one reason for complaints about online casinos is banking related. Most often the complaints are in regard to how long it takes which is often unfair to the casino itself.
Banking methods themselves were looked at because simply put we are all different. Some players like to use paypal casinos so they can keep casino cash away from their normal living expenses. Some like to deposit by mobile billing. The more methods available the more the casino is paying attention to what people want.
Casino banking restrictions
Some casinos have restrictions in place which limit the amount of cash outs you can have, or the total amount you can cash out, we looked closely at these too. On the opposite some restrict the amount of deposits you can make, this isn’t a bad thing and is all inline with safer gambling, however if you’re a multi millionaire and want to spend some serious money you need to be able to do so.
When making a cashout we ranked them in order of how smooth the whole operation was. Most if not all Casinos now need to see proof of ID and address before allowing you to withdraw. This isn’t their fault, it’s legislation to stop problem gambling, protect the underage and help against money laundering. We didn’t mark them down for this it’s just the way it is.
A pet hate of mine is when they hold your withdrawal for too long giving you an option to reverse it. Casinos were marked down a little for this, if we win, we want to cash out when we want to. We don’t want them tempting us to change our mind and having money classed as “pending”.
We scored them accordingly on:
- Number of deposit methods
- Minimum & maximum amounts
- Withdrawal times
- Any restrictions
Step 4: Have fun, what are the games like?
This was the fun part if the mission to look, play and test the huge variety of casino games available. You’ll find most casinos offer the same kind of games from the same game developers, the same goes for slots. There are a handful of casinos however that have exclusive games just for them, or slots you can only play at their casino. While this sounds great and unique these “exclusive games” aren’t usually that good . they are just a slight tweak on a traditional casino game.
We all want similar games but some might want to play pontoon instead of blackjack. Others might want 3 card brag instead of 3 card poker. If the site had more games to offer, more variations and had betting limits to suit all budgets, they scored higher than those that didn’t.
When it came to slots we were looking for a mix of jackpot slots and video slits in particular. Any casino that had fruit machines or old skool one arm bandits got some extra points for nostalgia.
Step 5: Customer support
This is actually a very important factor to take into consideration. If the online casino has good support they care about customers, if they care about customers it’s likely the casino deposit bonus is a good one.
We threw all kinds of random questions at the support staff and some really didn’t care. Other however were fantastic and not only efficient but had a great sense of humor to go with it. The majority of casino support aren’t based in the UK and English won’t be their first language.
Nothing racist whatsoever but we preferred UK based staff on the phone, and live chat provided by UK residents. It just made things so much easier.
Most often the support teams seem to be reading off a list in front of them and have no real answers to questions. The best support was easy to spot and they really were amazing. Nothing was too much trouble. The better the support, the higher the rating, simple!
Now we ranked them in order
Once we had scored each casino based on the above criteria we put all the scores into a speadsheet and got the overall results. Marking them each out of 5 but more precise than that. You’ll see scores going from 1 star, to 2.7 to 4.6, so there was a broad range of scores that the casinos could get.
A little bit more emphasis was put on the deposit bonus score because that’s our sole purpose. We found this to be a fair way of scoring and rating the casinos. Not only that it put us in a good string position to do full open and honest casino reviews.
So there you have it. That’s how we ranked, rated and reviewed the online casinos, and the best made it onto our list of casino bonuses. It wasn’t rocket science, but it was exhaustive and fun at times. We hope the info is useful and please check back as we have far from finished adding casino reviews, and casino deposit bonuses to our list.