» What it does: This website monitors social media, message boards, newsletters and more in the travel industry to find inexpensive routes and flight sales.

» What’s hot: ExitFares locates remarkable flight deals; it also leads you to little-known websites that hunt down cheap flights and then show proof of how they were discovered. On the day I tested the site, I found a Los Angeles-to-Chicago round trip on American for $81 (Airfarewatchdog.com), San Francisco-to-Honolulu round trip for $338 on United (secretflying.com) and Boston to Hong Kong for $504 round trip on American (theflightdeal.com). What about the taxes, you say? Included. For me, knowing when and where the deals came from was the selling point. You might see "Found 3 hours ago at hopper.com" or "Found 2 hours ago at theflightdeal.com."

» What’s not: I signed up after it launched earlier this year, but then its emails went into the nether regions of my inbox, and I never saw them until I stumbled on them by chance. Make sure you add its email address to the appropriate areas of your contact list so you can actually see the deals. Because if a great flight deal lands in the middle of a forest, does anybody take it?

Jen Leo, Los Angeles Times