CoverHound’s technology helps people compare multiple insurance policies and plans. The startup has raised a $4.5 million round to grow the team and develop new products. Its engine collects and compares data about car, motorcycle, renters, and homeowners insurance. Consumers can also buy and manage their plans directly on CoverHound and adapt their policies as circumstances change.

“We’ve spent the past year building an insanely complex comparison engine that takes just seconds to sift through tens of thousands of different carrier and coverage combinations to find you the best value,” said founder and CEO Basil Enan in a statement. But we’re just getting started. Our dream is to become the brand that consumers trust for all of their insurance needs.”

Insurance is a massive industry that has remained relatively untouched by startups. Changes in national health policy caused a huge uptick in the number of consumer health engagement companies last year, and other insurance verticals are ripe for disruption as well.

“Insurance is a massive industry that’s seen far too little innovation and is still terribly inefficient,” said investor Tom Loverro of RRE Ventures. “CoverHound empowers consumers for the first time to make informed auto and home insurance buying decisions rather than simply relying on the last commercial they saw on TV.”

RRE Ventures led this round, with participation from Bullpen Capital and existing investor Blumberg Capital. This is CoverHound’s first institutional round of funding. Enan initially started the company in 2010 after spending seven years working in the insurance industry. The founders participated in the AngelPad incubator program in 2011 and have since launched the platform nationwide and added a long list of strategic partners, including Progressive, Safeco Insurance, Travelers, and Fidelity property group.

CoverHound is based in San Francisco and has raised $6.5 million to date.

Within the past few months, McClure’s has established 500 Startups funds in Mexico and India and revealed that over half of its latest class is based outside of the US. Germany is taking off as a entrepreneurial hub in Europe, so it is no surprise that McClure wants to have a presence in this market.

Versus IO is a comparison engine based on a natural language algorithm. It culls information from around the web to present a straightforward side-by-side perspective. Users enter two things they want to compare, such as electronic products, cities, or services, and the system will present a list of pros and cons.

Pitting the Apple iPhone 5 against the iPhone 4s indicates that the iPhone 5 is thinner and lighter with higher resolution and more RAM memory. A comparison of San Francisco and New York reveals that San Francisco is closer to mountains, notably more Facebook users, a greater number of singles, and a lower murder rate. New York, on the other hand, has more airports, a younger overall population, and is more ethnically diverse.

The German startup launched six months ago as a product comparison engine. It introduced the city comparison engine in October and now includes 240 cities, factoring in over 100 criteria such as education, crime rates, economy, climate, and infrastructure. Now, the site can make 10 million comparisons, is available in 18 languages, and receives 2.5 million visitors a month.

German investors HTGF and JMES Investments put $879K into Versus IO in April. The team works out of The Factory, a startup incubator in Berlin that received €1 million from Google in November.

Next on the agenda, 500 Startups Antarctica fund?

Small business owners have enough on their plates, without having to worry about telecom services. Wiresurfer attempts to remove this annoyance from entrepreneurs’ stack of concerns by providing a comparison engine for business communications.

Whether it is a neighborhood Italian restaurant or a “big data” startup, businesses need phone and Internet services. Navigating the tricky waters of network providers is confusing and time-consuming. Packages are difficult to decipher and no consolidated place exists for small business owners to view all their options.

Wiresurfer functions similarly to Expedia or Kayak and compare deals and details side-by-side. You go to the website, pinpoint your location, and then see what plans are available and at what terms and prices.

According to a Gartner report, the average small business owner spends about 25 hours deciphering and procuring telecom services for their company.

Cofounder Jeff Kaufman spent years of his career in the telecom industry. Talking to customers, he realized that they often defaulted to the most familiar provider and were unaware of the full scope of their choices.

“Telecom carriers make it virtually impossible to do an apples to apples comparison of their deals with other deals,” he said. “There is also not a single place to find all the deals offered by all the carriers. On Wiresurfer, ou click on a map, browse deals, and order the right one through us.”

The site’s design should be very straightforward and user friendly. Twelve carriers have already signed on, and the team will continue to add more. Ultimately, they hope to offer the No. 1 resource for telecom services in the world.

Wiresurfer is one of 75 companies and 6 student “alpha” startups chosen by VentureBeat to launch at the DEMO Fall 2012 event taking place this week in Silicon Valley. After we make our selections, the chosen companies pay a fee to present. Our coverage of them remains objective.

Top image courtesy of Blend Images, Shutterstock