Review of Date.com

Every relationship begins with a date. Join Date.com today!

Subscription costs

Payments by credit card
30 days $24.95
90 days for $49.95 USD
365 days for $95.95 USD ($7.99 a month)

Payments by certified check or by money order
90 days for $49.95 USD
180 days for $74.95 USD
365 days for $95.95 USD

What is free: To post a profile and search, receive emails and use instant messenger

Special Offers: Online dating is fun, safe and easy. Sign up free!

Summary of Date.com and Date.ca (Canada)

DATE.COM is one of the oldest dating sites online and have been going since 1997. They have over 2 million members on their database. This site is designed to suit the serious dater who is looking for a long term relationship. Most of their members are based in and around the larger cities of North America. If you live in a big city, you will find a lot of success using this site.

Date.com also caters for singles in a lot of other regions in the world including the UK and Australia.

They have over 10% of their members over 55 years of age and seem to have an equal distribution of male and female members across the age groups.

Signing up process
To set up a profile, search and show interest in other users but if you want to make connections you need to upgrade to the Gold membership. With this you get some advanced features, such as Email, Instant Messaging and the Chat Room. With the free membership, you can search by location, age, interests, and 100 other personal preferences. The members who join Date.com are generally professional, educated and are all looking for a meaningful long term relationship.

An additional feature that Date.com has is Date Mobile is available for members in North America. With this service you can view profiles and connect to other members by SMS text. To set up this service, you are given a number to text and you will get a reply back with what to do next. When you become a member, you can even add a picture using your mobile phone to your WAP profile.

The costs for this service are:
DateMobile SMS – 50¢ USD for every message you receive including replies to commands that you send and the charges will appear on your wireless phone bill.
DateMobile WAP – A monthly charge of $4.99 USD will be charged to your wireless phone bill which allows you unlimited access to your DateMobile WAP service.

DATE.COM sometimes organises cruises and other events to allow singles to meet face to face.

Thumbs Up
It has a good quality membership and their online magazine, Date.info, has some very well written articles and is of better quality than other sites.

Thumbs Down
Its features are not as up to date as some other sites.

“Date.com is a community of two million active singles all seeking that special someone. Create your free profile, search and show interest in others. Then upgrade to a Gold Membership to email and chat with other singles. Invest in your social life today, at Date.com!”

Find A Date Now! – Date.com or on Date.ca now!

Popularity: 12% [?]

Review of Dating Direct

Subscription costs

Standard membership is free.

Premier Membership costs are as follows (prices are in GBP):

• • 1 Month (30 days) costs just £24.99
• • 3 Months (90 days) costs just £44.99
• • 6 Months (180 days) costs just £59.99

What is free: Standard membership, browsing.

Special Offers:

Summary

DatingDirect advertises itself as the largest dating networks in the UK but it also includes a lot of people from Europe too. You can select which region or country you are interested in.

The signing up process:

To sign up on DatingDirect and to add a profile and photo is free. You fill in your profile and then you can proceed to searching the database for dates. You are also directed to a page where you can leave a voice greeting, which will of course increase your chances of getting some hits.

An unusual feature here is that you get assigned a user id number that you have to use when you sign in, which adds to the hassle of remembering yet another number and password. For users in the UK, there are some special services like being able to SMS others (you get 5 for free, then 10p each) and announcements of parties on the home page. Their cupid mail service will email you with new matches every week. Other than this, there are no other ways to make contact, you can’t chat or IM or use message boards.

Some of the profiles on this site are quite sparse compared to other dating sites, which might be a result of the simple sign up process and quite a few don’t have photos. This may be more due to the membership than the fault of the site itself, although it can do more to encourage some more dynamic profiles. Only when you want to start communicating with someone, you have to upgrade to the premier membership.

With this membership, you you will then be able to send unlimited messages to as many other members as you wish and have full use of the “Premier Search” function which allows you to narrow down your search for your ideal partner. When your premier membership expires and you don’t renew it, you revert back to being a standard member. You can even pay by cheque or postal order.

Dating Direct also holds occasional parties under the Chemistry brand and for about £25, you can go along to meet about hundreds of singles.

If you are in the UK, Dating Direct might be a good option to meet some local singles and to attend their parties.

Thumbs Up

You can search for someone within your area by postcode and they will only bill you once for the premier membership choice that you have selected. It won’t automatically charge your credit card when this expires.

Thumbs Down

As the signing up process doesn’t require you to fill in a lot of details in your profile, you end up with a lot of skimpy profiles of other members too. Very limited ways to contact other members.

Popularity: unranked [?]

Review of Meetic UK

Review of Meetic:

Subscription costs

1 Month £20.35
3 Months £40.95
12 Months £82.20

Women FREE

What is free: Free membership for women.

Special Offers: You can get a free personality profile with Ulteem when you have registered.

Summary

Meetic has over 10 million members over Europe ( being owned by a French company) and Meetic UK has an enormous database of UK singles. It is the largest European dating website and it prides itself on keeping the privacy of its members and the integrity of the profiles of members that they have. After a recent partnering with Lycos, it now has a very user friendly website with a lot of great features.

The signing up process
With Meetic, you have to fill in a preliminary form before you can get into the site to start searchin. This is to because they place a lot of importance on their privacy policy and confidentiality. You just need to give some basic details to get in, and then choose to fill in a more detailed profile later. When you get to this, it is quite a detailed and lengthy profile to ensure accurate matching. You can even record a voice message.

The search criteria is really detailed and includes all personal and physical attributes too. The results generated will display a lot of information of the matches that they have found.

The other features that are unique on this online dating site is that you can search for matches within your area, or with the same birthday or some other details. You can then send them a mail or even a voice message, giving you some new ways to communicate than other dating sites. Like some other sites, you can also chat to other people who show up as being online. When you visit your home page, you can see details of the last email, or last chat with another members.

Although women have access to all these features for free, they can also buy a “girls pass” which allows you to :
• Find out who dreams of meeting a girl like you.
• Filter which guys can contact you.
• Use Meetshake
• Surf the ad-free version of meetic
• Get premium customer service

This is one of the most impressive and comprehensive online dating website for the UK and Europe. They have thought a lot about how to get their members to communicate and making online dating a fun and pleasurable experience.

Thumbs Up
Since membership for women is free, this ensures that the membership grows and that men who use the service will find that the women that they find interesting on the site can respond without having to pay a subscription, unlike other sites.

Thumbs Down
None that we saw.

Popularity: unranked [?]

Review of uDate UK

Review of www.udate.co.uk

Subscription costs
1 Month : £24.95
3 Months : £49.95 0r £16.65 per month
6 Months : £69.90 or £11.65 per month

What is free: You can browse for free and sign up for a free trial. They don’t take your credit card details.

Special Offers : n/a
Summary
Udate in the UK has over a million members with thousands joining up every month so there will be a lot of members for you to date.

When you sign up and complete your profile, you can then make some quick choices of what kind of relationship you are looking for and their profile. This is made easy by ticking a list of boxes, takes 2 minutes. The next page then immediately takes you to the list of members who match the boxes you ticked. You can browse the list of matches they found for you including pictures and personal profiles.

One of their unique features is that you can see who is online and send them a whisper which is like an instant message. You can upgrade to a paid membership and initiate emails with other members through your private email box.

There is a tab called encounters which shows you who has looked at your profile and so you can expect them to know that you have looked at their profile too. If there is interest, they will get in touch. You can also see who has added you as a friend and which appears high in the match list. For a lot of people, this feature is what makes udate a favourite with other online daters. You can increase your success rate if you reply to someone who has browsed you and added you as a friend. It makes you less hesitant to email that person to start a conversation as it takes a of the guesswork in whether your profile is interesting to other person.

Occasionally you will be sent emails with details of new members who matches your criteria.

All in all, udate is a very easy site to use and to browse. The joining procedure is simple and the profile creation is quick. You can browse matches within a few minutes of joining up.

Thumbs Up
You can upload your photo to your profile in about half and hour rather than the 24 hours that some sites take. Quick sign up process and free to browse.

Thumbs Down
You can’t switch off from people you are not interested in and don’t want to talk to and you will continually be matched to this person. You can’t read emails that are sent to you unless you are a paid member.

 

Popularity: unranked [?]