So now that you’ve decided to leave the real world and take off for internet space in your search for a partner, you need to decide which online dating site you’ll entrust to play matchmaker. You can be a paying customer, or you can join one of the free dating sites. This article will discuss your options if you’d like to pay to date; next week’s column will review some of the prime singles sites for online-daters on a budget.
The two most popular online dating sites for paying customers are Match.com and eHarmony.com and I’ve had experiences with both.
Match.com Pros
- With Match.com, you’re allowed full freedom in browsing profiles and contacting whomever you choose. While Match.com may suggest people it thinks you may like in its Daily Top 5, you are not limited to a certain number of people who meet a given “chemistry” criteria. Match.com does not presume to know who you’ll like.
- It’s affordable. If you sign up for a six-month membership, for example, it can be as cheap as $15.99/month. There’s even a “meet somebody in six months or your money back” guarantee. Keep in mind, however, that this guarantee comes with strings attached; you have to prove you’re actively searching out a mate with a minimum number of monthly emails and responses. Sounds exhausting unless you enjoy a challenge that involves going on a date every night.
- You can clearly see what people look like from the pictures. I’ve seen sites that somehow manage to reduce the picture quality to the point that your “blind date” is truly that—you have no idea how they’ll look in person from the fuzzy pictures on their profile.
Match.com Cons
- This is a pro in my mind, but could be a con for some – as aforementioned, Match.com doesn’t pick your matches. It’s up to you to do the dirty work and peruse profiles to narrow down your options. You need to know what you’re looking for, or you’ll be overwhelmed by the 5 million men/women online and you’ll try having a date with all of them. Totally inefficient.
- You don’t know who’s a paying member and who’s not. Non-paying members of Match.com can’t do anything but wink. So somebody may wink at you, but then never respond to your email – because they can’t! Just assume if you don’t hear back from somebody, then he or she is a non-paying member who can’t send/receive emails and move on.
eHarmony Pros
- eHarmony decides who you’ll be romantically attracted to according to a comprehensive personality profile it generates based on your answers to an overwhelmingly large number of questions.
eHarmony Cons
- eHarmony decides who you’ll be romantically attracted to according to a comprehensive personality profile it generates based on your answers to an overwhelmingly large number of questions. This means – if it doesn’t generate anybody to whom you could envision being attracted, you’re out of luck – no more options until eHarmony identifies another possible match.
- There are at least six or seven steps to work through before actually getting to correspond with an eHarmony potential match. They include sending multiple-choice questions to one another and sending “must-haves & don’t-wants” (pre-chosen lists of deal-makers and deal-breakers for your ideal partner). Who has this kind of time? I think I made it through step 2 with one potential partner before losing interest.
- It’s expensive. I did a free trial, but I think the price for a month was upwards of $50. If you don’t meet anybody, wouldn’t you rather have met nobody for the price of $16 than the price of $50?
- The pictures were somewhat poor quality. If eHarmony generates, for example, three potential matches, and you can’t tell what they look like (for example, only head-shots, or simply poor quality resolution), it’s hard to envision spending weeks going through the arduous multiple-step process just to finally get to the point of actual correspondence so you can send an email that says, “Hey, you! Put up a better picture so I can actually see what you look like!”
- I felt scammed. I’m a stable, smart, gainfully employed, attractive, funny (at least – I laugh at my jokes) female, yet after laboriously completing my personality profile, eHarmony insulted me by deciding there were only three people within fifty miles of me who might possibly match me. Conveniently, once my free-trial was up and I declined to pay, eHarmony suddenly found dozens of matches for me – matches I’d be able to see as soon as I signed up for a membership, as it told me by way of emails for a good six-months after my trial expired.
Match.com vs eHarmony? In my experience Match.com wins by a landslide.
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