The Great 'Cheapest & Best Internet Dating' Sites

Percy1983

Magicboo wrote: »

take the opportunity to start a conversation with her-tell her you liked the look of her but didn't have time to email so put her in your faves for later-it might be the opening you need!

Sounds a good plan to me.

Good Luck.

Top_Banana_2

Will do!

Hope I don't look like a stalker!

Kira000

I was a member of a few for a while, Match and Parship. Didnt like Match at all, got loads of guys just focussed on looks (and no i'm not hit with an ugly stick) and hoping for a leg over. Parship i preferred as you dont automatically see photos, and the matching is done by personality and life aspirations/goals/opinions. Met some decent guys on there who had reasonable amounts in common with.
I decided to give it a break after 12 months, and have some girlie time. In which time i got a message from a free dating site OKCupid, which i had been signed up for for yeeeaars for the silly tests (i.e which character from Buffy are you). I usually binned the messages, but on this occassion, i read it, and saw the guy was from about 20 minutes away from me, and after a few hours using their online chat facility, agreed to go for a drink on a mad whim. That was 4 years ago- i effectively moved in 3 weeks after we met, we've been been married 1.5 years, and first baby due in December!!

OKCupid is quite fun, and for a free site is pretty good, not too grubby and sleasy, and there are lots of people on there. Howeveryou do get some stupid messages, so you need to do some filtering, and being international, you can get lots of people from strange places message wanting to be your new best friend. So just bin those. Worth a play though!

Kx

Novice111

Hi! I am relatively new to this online dating thing, however, I have been on Plenty of Fish, Oasis, and a hand full of other sites. Plenty of Fish i found to be ok and and I cant say I was too keen on the Oasis site so I'm not sure if this online dating is for me although it would be really nice to meet someone on one of this sites. I did find a new online dating site which I have just joined and it has really cool features that I have not seen before but it looks like it is only new and there is not very many people or members, on the other hand I have been in contact with 3 other members almost straight away. It has only been just general chit chat but enjoyable. Given I am new to this I was just wondering if anyone else has any knowledge of this site and if it has been around for a while and people dont want to join it or if it's worth giving it a go and see what happens. the site is activdates.com
if any one has any suggestions for really cool dating sites I would love some help.

Thanks!

mackemdave

Couple of free ones are
smooch.com
freedating.co.uk

Gordon_Gecko

I've tried a few over the last few years and preferred the paid sites like match.com as I figured that people would be more serious about wanting to meet someone if they had paid a fee.

A few friends have been on various sites too, and one that I didn't get a chance to try but heard good things about was mysinglefriend.co.uk - although it does rely on you getting a friend to write a good review of you!

I ended up trying speed dating, and much preferred that to online dating - so well worth a try!

enessimo07

I have been using luckylovers.net for a few years. I can easily say that there are wonderful girls who are waiting their soulmates. You can easily see their profiles and photos. Most of them write what they exactly want from a guy. You should really try luckylovers.net

mackemdave

enessimo07 wrote: »

I have been using luckylovers.net for a few years. I can easily say that there are wonderful girls who are waiting their soulmates. You can easily see their profiles and photos. Most of them write what they exactly want from a guy. You should really try luckylovers.net

Wouldnt touch the site with a barge pole

giantmutantbroccoli

I decided to give internet dating a try, did a bit of research and decided on okcupid and plentyoffish as the two free sites that looked the least dodgy. Okcupid has been pretty good so far, most of the people there do actually read your profile before messaging, and there's a decent mix of different ages and preferences. I like the layout -it's a bit social-networky, a bit like mybook or facespace or whatever I like the fact you can limit searches according to age, and I love the matching system. You answer a ton of questions about what you would or wouldn't do in various situations, and what you are or are not looking for in a partner, and then tell them what answers you would want to see from someone else. Then you get a % match in terms of how well their answers match yours, and a %friend or enemy according to how their answers differ from the answers you said you wanted to see. All pretty cool.
The profiles vary of course, but mostly seem to be written by literate guys who sound relatively human.
One thing about okcupid that I found very strange is they have (according to wikipedia) a hidden rating system. You can rate people according to how attractive you think they (or their personalities) are - not too weird, right? But all the ratings you're given contribute towards decided how you appear in search results. If you're consistently rated as attractive (4 or 5 stars) you eventually get an email to say that you're attractive and you will have access to better looking matches in your search results. So when an attractive person searches, they only get pretty faces in their results. Likewise if you're consistently rated as unattractive you will be given less attractive people as matches - although for some reason they don't send you an email to let you know! TBH I find that bit kind of creepy.


I'm not too keen on plentyoffish. For starters, out of 80+ messages I've had from that site only 3 were from people who appeared to have read my profile. I clearly stated I was looking for someone aged 20-28 (I'm 25) but I still get messages from guys aged 35-55 (oldest was 59!). All the messages were generic "Hi U look cute wanna get together/go out/ sexyfuntimes???". A lot of the profiles contain "red flag" warnings, iykwim - things like "my last GF was a total b!7ch, I'm lookin for a Nice Girl" or "I know how women like to be treated" or even "looking for a girl 17-25 who's looking for a sugar daddy!". While googling for tips on how to make my profile not suck I found a whole host of sites with tips for guys on how to pick up girls on plentyoffish, so that may have something to do with it. Of course it depends what you're looking for - but if you're looking to have a conversation with someone before you meet them in realy life, I'd say that in my experience plentyoffish is not the best site for that.

Top_Banana_2

Hi GiantMutantBrocolli

(That name totally rocks, by the way!)

I share your thoughts on PlentyofFish. The bad guys who write idiotic messages or simply 'cut n paste' them make it much harder for us normalists who actually put in the effort. They make us all look bad and we get treated with suspicion.

The thing that bugs me most is when I read a woman's profile and made the effort to comment on it or ask a question on it they just reply back with something like 'Hi hun, yeah I'm gd. U?'. It's so frustrating!