Free Dating Sites

Before joining a totally free singles service, you should probably read about the potential drawbacks of using them.

Is it Genuinely Free?

If you have tried browsing for 'free singles services' then you already know that several of the websites that you visit do actually charge a fee.

The standard business model for reputable singles services is to allow potential users to create a profile, browse and perhaps even send messages without a fee, but to require membership before the service can actually be used for getting to know other users. Usually one or both directions of communication are only on offer to paid members - either you can look at e-mails but not send any, or you can send e-mails but not read any that you receive until you have paid up.

There is nothing remotely wrong with this, it is simply the best commercial model and it does allow you to determine how useful you find a site before you hand over any fee.

The problem comes when services advertise themselves in a misleading way that indicates they are genuinely a free singles service when they aren't. Watch out for free dating services which are only pretending to be free. Please note that we check out the sites we list on this site to make sure they don't do this.

If it's Free, do I Truly Want to Use it?

Despite our comments above, there are a few online singles services that really are free - no commissions payable and anyone can join and use the service however they want.

The business model for such services is typically advertising revenue and this is the first problem with them. Some of the free singles sites we've visited have pages so loaded with advertising that it is difficult to work out what is going on. This is understandable as it's typically how the service owners make money, but in our opinion being sent a screen full of advertising is not conducive to finding a partner. In fact, in many cases the advertisements are selling other, fee paying dating services (sometimes pretending to be other free websites, see above). The cynical may even think many of these free online singles sites are put together so users will give up and click on the income generating advertisments placed by fee-based singles websites!

The 2nd problem with the free dating sites was discussed in the first sentence in this section - anyone can join and anyone can use the site in any way they want. When individuals pay for a service, they are generally serious on the subject of what they are doing. However free dating services can attract all sorts of people who are not at all serious. Additionally the lack of payment means there is no checking - not even the basic checking of someone's name against their credit card information. On a subscription-based site at least you know that even if you only know a user by their nickname, the company which runs the site knows who they are.

The last completely free dating site visited by our reviewers had a chat room in which we 'lurked' and discovered what appeared to be a group of teenagers boasting on the subject of the offensive e-mails they had been posting to other members. They had been reported before but there is no way to prevent someone from running multiple accounts so they had just registered again under new names.

Of course the other problem with completely free dating services is the matter of e-mail addresses. During sign-up they will always want your email address. One way a free service can generate revenue is by selling on its list of members' e-mail addresses to third-parties and, unless their conditions of use do not allow this, they are absolutely free to do so. Do you genuinely want you email account bombarded with spam?

Conclusion

We hope we have put you off the idea of going for a fully free singles site. In our experience they are often difficult to use, badly regulated, and have quite a few dodgy members. Anyone who is serious about online dating will use a subscription-based service and it is this kind of services where you will come across people who are genuine about getting to know you.

All the dating services listed on our (www.online-dating-sites.co.uk) website have been examined by our staff, are paid services, and we have discovered no evidence that they do unfair advertising. We do not list many websites as our intention was never to supply a huge list of all the 100s of low-membership singles services that there are, but to support exclusively the biggest, best known, and best established services that we can.

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In case you are not already looking at it (sometimes our articles get copied by other sites) the original of this essay is available here and more articles on love, romance and dating can be found at www.online-dating-sites.co.uk.