Match.com is one of the “big dogs” in the online dating market. Since its inception in 1995, Match.com has been the largest singles dating site on the internet. The site boasts millions of singles and serves over twenty four countries. It also targets a wide variety of niche groups, such as Christians, Jewish people, African-Americans, and many others. It is laid out in an easy to use manner with a simple color palette. It is welcoming with very clear instructions on how to proceed with setting up your profile.
Match.com Profile
Your Match.com profile can be as detailed as you want it to be. In addition to asking for things like favorite movies, religion, and appearance, it also asks about things like birth order, favorite comedian, and favorite charity. It allows for up to twenty-five photos and you can customize just about every question field you can answer. For example, if you want to explain your religious beliefs, there is an optional box you can check for that. On the downside, you are mandated to put two hundred characters in your main profile space which can be sometimes difficult for those who have trouble writing an online dating profile.
Finding Your Match
The main search mechanism of Match.com is straight forward. It asks for location and distance, then sends you to the profiles. In addition, you may continue to customize your search as you bring up matches to narrow your field. They have two other search mechanisms. One is “mutual match” which helps find people who match your ideal date as outlined in your profile. The other is “reverse match” that shows you people who are looking for someone like you.
Other Match.com Features
Match.com also features some its own unique technology to better help you find good matches.
Daily Matches – Uses Match.com’s proprietary matching technology to present the best matches to you. You can then mark the matches that “spark your interest” and the ones that don’t. The more matches you rate, the better the system gets at picking people you will like.
Like At First Sight – Like other dating sites, Match.com has its own set of fun quizzes to take. You’re shown a group of pictures and a question, and asked to pick the picture that makes the best first impression on you. This is another way to improve the Match.com algorithm to show you better matches in the future.
If you have a few minutes, watch this Match.com review video I did, where you can get a closer look at what’s inside the site.
Match.com Pricing
Free members can create a profile, conduct searches, and send “winks” to people to let them know your are interested. For $34.99 per month, you can contact singles, use instant messaging, use email, remove profiles from your view, and see who has viewed your profile. If you sign up for more than one month, the price per month is less. For instance, six months of membership is only $17.99 per month.
Match.com also has a six month guarantee that you will find someone in six months or you get six months free. That’s a company that really believes in it’s service.
Match.com Pros
- Large community
- Multiple ways to search
- Six month guarantee
Match.com Cons
- Cannot respond to emails as a free member
Match.com Recommendation
Match.com is the largest dating service on the internet and there are many matches to choose from. It is one of the best places to start looking for matches and I know of a handful of my friends who have found some great matches on the site. The six month guarantee is also a nice feature and alleviates the doubts you may have about joining a site like this. If you are looking for the premier online dating site of the internet, Match.com is it.
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{ 16 comments… read them below or add one }
The biggest issue I have with match.com is the fact that after your membership expires they continue to post your profile. I still get emails telling me that women are interested in meeting me. These women are unaware that they can’t get an answer back. I believe this deception is for keeping the number of potential contacts up. A person trying to reach someone only gets disappointed waiting for replies. They need to keep former members out of the system to eliminate this.
I agree with Jerrai except I just wish they would let you know who is an active paid member and who is not. Even as a paid member you do not know. I’ve tracked that site over the years since I still get emails from them. Most of the profiles have been there forever and you are just wasting your time and money trying to talk to them. If someone hasn’t been there for months or years they will list the status as simply “over three weeks”. And if that wasn’t bad enough, they use your profile in advertisements. For example, that obnoxious gossip site Topix. The little ad box for Match will use profiles from the area of the Topix user. Not so bad if you are from a big city. But who wants the entire town to know you are using a dating site? Or at least the gossiping busy bodies to know? Or even want people who use that type of site to hit you up?
Match is a slick, well designed website with features that I feel are second to none. However, it has one drawback that offsets all that good, and then some.
My problem with Match is that the majority of profiles on the site are profiles of non-paying members. A non-paying member is worthless to a Match subscriber, because a non-paying member can neither read nor reply to subscribers’ e-mails. I would have much less a problem with Match if non-subscribers were listed as such, but there is no way of knowing, when looking at profiles, which are profiles of viable, contactable singles and which are merely useless photos. Not only is the number of useless profiles misleading to someone considering joining Match, it is frustrating to the active, paying subscriber who sends a message to a potential “new squeeze” only to find that it has never been read, which leaves the subscriber to wonder it the recipient was just not interested or if the recepient was not a recipient at all because he/she was not a paid subscriber.
As I see it, anyone who is inactive for over three days is most likely a non-subscriber; after all, who would subscribe to a singles’ service and then ignore it for days at a time? Of those more current–active within three days or twenty-four hours–members, I would bet that half are non-subscribers just cruising the site. Bottom line: Of the 606 profiles that came up under my search criteria, when I apply the logic above, I would estimate that only 98 of those 600 were active, contactable members–about one in six.
Don’t get me wrong; Match is a big site, but, as long as it does not allow non-subscribers to read and respond to e-mails directed to them, it is 5/6′s useless, as I see it. Singlesnet, for what it is worth, is a crappy site with stone age filters and features, but it has one big, BIG advantage over Match, that being that if a subscriber contacts a non-subscriber, that non-subscriber can read the message and reply to it. I don’t know the numbers, but, to pull some out of my hat, if Singlesnet is only one-third as large as Match in number of profiles, it is still over twice as large in number of people who can respond to a member’s e-mail messages.
Also, you might want to look into Plenty of Fish. PoF offers all the frustrations of internet dating, but at least it’s free to suffer them.
I have used Match sproadically on/off (more off given 3 and a half years in two separate relationships that became long distance re: commute from UK to Japan / China) since 2004.
I have used a few other dating websites – Village Voice, Yahoo, Gumtree, ChineseFriendFinder (horrid!), PoF (horrid!) to name but a few – yet I always return to Match.
I agree with Tom that Match over the years, is extracting more than its pound of flesh, and is reducing access to non-subscribers. A few years ago, non-subscribers could read email – now, only available to subscribers.
That said, whilst I agree that it is an irritant that Match doesn’t indicate who is/isn’t a subscriber (to avoid wasting one’s time emailing), I generally haven’t found the whole non-subscriber thing to be much of an issue. I’m generally hitting the 1/3 response rate – if not, the heady hights of 1/2 (50%). Unusually, this time around, my response rate beyond the initial reply is hovering at 10%.
So why do I subscribe to Match.com? Quite simply, it’s a combination of sheer number of people available (it boils down to a numbers game re: 1/3 of people will respond), functionality, and people who subscribe are generally more serious about meeting someone.
I’ve used (in the loosest sense of the term) PoF twice – probably 6 weeks total, and found the site to be a complete waste of time. Sending comparatively the same number of messages, to the same demographic (Chinese / Japanese), I am an absolute ZERO, niente, nada, nothing, a big, fat zilch for replies; whereas, with Match, I’m in the 33%-50% range.
As much as I would like to find alternatives to Match (counting down 2 years until I emigrate to Asia-Pacific region), none of the other (UK) websites come close for me.
Note: your mileage may vary.
Cheers!
Dec. 31 2010 I finally meet my future wife face to face from Match.com. We are to be married this coming October 22. Match.com works – you get what you give!
Thanks for letting us know Brian! I’m glad that Match.com was able to help you find your special someone. Wish you both the best!
I find the non-subscriber issue frustrating as well. Also Match.com will send me “Daily Matches”. When I note an interesting person, I’ll search his username vs. just reading the snapshot. Very often I get a message:”Oops, the profile you are searching for is not available”. Well, why did Match.com send me the profile? Not a member? Hidden profile? I know that many online sites post fake profiles which they claim is a marketing tool.
One thing I like about OKCupid is they post the last time a member logged on. So if I see a profile in Quick search it will tell me the last time he logged on was 2009 and I won’t bother sending a message. However OKCupid has sent “Quiver Matches” of guys who haven’t been on-line in years. But at least the date is there, unlike Match.com. Match will say “on-line now”, that just means someone is using their computer. I’ve also suspected that Match holds back some messages right around the date my subscription might expire. Once the renewal kicks in I’ll get 5 messages. And I can tell by information in the message that it was written a few days before. Just have to be aware that it’s in their interest to keep you a member as long as possible.
Match.com is not a honest website because it automatically charges you when your membership due. I bought a 3mth membership and I thought my membership would expire automatically but it is not the case. I am charged automatically after 3 mths which really sucks. Now I am trying to get my money back.
Hi Joann. Sorry to hear about your problems with Match.com but this is pretty typical of any site that uses the online subscription model. 99% of them are automatic renewal and you typically need to cancel yourself membership manually. If you read Match.com’s Terms of Use, it’s spelled out in there, so you probably don’t have much recourse unless their support is nice enough to offer you a refund. Hope you get it though!
Based on my limited use of online dating sites, I find Match.com to be a useful tool. I have not had the problems people complain about (old pics, lies about various topics, etc.). I find the large selection of participants in my area (Phoenix metro) to be a real positive.
Like TOMINPA and putonghua73 (see comments above) the response rate to my queries isn’t very high. I don’t understand why people don’t bother to respond to e-mail queries. It only takes an instant to say: “No Thanks”. Why subscribe to a site like Match.com and not respond at all when contacted?
Best of luck to everyone.
I too experienced everything that has already been mentioned about Match.com. I also found a lot of duplicate profiles. Same person, different user name and match criteria. I also saw a couple of profiles from another dating site from YEARS ago, with the same photos… Their reverse and mutual matching just plain doesn’t work. I got a lot of questionable winks and IM’s from out of state members. The Match.com software is incredibly glitchy.
I have discussed this with several other people, we feel there are a lot of fake profiles there to make Match.com appear larger and more active than it really is. If you are a free member, they will tell you people are trying to contact you. They will withhold who it is until you agree to subscribe. Then it is an out of state member who has an “unavailable profile”.
Buyer beware…
I am very disappointed with Match.com. After 6 months of following all the rules to maintain an active profile, my profile has red warning signs that it is not visible and I have voided my guarantee… funny thing that while they are telling me its hidden, I log into match on another device and it says available…I even continue tho get winks and new “who viewed you” updated every few minutes!….. I cannot get anyone to email me or return my requests for an investigation. Hoping someone will listen.
Hi Susan,
I’m not really clear about what has happened to your Match.com account. But I would file a support ticket with them to see what’s going on. I’ve always found the Match.com support people to be generally responsive so they should be able to help you out.
Match.com and PoF have excellent search engines that cover large geographic areas. I’m looking for one special woman with similar hobbies and lifestyle, and I’m willing to travel and move should we become friends. OKCupid’s social/lifestyle preference matching is the best as long as the individual answers how they truly feel, rather than what they think would be more attractive (True for all sites, BTW). Only major issue with OKC is their search engine is primitive for defining distinct searches, like 5′, Jewish, college degree, anywhere USA. It returns only a small portion of the US and loses your setting from search to search. Too time consuming and frustrating!
I am considering a match.com account and a catholicsingles.com account. I’m just not sure about either one because after reading these comments, I only have a few girls on the site that I even would consider dating, and who knows if they even have paid accounts?!
The website says I have two messages already from active users, and I am curious to see what they are, but are they even real? I don’t know… it’s really only 35 bucks, but I’m not rich, you know?
I agree with Mike and Katie about Match.com I tried it about 5 years ago and found many old profiles on there. I would find a profile for a woman I was interested in and check the last time she was online. If it said “online in the last 72 hours” or “online in the last week” I would send her a message. The next day I would check the same woman’s profile and it would say “online in more than 3 months”. I guess Match was waiting for me to send a message before telling me that the woman was long gone from the site.
Now that OK Cupid and PoF are popular and Match has such bad reviews, one would hope they have improved their system