A Comparison Of Free Dating Sites vs Paid Dating Sites

So which is better, free dating sites or paid dating sites?

I was inspired to write this article when I found some reviews by real users about the most popular free dating site - PlentyOfFish.com (POF for short).

To summarize what I read, the complaints centered around two issues:

1. There’s very little security.

One user says that hackers hack the accounts on POF. The hackers then proceed to hijack email accounts to send out phish.

“Phishing” is a way of attempting to obtain private information such as usernames, passwords and credit card details by masquerading as a trustworthy company in an email.

There’s a lot more info about phishing here.

2. There’s little privacy protection.

A user reported that your Plenty Of Fish profile can be found on Google. I wanted to test this myself, so I set up my own profile.

Days later, I did a search for my username at Google. Sure enough, I was able find my entire profile!

I personally don’t think Google should be able to crawl and therefore list a dating site’s profile pages.

Google caches the pages that it crawls, so even if you delete your account, it can stay on Google for years.

If POF (the largest free dating site on the internet) has these issues, I suspect many free websites have the same issues.

The advantage of free online dating sites is obvious – they don’t cost you anything.

According to this article, disadvantages include:

Scammers love free dating sites.

To be fair about this, there are scammers at ALL dating sites who try (and some succeed) to take advantage of lonely people.

It seems to make sense that scammers would prefer a free site. If the scammer happens to get banned from a free site, he or she can easily create another account using a different email address.

A larger percentage of free dating site members are players.

By “players” I mean people who are attached, just wanna get laid, or people who are just plain flaky.

Again, let’s be fair about this. You’ll find players at both free and paid sites, but I do believe you’ll find more of them at free sites.

I have no statistics to back this up, but generally speaking people who pay for things tend to have a different mindset than freebie seekers.

Married people gravitate toward free sites.

Just like scammers, married men and women join both free and paid dating sites.

However, free sites may be more attractive for married people because there’s no paper trail. It’s easier for them to hide their attempt at infidelity.

The functionality of a free dating site may be inferior to paid sites.

I’ve seen multiple reports of some PlentyOfFish users having their accounts mysteriously deleted.

And I spoke earlier about security and privacy issues.

Speaking of functionality…

I’ve seen reviewers complain about canceling a paid site subscription but still getting re-billed.

Actually, this sort of thing happens with all different kinds of paid subscriptions.

It important to obtain back-up documentation when you cancel any kind of subscription. If you don’t receive documentation upon cancellation, you need to follow up to make sure you won’t be billed again.

Bottom line…

You’ll find people on both sides of the free dating sites vs paid sites argument.

I’m going to avoid labeling one as superior to the other because it mostly depends on what YOU are looking for. I hope I’ve at least done a good job giving you some information to help draw your own conclusion.

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