We have another review and this time it’s one of our competitors, well kind of……there is one huge difference, it costs money and lots of it!

eHarmony, without a doubt, is probably the most nationally recognized online dating program there is, due to their massive television campaigns. They attempted to set themselves apart from the rest of the online dating sites by creating an algorithm that is based on scientific data about successful relationships or so they say. First you complete a massive personality profile, and based on your answers, they match you up with compatible people. When we say massive it’s nearly 100 questions and takes the average user 45 minutes to complete.

If a dating site is truly based on creating relationships, not just one-night stands, then requiring a personality profile might just help keep those on the prowl for a one night stand to another site. There’s nothing wrong with people looking for sex, but each dating site has their own goals, and for eHarmony, solid connections was theirs, not just sexual encounters. eHarmony is an anomaly in the dating world, in that most of their users are women, whereas most dating sites have more men than women.

Once you’ve completed the long personality profile when signing up to eHarmony, you begin receiving matches based on their personality algorithm. But, you don’t have the ability to contact your matches right away. First, you need to answer more questions! The questions are 5 questions in the following categories: personality, relationship, or character. Next, you submit a list of the qualities that you must have in a partner and the qualities that you must not have in a partner. Lastly, each of you sends 3 open-ended questions that each other must answer, in order for you to be able to communicate with each other. Are you confused yet? At any point during this questionnaire process, either person may end the match for any reason. But, if you each pass all of the questions, you can communicate with each other. This is of course if you have both now paid their rather hefty monthly subscription fee!

Keep in mind a paid member cannot communicate with a non-paying member, no matter how compatible they are.

All in all, eHarmony is a successful dating site and given their TV marketing presence they are growing. We believe that there is a better way to find that special someone. Not only is Datepad 100% free we have just launched the datepad attraction in action survey system.

To continue with our theme of reviewing other competitors in the free online dating niche, Datepad took the time to review OKCupid.com. Datepad believes that by showing you everything that our biggest competitors have to offer, you can make up your own mind as to why Datepad is the best choice. Today’s competitor review is a dating site called OKCupid.com. OKCupid has a neat clean design and a bold logo. Next to their name is the logo of a glass beaker, presumably filled with some sort of love concoction. The site features a lot of calm colors, including blue, purple, white, and black. Now for the good stuff, here are a few things that we here at Datepad like about OKCupid, as well as a few things that we think they could have fixed.

Pros

1. The site is a lot older than Datepad, so it is much more established with a plethora of questions, answers, users, photos, and especially quizzes.
2. The site offers support for multiple languages, venturing away from just the English speaking daters.
3. The homepage is short and to the point, converting you into a member very quickly.
4. The company is well staffed, and has a very informative about page.
5. The site has a very vibrant and active forum.

Cons

1. You are not allowed to see the entire site or use all of the features until you have signed up as a member.
2. There is a lot of text in the footer of the site that is white on a light blue background, making it very hard to read depending on how bright your monitor is.
3. Once you have signed up and started looking at other people’s profiles, you will notice that they can be extremely cluttered and somewhat “Myspace like.”

In conclusion, OKCupid is an exceptionally nice free online dating competitor of Datepad, and in our opinion, the second best one out of all of them in existance. They are working hard to grow, much like we are, and they will prove to be a worthy adversary on our goal of building the internet’s largest free online dating community.

We here at Datepad want to provide the world’s best free online dating service, but we know as well as you do that we are not the only website in our industry. We believe that by showing you everything our biggest competitors have to offer, you can make up your own mind as to why Datepad is the best choice.

With that being said, here is our first dating site blog review.

The first online dating site that I am going to be reviewing is called DateHookup.com. Datehookup is an older online dating site, having been launched way back in July 2002. Since the site is a lot older than most of the other websites in this industry, it has had a lot of time to rank well in search engines and receives a lot of visitors every month.

The site offers all the features you would expect from a free online dating site, you can get your own profile, there are forums, as well as date ideas. They tote that they are better than everyone else, but let us look into their claim and see if they can stand the test of time.

On their About page, tthey have a detailed list of everything that DateHookup offers, but one thing I found a bit unprofessional was that while listing the best features that their website has, the bottom one says, “Other stuff I can’t remember.” If the developers of the website do not even know what their website does, how is anyone else supposed to?

Aside from that, the site looks well established. The site is monetized with a strip of Adsense ads on the right side. This is an excellent way for them to make money while not annoying the users of the site. The majority of free online dating users would prefer a free site that has advertisements rather than having to pay a monthly fee. Free is the way of the future for online dating.

A very prominent feature on DateHookup is the forums, with some of the bigger categories reaching 7000 threads! Dating forums are generally the hardest part of a site to grow, and it looks like they have that on lockdown. That is due to many years of promotion and slow exponential growth, and they are now reaping all the search engine traffic from it. It will take a while before Datepad has a forum that is that active, but all in good time. Congratulations on that DateHookup!

What do you guys think about DateHookup? Leave your feedback or any experience you have had with DateHookup.com in the comments below to have your say! After a little research, it seems that there have been quite a few complaints that you can read about here.