There’s no arguing that Plentyoffish.com is one of the most successful free internet dating services in the English speaking world. The question remains does a site that is so successful have to be so unappealing? The owner of the site says he runs the whole thing out of his apartment and claims to have one employee.

The Pros:

1. It’s free. Like Datepad, Plentyoffish is 100% free. Once you’ve created a user name and password, the only “must” for using the site is the completion of the two page registration form. Depending on how well you know yourself, this shouldn’t take more than 10 minutes.
2. There are plenty of members, as well there should be. Having launched in 2003, the owner has had more than five years to perfect his business.
3. Mail filters are easy to use and give a certain peace of mind in that you can block users meeting specific criteria from communicating with you. For instance, you can choose not to be contacted by anyone who has messaged others for an intimate relationship. It’s a good way of ensuring that you will only be contacted by people looking for the same type of relationship as yourself.
4. The forums are standard in design but have tons of posts, you can really spend a ton of time searching through plentyoffish’s forums.
5. New matches sent on a weekly basis. Great if you’re lazy and don’t want to do any searching yourself. The email is clean and easy to read, no logos here just a text email.

The Cons:

1. There has been very little thought put into the design and layout of the site. Plentyoffish.com is a jumble of text and advertising that makes it necessary to read every single piece of text on a page to figure out where to go next. Very annoying and unnecessary.
2. Navigation is painful. Again, due to the layout of the site, it can be very difficult to figure out where you need to click to get to a particular page.
3. The mail system is cluttered and unappealing. Before you can get to your mail, you have to scroll through a list of Plentyoffish get togethers and social events and pictures of members who live within 50 miles of you. It can be difficult to find your “sent messages” because of the jumbled site layout. I only found it by searching the page for the word “sent”!
4. The Help section needs an overhaul. Once again, the layout of the site is amateurish and content appears to have simply been added onto the back of what was already there. The use of different sized fonts makes it hard on the eyes.

This site has a good backbone and a large user base. If you can get past the lack of design for the layout, it can be a lot of fun to use, but please bring your patience as you will need it.