Dating.com offers something unique right from the get-go. Why settle on what’s convenient (ala Tinder) and instead find your “true match” anywhere on Earth? That’s why for this Dating.com review, we wanted to know how the site worked and what kind of “spark” they’re talking about.
We’re going to get to the bottom of this online dating platform and consider its pros and cons. Most of all, we want to know if it’s really worth all the effort to sign up.
For starters, let’s talk about the basics of Dating.com.
Dating.com Review in 10 Seconds
- Online dating across the world
- The site is serious about user verification
- Some members are looking to travel or relocate
- Others are just looking for flirting & gifts
- Some members are broadcasting for fun & popularity
- The online dating platform is not for casual sex
- No members are paid for broadcasting
- You only pay for what you want to do
Who is Dating.com For and Not For
Dating.com is at once, a site about having fun, and yet NOT about hookups. The site is about fun conversation, falling in love, and testing “sparks.”
However, it’s also more relationship and friendship-oriented than just finding nearby one-night stands.
It’s definitely for users who enjoy social media and enjoy “broadcasting content” to get people’s attention. The video-sharing aspect is what makes Dating.com’s member base so unique.
On the other hand, Dating.com would not be appreciated by other users who are looking for serious, personality-based matchmaking. This is more of a fun and partying social media dating site where people can meet and find new friends across the world.
Many users on Dating.com are looking for husbands/wives or maybe just traveling partners for a limited time. It’s not that all users are looking for marriage. Some do have short-term relationship goals. But it’s clearly not about sex and convenience here.
The Dating.com website is about making friends first – and location isn’t an issue.
What We Like and Don’t Like on Dating.com
Pros
- Worldwide searches in major cities
- Video chat – with many friendly & outgoing members
- Choose your daily “mood”
- A paying member can send & receive gifts
- Free communication with premium package
- Pay per transaction – no monthly fees
- Send gifts using credits
- Mingle mode lets you reach out to others directly
Cons
- Listing other network-related sites to join feels pointless
- No system-generated icebreakers
- Sometimes pricey
The Business Side of Dating.com Review
Dating.com feels like a new site, but according to the company, it was first founded in 1993.
The actual member base of the company remains a mystery, with some sources claiming anywhere from four million to twelve million and others ballooning that up to 250 million.
While the site doesn’t give an exact count, it does claim to cover over 32 countries, making it a very friendly site for penpals, overseas dating, and travel/luxury dating.
According to PitchBook.com, Dating.com’s headquarters is based in Singapore. The parent company is known as Social Discovery Ventures, and it was founded in 2003. This suggests that Dating.com may have been acquired by Social Discovery Ventures several years back.
Design of Dating.com Review
Dating.com is a minimalist-looking site that shoves as many pretty faces in front of you as you can handle.
Looking at the screen with a common tablet, you will see rows of partners to choose from. Above the standard profiles, you can also see several “stories” of other members to check out – a feature similar to Facebook/Instagram.
When you click on the right tab for “Broadcasts,” you will see users who are more interested in casual chat, modeling, and gaining popularity.
These people are not really online to find a boyfriend or girlfriend. They are competing for “leaderboard status.” They do love to chat (and sometimes have as many as 500 users viewing at a time), flirt, and talk about life.
You will also notice a chat window and tabs at the top of the main page for notifications, private messaging, search functions, and more options under the dropdown menu.
The dropdown menu lets you make changes to your profile, broadcast yourself, or view your settings.
Overall, we have two distinct dating sites in one at Dating.com. First, a friendly chat line site, and second, a more serious dating app that matches penpals.
A Step-by-Step Guide to Using Dating Dot Com
Start your Dating.com experience by signing up using an email address. After choosing a password and validating your account, you can begin browsing the site and seeing the list of worldwide singles.
While the web version works well enough, you can also opt for a mobile app installed, courtesy of Google Play or the Apple Store.
This is called free membership, and no payment is required for previewing the site.
The general profiles section is listed by random selection, highlighting fairly good profiles that are real, with lots of photos. Some are just photos, but some also have a brief “pitch line” to gather your interest, as well as the person’s age.
Status Matters
The blue checkmark symbol means the person has verified their account via a selfie shot. The “fire” symbol apparently suggests that a profile has “popular status” and is somewhat highlighted among all the other accounts.
The “Broadcasts” tab has less emphasis on age and location but promotes the “broadcaster” (or cam model if that makes it easier) as an influencer to follow.
While these broadcasters are not paid, they still earn popularity by “going live” and sharing videos on their relationship status or what they’re looking for.
The dating site also sponsors friendly competitions for broadcasters (such as a stewardess party), highlights new streamers, and posts the “leaderboards” for the top-ranked broadcasters.
This is one of the more unique features of Dating.com, as broadcasters will reach out to new members and encourage them to live chat. They will also send messages that you can respond to or reply by sending a virtual gift.
Creating an Online Dating Profile
When it’s time to spruce up your profile page, you can add a social media-like cover as well as a headshot.
The bio section is called “A Few Words About Myself”, and you can tag several tagged interests, as diverse as “lying on the beach” or museums and art.
Two sections to fill out are your “About Me” stat page which is lifestyle-related info, while the “I’m Looking For” section is for posting the kind of partner you want.
As with most dating apps, you get a much better response when you upload photos of high quality. Include a selfie, a closeup of your face, ideally smiling, and a full body shot.
Let’s Mingle Feature
Let’s Mingle lets you start an icebreaker conversation with the entire site instead of just one person at a time. You can start a conversation, share it with the Dating.com community, and get better-quality matches to answer you.
While there are no system-generated responses, which is disappointing, it’s still a cool feature.
Filtered Searches vs. Browsing
The more details you fill in on your profile page, the more likely you will get back better matches.
While the browsing option works well enough, a lot of the results are random.
But you can also find partners using a filtered search. The main details include gender/sexuality, age range, interests, lifestyle habits, interests, and whether the person is available to video chat now.
This is a handy way to narrow down the list and find someone you can relate to, as opposed to just all the beautiful faces.
Communicating with a New Friend
Once you find a “spark” with a new friend, you can choose the way you reach out.
If your crush is online at the moment, start a new chat with a direct message. If they’re offline or not answering messages, leave a private email for offline chats.
Or, if you want to be dangerous, you can send a virtual gift.
Virtual gifts are icebreakers and little custom graphics, ranging from 48 to 5000 credits.
Profiles contain not only many photos but also have links to private galleries that are for your eyes only – that is if the other person gives you the keycode to those locked media files.
Choose Your Mood
The “Today I am” tab lets you decide whether you’re in a serious mood, playful and flirty mood, or looking for something romantic.
There are also mood indicators for feeling “naughty,” as well as more “penpal” related conversation. You can also select “Don’t know” in case you want to test the chemistry.
We can only imagine the shenanigans that happen when two users feeling “naughty” match up together and have a hot conversation.
Incoming Online Chats
Sometimes, other members will reach out to you first. When they send you a private message, you can reply back, see their stats, or even send a virtual gift. You have the choice of sending live webcam videos or a file from your device.
The broadcasters tend to interrupt your dating messages so they can send you chat requests for a live stream. It’s a nice way to start a conversation, although you will be sharing with multiple users most of the time.
Live Video Chatrooms
A free member can view “broadcasters” for free and follow them or send messages. In many cases, the broadcasters are trying to hit a goal. For example, 20,000 diamonds, which you can help with donations.
It’s a fun section to explore, especially when other broadcasters start sending you messages while you’re watching another broadcaster!
Lots of competition here, and it makes the site a lot of fun.
Dating.com Reviews From Users
Dating.com negative reviews from users generally focus on the site’s pay scale and the video-sharing environment. Other members looking to date locally and casually, naturally, will not see much use in the site.
Virtual gifts are fun distractions and convert to digital currency for the broadcasters. However, some users balk at the prices of these virtual gifts and wonder if regular icebreaker questions wouldn’t have worked better.
Dating is not a sugar-themed site, contrary to some negative reviews out there. Nonetheless, because it is also associated with world travel, luxury dating, and the like, comparisons to sugar dating are bound to occur.
Simply put, people looking for local casual dating and who don’t want to spend any money will find their way out reasonably quickly.
Dating.com Review of Video Chat
Dating profiles are diverse on Dating.com, with singles from as far as Amsterdam to Australia, or sometimes as close as Canada or the United States. The age range here is diverse and has plenty of users over the age of 40, with many even in their 70s.
Biographies don’t tend to be detailed, probably so that live chat is emphasized for meeting people face-to-face. However, most users agree “popular members” (video only) and other members (dating) are very chatty, outgoing, and fun to interact with.
What you will notice is that free membership doesn’t give you the complete experience. While you can watch live streams of popular members and comment, you cannot face-to-face unless you have a premium monthly membership.
A monthly membership gets you free communication with all members (not counting popular members) as well as unlimited messages and access to virtual gifts.
How Much Does Dating.com Cost?
Dating.com uses a credit system in exchange for your monthly subscription price.
Services costs break down as follows:
- For $19.99 you get 150 credits/mo
- For $150 you get 600 credits/mo
- For $300 you get 1500 credits/mo
However, you can always buy credits per month as needed, even beyond credit packages.
Knowing Dating.com cost is the best way to determine pricing. Here is a list of all transactions based on price:
- Basic Chat – 1 cpm (credits per minute)
- One Way Video Calls – 4 cpm
- Two Way Video Calls – 6 cpm
- Offline or Mobile Messages – 1 c per 160 characters
- Emails – 10 c
- Sending or Viewing Photos 15 c
- Sending or Listening to Messages – 10 c
- Sending Tickers – 5 c
- Sending Emojis – 1 c
- Sending Virtual Gifts – 50-5000 c
- Sending Personal Messages in Live Chat – 1 c
- Viewing Video in Profile – 10 c
- Let’s Mingle – 5 c
The dating platform may also extend the scope of membership and sometimes include free chats, free video calls, and other privileges free of charge.
Things can get pricey. However, if you can stick to several conversations a month, monthly membership should be just fine.
The video option remains low-cost, but users can always chat offsite once they get to know each other. The site’s assurance of anonymity is limited to communication taking place onsite only.
Other Dating Apps Similar to Dating.com
How do other dating websites compare to the broader Dating.com? Here’s what we noticed about these other dating sites.
Seeking
Seeking is known as a luxury travel dating site. While Dating doesn’t brand itself that way, many of the same features will seem familiar.
Both Dating.com and Seeking offer video, as well as verified profiles. Where they differ is that Seeking is made for wealthy users wanting to attract beautiful partners. Dating.com is more of an everyday dating site for people of all lifestyles and income levels.
- Seeking is more luxury dating oriented – money talks!
- Seeking lets women join for free
- Dating offers video chats like Seeking
- Dating has a community of other members streams
Zoosk
Zoosk is another video-sharing site, much like Dating.com. Both sites emphasize a video sharing and speed dating community as the best way to get to know other singles.
Both dating apps offer video chat as well as communication services off web camera. However, Zoosk appears to have more members, is available in more countries, and so has more “local” matches than the distinctively “international” Dating.com.
- Zoosk and Dating offer video-sharing communities
- Zoosk has a much better matchmaking system
- Dating has a better preview for free members
- Dating gives away more free perks to its paying members
eHarmony
eHarmony and Dating.com both offer an online dating website for serious relationships, whether that’s love and marriage, or just long-term and “let’s see what happens” in general.
eHarmony invests much more time in its matchmaking system, which matches people together based on their shared values. Dating.com doesn’t spend that much time with algorithms and instead emphasizes going on a few dates (virtually) to get to know each other.
- eHarmony has a much better matchmaking system
- eHarmony offers cam-to-cam video chats but not video streaming
- Dating and eHarmony both have human moderators for profiles
- Dating is better on pricing
Ashley Madison
Ashley Madison and Dating are advertised as discreet, safe, and anonymous communication services. Both sites have vulnerable people genuinely wanting to connect and be intimate. That sometimes comes with a risk of disclosing too much information.
Ashley Madison suggests its married users be careful when using instant chats in the same house or a shared device. Dating warns its users against scammers and the unusual phony money-making scheme.
- Ashley Madison lets women join for free
- Ashley Madison has photo editing tools onsite
- Dating has public and private galleries, like Ashley Madison
- Dating is about finding a friend companion – not just sex
Dating Sites (Dating.com) FAQs
How can I find contact details for Dating.com?
You can find contact details for Dating.com on the contact customer support page.
The phone number is 1-888-980-9770, or you can constant customer support at support@dating.com.
Is Dating.com only for online relationships or real-life dating too?
Dating.com is for both online romance and real-life dating, depending on your needs.
Dating.com allows you to send or receive a chat request from any member worldwide. Some popular members are not interested in serious dating but just want to meet people, flirt, be friendly, and hopefully make money.
However, other members on site are in the regular “profiles” section, and they want online companionship that eventually turns into real-life romance – usually overseas.
What are some Dating.com tips for staying safe?
Dating.com provides tips for staying safe, and they are as follows:
- Do not exchange contact offsite until you’ve known the person a while
- Never provide credit card details to other members for any reason
- Always tell someone if you’re going to meet in person
- Cam to cam with someone before agreeing to meet
- Try to chat “onsite” to avoid the risk of offsite viruses or malware
- Never send money offsite
Does the Dating dot com have fake profiles?
No, Dating dot com doesn’t create fake profiles intentionally.
The dating website is one of the few legit dating sites and doesn’t even pay its broadcasters to chat. (Broadcasters split gift currency profits with the company)
That said, some users do occasionally report fake accounts with suspicious-looking photos. These profiles are eventually deleted when the moderators discover them.
Even other legit dating sites have problems with fake profiles, including Tinder, Bumble, and Hinge. Some people are fakes, flakes, catfishers, or spammers.
People are just weird sometimes!
Can I use Dating.com for free?
Yes, you can preview Dating.com for free.
A free member can view broadcaster live streams and comment publicly on their feed.
However, to interact with other users who may be compatible partners, you need a paid membership.
Final Dating.com Review – Try Your Hand at Soulmate Dating!
As a global dating service, Dating.com makes it easy to find your soulmate, even across the world. The video and pay-per-transaction model makes the site easy to use – especially since you don’t have to talk to your overseas date on the phone.
Because of easy verification, you always know who you’re talking to, and the site has all modern security features, along with an anti scam policy.
Besides the video introductions and one-on-one video, you can also broadcast yourself or watch fellow “popular” broadcasts for entertainment and fun conversation.
If you’ve never had the chance to speak to somebody from the other side of the world and test the chemistry with people you might otherwise never meet, Dating.com can give you that experience.
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