Free Singles Sites
Before registering with a completely free singles service, you should most likely find out about the potential drawbacks of using them.
Is it Truly Free?
If you have tried browsing for 'free singles websites' then you are already aware that many of the sites that you end up on do actually charge a fee.
The standard commercial model for reputable singles sites is to permit likely users to create a profile, browse and perhaps even send messages for free, but to require subscription before the site can properly be used for getting to know other members. Typically one or both directions of communication are exclusively available to paid subscripbers - either you can read e-mails but not send any, or you can send messages but not look at any that you receive until you have paid up.
There is nothing remotely unfair with this, it is just the best business model and it does let you determine how useful you find a site before you hand over any fee.
The problem comes when services promote themselves in a misleading way that suggests they are genuinely a free singles service when they aren't. Watch out for free dating services that are only pretending to be free. Please note that we check out the services we list on this site to make certain they do not do this.
If it is Free, do I Really Want to Use it?
Beyond our comments above, there are a few online singles sites that genuinely are free - no charges payable and anyone can join and use the site however they want.
The business model for such services is typically advertising revenue and this is the first problem with them. A number of the free dating services we've visited have screens so packed with advertising that it's hard to make sense of what's going on. This is understandable as it's typically how the site owners make money, but in our opinion being presented a page full of advertising is not conducive to finding a partner. In fact, in many cases the advertisements are selling other, fee paying dating sites (occasionally pretending to be other free services, see above). The cynical might even think many of these free internet singles sites are designed so users will give up and click on the revenue generating advertisments placed by commercial dating sites!
The second problem with the free singles services was discussed in the first sentence in this section - anyone can join and anyone can use the site in any way they want. When people pay for a service, they are generally serious on the subject of what they are doing. However free dating sites can attract all sorts of people who aren't at all serious. Also the lack of payment means there's no checking - not even the simple checking of someone's name against their credit card information. On a fee--based site at minimum you know that while you may only know a member by their nickname, the company behind the site knows who they are.
The last completely free dating site seen by our reviewers had a chat room in which we 'lurked' and found what seemed to be a crew of teenage boys talking on the subject of the offensive e-mails they had been posting to other members. They had been reported earlier but there is no way to restrict someone from having multiple accounts so they had simply registered again under new names.
Of course the other issue with entirely free dating services is the matter of e-mail addresses. During sign-up they will always need your email address. One way a free site can generate income is by selling on its list of members' e-mail addresses to third-parties and, unless their terms of use rule this out, they are entirely free to do so. Do you truly want you email account blitzed with spam?
Conclusion
We hope we have put you off the idea of going for a completely free singles service. In our experience they are usually clumsy to use, badly policed, and have a lot of dodgy members. Anyone who is committed to online dating will use a fee-based service and it is such services where you will find people who are serious about meeting you.
All the dating services listed on our (www.iloveyoulove.co.uk) website have been reviewed by our staff, are fee paying sites, and we've discovered no evidence that they engage in misleading advertising. We do not list many sites as our intention has never been to offer a huge list of all the hundreds of small singles websites out there, but to support exclusively the biggest, best known, and best established websites that we can.
The master copy of this essay is here and more articles on love, dating and romance are available from www.iloveyoulove.co.uk.