An Online Dating Blog by Shimrit Elisar

The best online dating site

October 17th, 2007

One question I keep getting asked is “what is the best dating site?” The short answer is, of course: there is no such thing.

Where is the best place to meet the love of your life? Ask any person who’s happily married and they’ll tell you the place where they met their husband/wife. This could be a particular club, the supermarket, the chess club, a resort in Ibiza, or practically anywhere else in the world. If you went to the same place as person X, would you meet the love of your life too? Who knows? There is absolutely no guarantee.

All we have going for us are statistics: increasing our chances of success. Sure, you may well meet the love of your life on the bus or on the beach, but you are far more likely to meet him/her somewhere a bit less random. While miracles obviously do happen, you can’t live your whole life sitting at home, passively waiting for one to happen for you.

So the first step is to put yourself out there, go out, date online, etc. Doing this increases your chances already, so how do you increase them further?

If you were picking a singles’ bar to go to in order to meet people, you would probably base your choice on the type of people who go there. The way a bar is designed, the music played there, the price of the drinks - these are factors to consider, but often only in relation to the audience they attract.

Basically - If you want to meet some cool kids and all the cool kids are going to Bar X, you’ll go to Bar X even though Bar Y might be better value for money.

It’s the same with dating sites. Some sites are clearly better designed than others, some are cheaper than others and offer plenty of cool features. There are now thousands of sites out there promising to revolutionise the way you date with their amazingly clever new concepts. Does any of this matter?

At the end of the day, people would happily sacrifice everything from additional features to basic functionality if they can make contact with similarly-minded singles. As long as a site allows you to search for people and make contact with them (even in the form of a really basic message) then it is suitable for anyone’s needs.

For this reason, it’s only possible to answer a question such as “what is the best online dating site?” on an individual basis. I often recommend sites to people based only on the site’s vibe and general clientele, rather than features, pricing or concept.
For people I don’t know personally, I recommend serious market research across a number of sites before deciding which one to go with.

Never make the mistake of assuming all dating sites are the same. They differ from each other as greatly as bars, restaurants and clubs differ from each other. Only you can decide which dating site is the best for you and you can always change your mind if the site you’re on is not performing as well as you’d hoped. So try a few different ones - big ones, small ones, generic and niche and see what works best for you.

Entry Filed under: Online Dating Tips