Lavalife Reviews

Editor's Star Ratings:

Chances of Getting a Date:
Features:
Quality / Size of Members' Photos:
Help Files / Technical Support:
Ease of Use / Navigation:
Ease of Joining / Registration:
Value for Money:
Overall Star Rating:

Costs:

• FREE basic membership!
• Premium memberships are priced as follows:
  • 1 Month:   $34.99
  • 3 Months: $59.97 (works out at $19.99 / month)

Features:

• Over 15 million registered members
• Over 8000 new members daily!
• Comprises of three different dating arenas - casual dating, relationships, and intimate encounters. You may set up a different profile in each of these areas, effectively making Lavalife three dating sites in one!
• View members' full profiles as a free member
• Post your profile picture and upload many other pics to create a backstage photo gallery
• Send smiles to other members to signify your interest (must be registered as a free member to do this)
• Send e-mails to other members (must be registered as a premium member to do this)
• Free members get to reply to any emails sent to them, but cannot initiate contact themselves. This is a very useful feature, which all too many dating sites don't provide.
• Ability to see when a member was last online. Again, this is a really useful feature that too many dating sites don't have.
• Search for other members to within a one mile radius of where you live, for super targeted geographical searches!
• Live video chat with other members over your webcam
• Create hotlists of other members you like
• Instant message other members
• Also available in French
• Available through WAP on your mobile. Browse Lavalife on your mobile and get free text alerts on the go!
• Lavalife Notes - an online magazine that's sent to you by email, with interesting articles, stories, features, tips and advice
• Excellent technical support.

Joining:

• Unlike most other dating sites, Lavalife will give you complete access to the site as a free member. You may browse member profiles, perform detailed geographical searches, send smiles and even reply to e-mails. The only thing you can't do as a free member is initiate contact via email and the instant messaging tool.
• Premium membership gives you full, unrestricted access to the site and allows you to initiate contact via email with any members you choose. It also allows you to contact other members via instant messenger and video-chat. Premium membership prices are listed above.

Performing a Search:

• A full search facility is available, allowing members to search by:
  • gender
  • sexual orientation
  • age range
  • location
  • zip code
  • radius to within 1 mile of your location
  • whether the member has pictures posted
  • who's online now
  • new members
  • members with photos or backstage galleries

Editor's Verdict:

Lavalife is based in Toronto, Canada, and was launched in 1997. As such it is very popular amongst Canadians, especially as the site is also available in French. However, following extensive publicity campaigns in recent years, the site has now become popular in many other countries, most notably the USA, UK and France, and has amassed an impressive 15 million registered users, making it one of the most popular dating sites on our list.

One of the main features of Lavalife is that it is effectively split into three different sections: a casual dating section; a relationships section; and an intimate encounters section. You can search separately in each of these sections and you can also include a different profile in each, making each one individually tailored to that specific arena. This means that Lavalife is essentially three dating sites in one! As such you may find that some of the profiles that come up when you search the intimate encounters section are a bit more steamy than those that come up under the relationships section! This means that whatever you're looking for, Lavalife has it all!

Another main feature of Lavalife.com is the amount of access that's granted to you as a free member. Most dating sites allow their free members limited access, possibly allowing them to only see a page of results for each of their searches, allowing them to only see limited or even no profile information for other members, or only giving them limited search capabilities. But with Lavalife, you get full unrestricted access to the site! As a free member you can search for other members to within one mile of your current location, you can read as many member profiles as you like - without restriction, you can send and receive smiles, you can view other members' pictures and videos, you can even reply to emails! This last point is a major bonus, as many dating sites will only let you reply to emails if you upgrade your membership. This means that if you've got a particularly eye-catching profile pic, you could effectively get away with being an active member on Lavalife without paying a single cent! Just wait for all the emails to roll in and reply to those that you like the look of - all for free! Great news if you happen to be a hot chick! But guys, this is great news for you too, because it means that anyone you email, even if they're just a free member, will be able to reply to you! This will vastly increase the chances of you getting replies to your emails and greatly facilitates the level of activity on this site, which in turn means you have a great chance of finding a date on Lavalife!

Before we wrote this review for Lavalife we checked out a few of the other review sites to see what they had to say about it. Generally the consensus amongst other reviewers was also very positive, with some ranking it as their preferred dating site. Many other review sites however reported that Lavalife operates a complicated credits system instead of a straight-forward monthly subscription as other sites do. But this is no longer the case. It's true that Lavalife used to operate a credits system, where instead of joining up for a month or more, you had to buy credits to email people at the rate of 6 credits for every email you wanted to send. But Lavalife have now switched to the more common monthly subscription system, allowing you to join for as little as $29.99 for 1 month's access, which, if you read the rest of our reviews, you'll see is very competitively priced.

So with all these plus points, why is Lavalife.com not 1st on our list of dating sites? Well, like any dating site, Lavalife isn't perfect. For example, Lavalife doesn't have any chat boards, a personality test, blogs or any social networking features of any kind. Now if all you want to do is find a date, then that might not worry you, but if you want to immerse yourself in the online community of hopeful singles, as other dating sites allow you to do, then Lavalife may not be for you. Also, it would have been nice if you could see which other members had added you to their hotlists. Many other dating sites allow you to see this, but Lavalife does not.

Lavalife is free to join, and as we stated above, a free membership gets you unrestricted access to virtually all parts of the site, so you'd be fool not to sign-up for a free membership and at least have a look around this site.

Click the button below to check out Lavalife.com for yourself...