- FREE to
basic members.
- Premium membership is offered at:
- 3
day trial: $1.95*
- 1
Month:
$ 49.95
*This
trial membership was available at the time of writing. Unless
canceled, this teaser rate will expire on the third day after
you
initiate it. You will then be charged $49.95 per month
thereafter until you cancel.
Please check the site
for the
exact details of this an any other available offers.
- Create your own profile and
upload your pictures for
FREE
- Search for other
members within your
local area for free
- A list of
your best Matches
is formed and stored on site for future use.
- Wink at other
members for free
- Browse
other members' profiles, look at their pictures and check out any video
greetings they have posted. (You must be a premium member to do this)
- Email other members using Mate1's
internal e-mail
system (you must be a premium member to do this)
- Instant message other members (you must be a
premium
member to do this)
- Access
to private chat
rooms. Private message other members in the chat rooms.
- Create your own hotlist of members you like
- Create your own blocklist of members
you wish to ignore.
- Ability
to store your searches.
- Search
by:
- Who's online
- Who's in
the area
- New Members
- Who's
got photos
- Your Matches
- A
full search facility is available, allowing members to search by:
- gender
- age range
- location
to within 10 miles of
where you live
- whether the member has pictures
posted
- ethnicity
- smoking
- drinking
- height
- body
type
- hair and eye color
- lifestyle
preferences
- religion
- occupation
- income
level
- exercise habits
As
one of the more aggressive marketing mainstream dating sites, Mate1.com is looking
to crack into
the big leagues as a major player in the world of website dating.
It is the parent to several other specialized dating sites
directed at specific niche markets. Its approach
is typically commercial, with a
structured
marketing operation. But is it a worthwhile dating
website?
Our initial impression is not favorable.
Our
registration was simple but we were directed to the Upgrade
pages
right from the get go. This is not what we like to see.
When we attempted to initiate our first search, we were
pretty
much confined to dealing with the site's defaults until we learned how
to get around that obstacle. This is an example of "marketing friendly" and not
"user
friendly" software. If
you put your relationship plans to work on a site that has
this
'marketing-friendly' approach you will be sadly disappointed with your results.
The cheap teaser trial (described below) is
worthless
if you can't find suitable matches. Be warned , because the results that we generated by our benchmark search were dismal. We got pages of results within our area.
But the list
had just 11 live members (who were online within the past 3
weeks). To us, that's an immediate red flag for a site that is
dead/stale
for lack of membership interest. You won't
have a good chance of finding "Mr. or Ms. right" on a site with low activity levels among members.
We were also dismayed by Mate1's approach to
pricing and
billing. The only thing that was prominently
mentioned on the Premium
upgrade page was the 3 day trial, with no mention of the costs of
monthly
or
longer subscriptions. To find the renewal terms you must scroll down the page, well below the 3 day offer, and read through a
few sentences of fine print. In a nutshell, after your 3 day trial has expired, you will be charged $49.95 per month until you cancel it before it expires. The devil really is in the detail! We can't help wondering if Mate1 are intentionally trying to capitalize on many people's tendency to not read
the fine print. It does seem strange that Mate1 don't (at the time of writing) seem to promote a monthly and longer subscription rate somewhere,
for the existing members to renew.
Our recommendation is not to
take up the teaser membership (unless you are happy to pay $49.95 per month) as you may forget to cancel it,
but Mate1 won't forget to bill you repeatedly, until you satisfy
their terms for cancellation. There are, of course, many other dating sites out there that
are
doing a good job of being up-front and serving their members well.
In
fairness, we need to comment on Mate1's
Contact options for members. You can send a flirt , but no
e-mail
options exist. You can chat with others online as a free
member.
That would seem like a good thing. Unfortunately, our
experience
with this during our first visit found us being approached by a
procession of twenty something year olds looking for a sugar daddy.
While the site isn't directly at fault for this, they do set
the stage.
What about on-site activities? Aside from
the private chat
option, it seems that nothing else is offered. Photos and profile viewing
options don't exist without paying for them. This is part of the
tactic with the trial teaser. It's cheap but don't be fooled
by
it.
Value
is another of our considerations for judging a site's quality.
At
their prices for monthly membership, the value is the lowest we have
seen in mainstream dating.
Our
best
recommendation is for you to check other sites we have reviewed. There are some great
Premium members' websites out there. Also, surprising as it
may
be, there are some good sites reviewed that are 100%
Free to
members, offering good potential for relationships. Please
check
our top ten reviews to become better informed of what's
available.
Click on the button below to check out Mate1.com for yourself...
