Home | Dating Site Reviews | eHarmony Review (2010)

eHarmony Review

A deservedly popular dating site that takes the initiative in introducing you to compatible matches and removes the awkward factor from those opening exchanges in a new and creative way.

E-Harmony promotes itself as a place where you can meet compatible singles who are pre-screened to be compatible for you - saving you time and energy trawling through profiles of possible dates as the site promises to bring compatible matches to you. Each day eHarmony will send you a bunch of profiles selected for you – all you have to do is take your pick. This saves you a whole lot of time and trouble – however, if you like to do your own searching, discovering and nitpicking, this probably isn’t the best place for you.

Once you join you get to complete a relationship questionnaire and create a detailed personality profile which will help you to outline your character traits as well as those of a person you’re ideally wishing to find. It is quite detailed and will take some time to complete, but it’s well worth doing it. However, if all you want is a fling, a flirt or a one night stand, this will probably not be worth your while. But if you’re looking for the real thing, this site might just prove to be the one that you’ve been looking for. Where else should you be looking for a soul mate than a place where there’s a chance to bare your soul?

Your eHarmony Profile

Creating a profile – or more accurately, putting together your personality profile – takes quite a bit of time and there’s a lot of answers to give – a lot of boxes to tick, as well as quite a lot to write yourself. As a result you will get a detailed personality profile of yourself, which could give you a better insight to your own wants and needs. The questions are varied and interesting, not just the usual dating site stuff – ranging from who has been the most influential person in your life to what was the last book you read and what was it about. While things like that take some time to think over and put down, they give you a better idea about someone than what is his/her favourite food or how he/she likes to spend a Saturday night.

The least you get from it is an interesting read and a half an hour spent thinking about yourself – but it could bring you a lot more. Who knows, it might even bring you a step closer to meeting your perfect match. It takes into account 29 different dimensions and character traits, so you will get a pretty comprehensive picture. EHarmony itself prides the foundation of their compatibility matching model to be based on years and years of scientific experience and research, so at least you know they’ve put in a lot of effort to that and aren’t just using a random questionnaire of ten simple questions.

The Search

There is no regular 'search' of profiles in eHarmony. In fact, you don’t see most of the profiles at all. The system will seek out those profiles that match your needs and expectations and posts them in your site, so you can then decide whether you’re interested in further communication with them or not.

Rest assured, you won’t just get a whole bunch of people who are extremely similar – there’s still a fair bit to choose – but most of the matches that you get will meet your expectations in at least a few of the characteristics that you consider to be important.

There are several methods for you to get in touch with your matches once someone catches your attention. The easiest option is probably sending an “icebreaker” – and you don’t even have to come up with the wording for that if you don’t want to as the system offers you a drop-down menu of different catchphrases and introductions that you can choose from.

In addition to an Icebreaker, there’s also a chance to opt for something that the site calls “guided communication”. Basically it means sending them five questions – that you also get to pick out from a selection of questions with multiple choice answers. Once they’ve replied to your questions, they can send you theirs. After that you can send each other the list of “Must Haves and Can’t Stands” – ten traits that you consider to be important that your partner should or should not have. And once that has been done, there’s a third option to send them three questions of your own. If after all those stages you find the match still interesting, you can start communicating via email. It sounds a little controlled, but it is a good way to find out more about someone if you don’t want to waste a lot of time on people whose profiles seem great but whose emails are nothing short of a disappointing.

Another absolutely great little feature is ‘match closing’. If you don’t want to keep emailing with someone who doesn’t just seem to be all that interesting or attractive to you but you also don’t want to seem rude and just stop emailing, you can just close that match with a little polite notice. Again, you don’t even have to come up with that notice yourself – the system offers you a pretty wide selection of viable reasons.

However, having no options to look around yourself and find suitable matches kind of keeps your options pretty low. If you want to start looking for different people, you’d have to adjust the 'match search' categories accordingly, so it’s not very simple and straightforward, should you suddenly feel inclined to find a complete 'opposite' to attract you.

In a Land Far, Far Away

Another thing – this is an international website, therefore it can also find you matches from other parts of the world should you wish that. Doesn’t hurt to keep your options open! Who knows, maybe true love really is thousands of miles away and just waiting to be discovered. On the other hand, if you really just want to meet someone in your own city, you can close all other search options and focus on near and dear.

There's not much in the way of extras on eHarmony – the detailed personality profile aside. There’s no chat, no audio or video messages, none of the technical bric-a-brac. There are questionnaires and there’s the email and it's as straightforward as that.

Free vs Paid site

This is not a great site for free users. Basically, you can create a profile and you get to review the profiles of your matches but these are without photos! And that’s about it. You cannot communicate with the dates – send and/or receive any of the icebreakers, email messages and like.

Pros and Cons

  Handy and helpful for those out there who take online dating seriously but find it new and little bit confusing.
 You cannot perform your own search – their matching system finds you suitable matches instead.