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Match.com Review

Lives up to the advertising hype with a huge number of active members, an easy to use, well designed site with a great introductory offer.

Perhaps one of the best things about Match is that while at £65.25 (£10.88 a month) it is rather costly to sign up for 6 months – it will give you an additional six months free if you haven’t found your match by the end of that time. So if you're more tortoise than hare, you’ll at least get the whole year for only 65 quid, costing you a measly £5 per month.

Creating Your Match.com Profile

Creating your profile might take some time but is worth your while as it will give a good idea about what kind of a person you are and who you’re looking for. There’s plenty of interests you can write up yourself, describing your likes and dislikes, your job, ethnicity, education, favourite pastimes – even your last good read, all of which helps to create a better picture of who you are and the kind of things you enjoy doing.

When visiting someone’s profile, Match will compare that with your profile, bringing out all the matching and non-matching points between your profiles, making it really easy and quick to grasp the basics.

Should I wink or should I mail now?

If you see someone you like you can either send them an email through the website (you get your own private Match email address) or if you're in a hurry you can send someone a simple wink which sends an automatic email saying you're interested. Another, more subtle, way of showing interest is to add someone to your favourites list as they can see you've added them from their profile page.

From your Match homepage you can see a list of everyone who's visited your profile, sent you an email or winked at you - but make sure you archive your emails and add people to your favourites list otherwise Match will wipe the info after a few weeks.

You can take a personality test that gets displayed on your profile or you can browse a daily list of 5 matches that are recommended for you based on common interests. There's also a daily email you can sign up for with a list of potential matches in your area with a compatibility rating.

Searching for a date on Match.com

The profile search on Match is very clear and easy to use, giving plenty of opportunities from simple one-click searches to more complicated advanced searching. In addition to finding people who meet your criteria, you can also search on mutual matches or even reverse ones – the ones that consider you to be their ideal match.

Another great feature is the 'saved search' button, which enables you to save certain details (from location and interests to height and body type) so you don't have to keep enetering all your requirements every time. It’s also really handy to see the last time the user has been active online in the search view.

A nice little feature is 'removed profiles' which enables the user to mark the profiles they no longer want to come across in the search.

Probably the best thing about searching on Match compared to other UK dating sites we tested is the sheer amount of numbers online. Match.com wins hands down in this department as its ubiquitous TV and internet advertising looks to have given them a big advantage over competing sites. Search within any distance of your postcode and there's always plenty of potential matches near or near enough to your area.

As for chat and other extras like instant messaging, Match doesn’t really offer much – there’s no chat, no video calls or messages, just plain old email.

Why not try some of these live Match.com searches here to see for yourself:
Single Women in London / Single Men in London
Single Women in Edinburgh / Single Men in Edinburgh

Free vs Paid site

There’s not much that you get from the free site – except for the chance to create a profile, search for matches and send winks. You can’t read or write emails or even see who has viewed your profile. But at least you can view an unlimited number of profiles, giving you a clear idea what’s on offer before you part with your hard earned cash.

Pros and Cons

Incredibly popular, excellent search interface and informative profiles.
No chatrooms, video or instant messaging.