Elite Singles Review
Elite Singles Review
Summary: A match-making style European based dating site that comes with an over inflated price tag.
3.4
Boasting an array of dating sites in 20 different countries with claims to cater for 13 million singles worldwide – but in a nutshell we would say Elite Singles is like a European version of eHarmony. But can it compete with such a dating powerhouse?
Serious singles
First of all, let’s see what Elite Singles say about themselves. It’s advertised as a partnership service designed for anyone looking for long-term commitment. It also takes compatibility rather seriously – their system is also based on an extensive personality test, which helps them to find personalised matches for their members and they take pride in their guided communication system. Due to their verification system – manually verifying all new profiles and removing those they think seem suspicious – they try to create a safe and secure environment for dating, which is something that we very highly appreciate here in the ODH office.
Signing up and getting started
So, how does their compatibility system work? EliteSingles has an extensive questionnaire, which every new member gets to complete. Their membership questionnaire is based on a well-known psychological model of personality testing called ‘The Big Five’ model. That means it looks at five personality dimensions – openness to experience, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness and neuroticism – in order to figure out your personality. Your character traits are matched with demographic data and personal preferences in order to create a suitable list of matches.
The first thing you get to do when signing up for EliteSingles is their personality test. It takes about 15-20 minutes to get through the questionnaire. At this stage there is not much that you have to write yourself – bear in mind that this is not yet your profile that you’re creating. We advise you to take your time and think about your answers when filling the questionnaire as this will be the base to the matching process.
After that bit is done the real work starts. There are dating sites where creating a profile is relatively easy – and there are sites where it requires a real effort. EliteSingles definitely belongs to the latter group. There’s a LOT of stuff that you need to write yourself – from your introduction to your likes and dislikes, your expectations to your interests etc. There’s pretty much no box-ticking at all. The pitfall for sites like that is that most members tend to skip the writing part or just quickly scribble something in the boxes to get that part over and done with. This results in bland and empty-looking profiles, which hardly say anything about the personalities of the members at all – even though the intention was completely different.
Of course, we encourage you to take the time and put some serious effort into writing up your profile – after all, this site isn’t cheap and once you sign up, you don’t want to waste your money – but unfortunately no one can guarantee that all the other members do the same. From what we saw when we looked around on the site – some members take their time to fill their profile page properly, others don’t bother.
The profiles themselves are pretty clear and clean. There’s no specific design to them, except for a nice little Facebook-like feature of being able to “like” and “comment” on different things people have said in their profiles. We like that, it makes communication that much easier because it often happens that we relate to some claims in someone’s profile.
By the way – keep in mind that just like eHarmony and some other big dating sites, you can’t see other members’ photos unless you sign up.
eHarmony twin
Now that we already brought up eHarmony, let’s carry on with that. The similarities with that big and well-known matching site don’t end here. In fact we would say that EliteSingles is pretty much like another version of eHarmony. Just like eHarmony, they base their site on compatibility testing and find matches accordingly. They also have guided communication – with even the same kind of features (send five questions, compare likes and dislikes, crate your own personalised questions…). Bear in mind that sites like that don’t have a traditional “search” button – every day you get offered a bunch of matches that the system has chosen for you based on your personality profile and preferences.
Were we happy with the selection itself? Well, yes and no. The matches chosen for us seemed compatible enough but we would have preferred a little more choice. We live in a big UK city and we got 7 matches to start with. Sure, it could well be more than enough – after all, you are looking only for one – but at the same time that one has to be special, so naturally it’s likely to take some time before you find it, unless you’re extremely lucky and just happen to stumble upon it right away.
It’s not a bad site, not at all. We like the design, you can see that it’s a quality site where a lot of attention has been paid to details and making customer experience as user-friendly as possible… it’s just that it lacks a bit of originality. eHarmony is a well-established and famous site – there is no need for another one just like that. Sure, there’s plenty of room in the online dating market for another site with similar aims and features but we’d prefer a little more originality and uniqueness.
Trustworthy and reliable
One thing we can highly commend though is the effort that EliteSingles are making in order to make their site trustworthy, safe and secure. They verify all the profiles manually and check them carefully in order to root out suspicious looking profiles. They also offer an extra identification validation, which is optional for Premium PLUS members. Unfortunately there are many scammers and fraudsters on dating sites these days and not all of them can be kept out from paid membership sites but sites with their own verification systems have certainly made that important investment into the security of their clients and we deeply appreciate that.
Free vs paid site
First of all, this isn’t a cheap site. There are three different membership levels to EliteSingles – Basic, Premium and Premium PLUS. Even with a Special Offer for 12 months you pay £16.95 a month for EliteSingles Premium PLUS membership (compared to similar eHarmony £6.95 Total Connect plan).
As usually with paid membership sites – basic membership lets you create a profile with the personality analysis and will choose personalised matches for you – but you cannot communicate with them or even see their photos. You can’t see who has been to your profile, and you can’t even send smiles and likes. In addition to these premium paid membership benefits you can get a few extras if you opt for the premium PLUS membership – you can get wildcard matches, you can have your profile verified and get a downloadable personality profile as PDF, and you can also get read receipts for all of your sent messages.
If you do decide to sign up for the site, there’s absolutely no point for signing up for less than 6 months – otherwise the price is just too high. So unless you’re sure you’re in it for a long haul, there are probably some better sites for you.
Conclusion
It’s not a bad site, not at all. We like the design, you can see that it’s a quality site where a lot of attention has been paid to details and making customer experience as user-friendly as possible… it’s just that it lacks a bit of originality. eHarmony is a well-established and highly popular site – there’s no need for another dating site just like it. Sure, there’s plenty of room in the online dating market for another site with similar aims and features but we’d prefer a little more originality and uniqueness.
Elite Simgles Review: Pros and Cons
Safety and security is a high priority on Elite Singles.
A pricier version of eHarmony, with very little originality and uniqueness.
And that’s the final word on our Elite Singles review, we hope you like the site if you decide to join 🙂
About the Author
Aet Suvari has been reviewing and writing about the world of online dating since 2008 and the launch of Online Dating Help. A stickler for promoting ethical practices within the UK dating industry she champions the sites that get it right while highlighting those holding it back. You can follow her on Google+
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