Mature Dating Review
Mature Dating Ratings
Summary: Mature daters feel at home here as it’s simple and straightforward, albeit a little bland.
3.4
Even five years ago online dating was still seen and perceived as something for young people. Five years on, all the Tinders and Happns and Grindrs later it is no longer the case. As young people have increasingly widened their pastures to find new partners, older generations haven’t been slow to discover the joys and woes of online dating too.
Therefore it’s hardly a surprise that new sites spring up all the time catering specifically for the needs of more mature daters. They might not be as tech-savvy as young daters nor crave all those bells and whistles dating apps feature these days, but they are looking for love just the same and appreciate good sites that provide a quality experience in a safe and secure environment.
Signing up
Mature Dating UK is one of these sites. While it’s not a terribly exciting site it certainly seems as good a site as any other for wisened daters to start seeking love. Signing up to the site is fast and easy, putting together your profile is also straightforward enough. As Mature Dating belongs to a bigger dating conglomerate Cupid.com, their design follows the same pattern that many other Cupid-owned dating sites do. While it provides little originality and individuality, it at least seems to be a well-honed machine, tested and tried.
After you sign up you’re ready to go and start looking for suitable dates. However, we strongly recommend that you take a little more time and put some more work and effort into your profile. Yes, photos count and you can upload quite a few of them. We don’t expect it to be that much different from all the dating sites young people use – mature daters too care about the way their date looks. Still, the older you get, the more you start realising that nice appearance doesn’t make up for other, more important things that one might want to find in their future life partner. Therefore we suggest you truly take some time to write up a proper description of your wants and needs – as well as what you’re looking for in your future date.
Searching for a date
Searching on the site is also fairly simple and straightforward. You can perform an age and location-based search as well go into more details and look for very specific characteristics. We recommend keeping your options open though – at least to start with. It’s always a good idea to get to know the dating environment and the choice you’re facing before fine-tuning it more to your needs.
Search results seem good enough although unfortunately we saw that not many members have taken the trouble of writing up proper profiles for themselves and have only put up their photo. You can also look for new members – those who have recently joined as well as those who have only just joined on the very same day, and of course, you can also perform a postcode search to find someone who lives close to you. However, the latter works best if you live in a big city like London with a lot of potential members on the site.
Mailing and chatting
If you want to get in touch with other users, you need to be a paying customer. Free members can sign up and have a look around but they cannot read or write messages or chats. Alternatively they can also send winks and/or icebreakers – even free members can send up to 5 icebreakers every day.
If you hit it off, you can use the site’s own chatroom to have a conversation, this way you don’t have to start sharing Skype or Facebook details so early on.
By the way – beware if someone emails you before you’ve completed your profile or even uploaded a photo. This could be a clever way to try to get you to sign up – as you won’t be able to read the email before you’ve become a paying member. We can tell you from our experience that it’s extremely rare for someone to contact you before you’ve completed your profile and put up a photo – so just make sure you don’t sign up to the site before you’re really sure that you’re interested in what the site has to offer.
All the activity that you’re performed on the site can also be found in the same place on the site, this way you never feel like you get lost or miss out – just go to your Activity page and all the members you’ve viewed or talked to are listed there.
Free vs paid membership
There’s not a lot for free members. Like we said, they can sign up, perform searches, send winks and up to five icebreakers daily. In order to send emails or chat, you’d have to be a paying member. Can’t decide whether this site truly is for you? You could opt for their 3 days trial for £9.99 and find out. Mind you, it’s not very cheap if a whole month costs just three times as much as that, but it certainly saves you a pretty penny if you should decide after those three days that this site isn’t for you after all. Just make sure you cancel your membership before the three days run out as it will automatically convert to their monthly membership plan if you don’t.
Mature Dating Review – Conclusion
There are many good general dating sites that cater for all kinds of specific needs and age groups – Match and eHarmony are amongst them and are the best sites we’ve used, therefore we can warmly recommend them for everyone. However, should you feel like you want to hang out with only ‘your kind’ of people, Mature Dating seems like a reliable and safe site to get started.
Pros: You’ll feel like you’re in good company around people your own age.
Cons: A little bland and lacking originality.
This is where our Mature Dating review ends and you get to decided whether to give it a go or browse our other dating site reviews to help you decide.
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+
Related Posts
Tinder Review →
Guardian Soulmates Review →
eHarmony review (UK) →
