- PLENTY OF FISH (POF)
Plenty of Fish (POF) is an online dating site that is completely free to use. They have a couple of premium features that require payment to access but the bulk of their usable features are free and you can use the site comfortably without having to pay anything. Their online platform is not so elegant but it is free and it does pretty good for a free platform with their extensive compatibility features. Another price you have to pay to enjoy this free service is the ads that run on the platform but apart from all that, it is a great place to meet prospective dates and single people as they have a pretty large member base of over 100 million active global users in total and it was also said that they have over 3 million users logged in every day with about 55000 new signups daily. They claim to create over a million relationships yearly and that for every two minutes, a couple would meet on their platform.
With the afore mentioned figures and statistics, it is easy to see how meeting people is always a breeze on Plenty of Fish as there are a lot of potentials online and you can communicate with them in different ways. It is important at this point to note that only females are allowed to share pictures on Plenty of Fish because the they discovered that the male users are more prone to sending inappropriate and dirty content than the females.
Since their inception, they have upgraded most of their features to improve on their user experience like the smart home friendly feature that enables Plenty of Fish to be used in a smart home with Google Home using the Google Assistant. They have also upgraded their iOS and Android applications with new and elegant designs and incorporated a new feature known as Spark which allows users to cite any pert of another user’s profile to help start off conversations. They have a very quick and easy sign up process unlike most online dating sites but upon successful sign up, you are led to take a couple of quizzes which would be used for effective matching.
To find people on Plenty of Fish, all you need to do is click on the search button and choose the kind of search you want to engage in from the basic search option and the advanced search option. The basic search option allows you to search from a drop down list of about 14 features like ethnicity and education while the basic search is a more intense search option that allows you to even search up to personality traits.
- BADOO
If you love taking selfies and dating, then this is a great option for you as it is also a highly visual platform. It is an online dating platform with over 350 million users with the aim of helping these users meet other people that are in the same location as they are. Owing to their vision and the use of a geolocation feature, they specialize in match making people for dates, friendships and hook ups from the same area or vicinity. Ever since they were launched, they have delivered quality service to their users good enough to be recognized by many sites as one of the best dating applications to be used in recent times.
They have a mobile application and even though the site is free to register with and super easy to download, you will have to pay to access most of their features as they indulge in in-app and online purchases. The Badoo application is more like a regular social network and you even play a game with another user to see if the both of you are compatible or not. With this application, you can share your profile or the profiles of other users on other social network platforms like Instagram and Facebook and also keep your photos, videos and albums private. The video taking feature was quite a recent development and you can the videos without having to leave the application.
Badoo has a very beautiful and intricately designed website and the same can also be said for the mobile applications too. The website has a ranking number of 150 among all dating sites and ranks number 1 in the area of relationships. They are very innovative in terms of social networking trends which makes it difficult to believe that they are over ten years old.
To sign up on Badoo, you can sign up via Facebook, twitter or directly by filling in your name, birthday, email address, location, gender, sexual orientation, what you are interested in and your reason for joining the platform. After signing up, you can choose to get your friends from your contact list and upload your pictures from other social networks. Badoo also imports the profile picture of whatever social network you signed up with. The mobile application also has features like Geolocation, push notification and custom notifications which makes it a better option to use when compared with the desktop application.
- BLENDR
Blendr is an online social application that helps its users meet new people to date, make friends and just chat. Though it is an application that can be used on desktop, they also have an Android and iOS mobile application too.
It is a free application and they have options where you fill in your interests. These interests can be used to create compatible match suggestions for you and you can also see people that share the same interests as you do. On Blendr, you can also rate the profile pictures of other users in the hope that yours will be highly rated in return.
Blendr presently has over 250 million users so it is a great avenue to meet someone new even though the free nature of the application encourages the breeding of fake profiles and suspicious individuals. To sign up with Blendr, you will need an active phone number because it will be used to verify your account. You will also need to fill in your email address and create your password. Another way to sign up with Blendr is to sign up with your Facebook account. After signing up, you will be required to fill in your interests to help the application suggest the right matches for you.
- THECHIVE
TheCHive is a website that entertains people using photos. These photos are collected through daily submissions to the website and from the various searches conducted by their staff on different websites both domestically and internationally. Its primary aim is just to entertain people by uploading memes, funny pictures and interesting photos.
This company is owned by Resignation Media Limited Liability Company and it was launched in 2008. It became really popular in the years 2008, 2009 and 2010 when some of the photos they uploaded on their website really went extremely viral. The first one was the photoshopped photo of a receipt from a Santa Monica restaurant that indicated that Donald Trump dropped a $10000 tip on a bill of $82.27. Eventually, he denied it on Fox News Channel where the story was publicized for the first time. Another photo that went viral was the photo of a female teenager who texted her father accidently about losing her virginity on the beach.
So, if you just want to have fun going through pictures and passing time, this is the go to site. It is quite different from the traditional dating sites.
- GRINDR
Grindr is one of these free online dating sites that just exist for merely the fun of it. It is an application that was launched in 2009 and it is very popular for encouraging gay dating. Most people refer to the application as a hook up application as opposed to being a dating application because the users of this application make use of the quick and easy sign up process and also the geo targeting features to keep looking for fresh connections to make. It is a very efficient application because it also has features that allow users get information on when other users are online and even goes as far as revealing information on how close they are.
The user interface of Grindr is quite out of style but people still use the application because of its strengths and the fact that you can be found by anyone within a 5-mile radius so the possibilities of meeting up with someone is quite real. Grindr also has the perfect algorithm for picking out the right matches for you depending on what you are looking for and you can also link your other social media accounts to the applications thereby making the people on Grindr look real and human as opposed just appearing as inhuman as profile pictures.
It is quite a very popular application and they have grown a great deal from when they first started out and now they have over 6 million active users with about 2.5 million logging in daily. They have also won awards like the best mobile dating app during the iDate awards that took place in 2011 and also the best dating application by About.com in 2012. They have a very quick and easy to use sign up process where you are asked to fill in basic information like your name, email address, gender, birthday, age and even sexual interests and subsequently when logging in, you’ll just be asked to provide your email address and password.
When using Grindr, you need to be very careful because its free nature encourages the breeding of people that are not safe to be with. Always meet in open places and never trust someone online enough to reveal your personal information like your social security number, bank information, personal home address and family details. It is a completely free application but they also have premium membership which costs $5 every month.
- LOVOO
Lovoo is an online dating application that helps individuals meet with single people around them and hopefully start a relationship. They have a mobile application and owing to the constant use of mobile smart phones in recent times, their mobile application is more popular among its users with over ten million downloads.
Lovoo has quite a number of interesting features that make it exciting to use. One of such features is the Flirt Radar. The Flirt Radar is a feature on their application that looks out for single people that are close to your location and displays them in form of a radar so that you could pick the person that is most attractive to you. They also have other features that could enable you project your profile more so that you could be found by more single people. The alternative of that feature is the Ghost Mode feature that allows users to go through the profiles of other singles without being obviously noticed but the tweak to this feature is the fact that it is only available to the VIP users.
Lovoo also allows users earn credits for completing specific tasks. You could keep collecting this virtual currency in form of credits and eventually use them to access some other features of the application. Lovoo is a free application to download but it contains in-app purchases which could be bought by purchasing credits that go for $2.99 for 300 credits.
To be a VIP member on Lovoo, it will cost you $0.94 every week.
- TINDER
If you are a young single lady or guy looking for an avenue to just have a casual date, then this is a great application for you to explore. Over time, Tinder has been tagged synonymous with basic casual hook ups and nothing serious. Since their inception up until now, they have generated over 9 million matches with their user database accounting for over 25 million members plus over a million Tinder Plus paid subscribers. They are also available in about 24 languages.
On Tinder, available matches are made available in a format that resembles a deck of cards. This format allows a user to swipe right if he or she likes a profile and swipe left to pass on them, they have other features like the concept where you can like the profiles of other users extensively in return for a personal profile boost. Tinder is also notoriously known as a platform where you can find casual sex so people don’t expect anything more than a hook up when meeting others on the platform. On Google Play store and Apple App Store, Tinder ranks number one in the lifestyle category and it also ranks 4 starts out of 5 stars and 3.5 tars out of 5 stars in both Stores respectively.
So, in conclusion, Tinder is not the app you want to use when you want to get into a serious relationship or find love. Of course, it is possible to do that but the statistics are against that theory in the sense that only 13% of all their users get into relationships that last more than one month. That is a pretty poor assessment but if you want a hook up or casual sex or something temporary, then Tinder is a great choice to make.
- COM DATING
Fling.com is an exotic website developed solely with the aim of helping its users which consists of couples, singles, straight guys and ladies, Gay guys and ladies find a platform for cyber-sex experiences or in person face to face sex encounters.
It is a very popular website that has an Alexa ranking of 5604 in the United States and another Alexa ranking of 7923 in the whole world. These are only but a few of the accolades and rewards they have acquired and most of the users of this platform are from the United States, United Kingdom and Canada. The traffic on this website is mind burgling as they record an average amount of close to 4 million visits every month in just views via desktops. They also have on record that users averagely spend 5 minutes on the website viewing up to 5 pages at every visit. Since they have referrals on sex sites like PornHub and YouPorn, they also get a huge volume of their traffic from those referrals.
Fling is a very innovative website with over 20 years of being in existence and they are still catering to the sexual needs of their users by currently upgrading their platform and providing content that users would be interested in viewing. Beyond being a sex driven application, you could also meet people on Fling because it is a highly visual platform. You can customize your own account to curtail what you want to see and what you would rather not see and their search option is very advanced and detailed.
Signing in to Fling is pretty easy as it does not require anything out of the ordinary. You would be asked for your email address, sexual preferences, gender and age. You will then be sent a confirmation email from Fling and you would need to click on the link in the mail to verify your account. Immediately after verification, you are home free and now a full member of Fling.com.
To log in after sign up, all that you would be required to provide is just your email address and password and it is as easy and uncomplicated as that.
Fling is a free application at the basic level but then they have a different higher levels of subscriptions to access different features. There is the Silver one-month subscription level that costs 24.95 dollars, the Silver twelve-month subscription which costs 99.95 dollars saving you close to 66% of the monthly subscription. They also have the Gold three months’ subscription which costs 34.95 dollars and the Gold eighteen months’ subscription which would cost you 119.95 dollars but save you 80% as opposed to when you go for the Gold three months’ package.
- ZOOSK
Zoosk is another online dating application and website that caters to the dating needs of its users. Both the desktop and mobile app user interface is very playful but clean, simple and very easy to navigate. They have been in existence for over ten years and over time, they have knocked out some of their competition like eHarmony and Match.com. they have over 38 million active members now and over 8 million photos that are verified. They also claim to have over 3 million conversations exchanged daily on the platform. The company is also a very transparent one as they have a section in their blog where all they talk about is using the data obtained from their application to enhance the user experience and show users how to enjoy the most out of their platform.
Normally, with most online dating platforms, you would need to fill a long questionnaire set to aid the matching system create a right match for you but with Zoosk, it is quite different and more simplistic with its clean displays of profiles. There is never more than one profile in one page per time so you’ll never have to struggle with confusion as to whose profile is more attractive.
In Zoosk, you can either an active user or passive user irrespective of your gender which means that both male and female users do the same amount of work required to get eligible matches.
As is common with other sites, signing up with Zoosk can be done directly with your own email address and other details or it could be fast tracked by signing up via Facebook or Instagram or Google. The Sign up process is really easy and for every step of the way, Zoosk will intuitively guide you through. To Log in after sign up, you can log in directly by filling in your email address and password, or you could also log in vis any of the social networks you linked to your Zoosk account.
- SKOUT
Skout is another totally free online dating application that creates a conducive environment for singles to meet new people, make new friends and fall in love. The application was launched in 2007 and since then they have grown into one of the top online dating applications with over 40,000 Facebook fans. This application is a one size fits all kind of application because it could be used to create normal friendships if you need a friend and it could also be used in the case of loneliness where you just chat with online members. It could also be seen in terms of being a matchmaker where two separate individuals can meet and find love. So you see, there is something for almost everyone irrespective of what your needs are.
Skout is one of those applications you need when you travel alone to someplace new and you want to hang out with friends because it has a geolocation feature that enables users find people close to them looking to meet up too. With Skout, you can chat with a total stranger from the other end of the universe, make a lot newer friends, get information on what the users in your location are doing or just skim through the pictures of the users that are near you.
The age limit for the sign up process on Skout is 13 years which is one of the main reasons why they have a very thorough security system ensuring that the use of inappropriate content is curtailed.
To sign up with Skout, you can either start the sign up process from scratch with your email address or link your account with an already existing social network like Facebook, Instagram or Google and to connect with people, you could either do a search for matches that are near you or you could just scroll through your updates of people that are in your city which is the function of a feature called Buzz or you could also just browse through the pictures of people you would like to meet with. There is also a feature called Shake that randomly matches you with a total stranger.
CONCLUSION
As I have tried to show you, there are even more applications that could have the self-same features as OkCupid does. With the ones listed above, you can comfortably make your own choice on what application to use and what platform to use it on depending on your needs at the moment.
One thing though you should look out for when using these applications is your safety. No potential date or love or relationship is worth your personal safety, or the safety of the ones that are dearest to your heart. The internet is home to a lot of hooligans in these recent times and it is imperative that you keep your personal information, bank details and the information of your loved ones private. Never reveal your address to anyone and always meet in public places.
Once you have all these in check, you can then go out of your way to experience as much fun as you desire with these applications and if love is your motive, I hope you find it in the nearest future.