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Complete guide to online dating, personals sites and matchmaking services on the web. |
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Review of Lavalife.com
Home Page: www.lavalife.com
Overall
The best features of the oddly named lavalife.com are the number of members and the site design. It has managed to build a large community of members, mainly through heavy advertising on high traffic sites like hotmail.com. As for site design, it is definitely one of the coolest looking sites around, geared towards young, hip and attractive singles. There are some quirks as well, mostly related to pricing, but more about that later.
Features
The site is divided into three areas, Dating, Relationship and Intimate Encounters. There are also two sister (brother?) sites: womanline.com and manline.com, that cater to gay and lesbian singles.
All the standard features are there, comprehensive search options, anonymous e-mail and chat through instant messages. You can create a fairly detailed profile (for free) and upload up to 10 pictures of yourself.
One unique feature of lavalife.com is "smile", i.e. if you see someone you like and are not quite ready to contact them by email, you can smile at them to show your interest. If they smile back, you know it is time to go further. Unlike email, smiling is available in free membership.
Another interesting feature is called "backstage pass". The way this works is that you can post more pictures of yourself which are not visible in your public profile, but are visible to people who receive your backstage pass from you.
Pricing
It is free to post a profile, search and view other peoples profiles, and reply to messages. It is not free to initiate contact with other members. This is where lavalife.com pricing structure differs from most sites.
The way it works is that you buy credits, and then you spend these credits on various features of the site.
There are three main plans:
Fun & Flirt $14.99 = 50 credits
Contacting a member costs 6 credits, instant messaging session another 6 etc.
One advantage of this system is that it discourages mass emailing and potentially provides for better and quicker matching.
Pros
Large member database. Safe and reliable. Nice site design with some extra features that distinguish it from other similar sites.
Cons
Could be pricey, depending on how many singles you contact.
Verdict
As a one of the mainstream large and well designed sites , lavalife.com works well and is recommended as a place to meet singles. Just make sure that their pricing structure works for you.
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