Types of Online Personal Sites
Online Dating Sites fall into four main types: general dating, relationship, matchmaking, and free dating sites. There is overlap between these types and many hybrid sites exist, but most fall into these four categories.
General Dating Sites
General Dating Sites try to fulfill the dating needs as of wide a group as possible – from flings and intimate encounters to casual dating to serious to long term relationships. They tend to have the largest number of members are often segmented by location (New York, Los Angeles), race (African American, Asian), religion (Jewish, Christian), or demographic (Seniors, Adult).
Singles interact by posting, browsing, and searching through photo profiles and contacting each other via email or instant messaging. They may not offer personality analysis to the same extent as Relationship Services and will charge a monthly subscription fee to join. These are among the most popular personals sites like Yahoo! Personals or Match.com and tend to be less expensive than other types of paid dating sites.
Relationship Sites
Relationship Sites rely on getting a very detailed profile from you, matching you to other profiles in their database (often using a proprietary system), and reporting back with the best matches. Most relationship sites have a guided communication process; they will provides singles for you to contact and you will never see the profiles of those who do not match your specified criteria. Relationship Sites are more long term relationship oriented and tend to focus on finding spouses for singles.
Because of the extensive screening and guided communication process, Relationship Sites are more expensive than general dating sites. Examples include Eharrmony, Perfect Match, and Chemistry.com.
Matchmaking Sites
Matchmaking sites focus on screening users and introducing them to a specific demographic (wealthy men, professionals) for marriage or long term relationship. While you can search or browse through profiles, Matchmaking Sites will also set up the offline events such as dinners or mixers for the singles to meet. These are sites like Wealthymen, Ashley Madison, or Great Expectations. These are the most expensive of all the online personals sites.
Free Dating Sites
Free Dating Sites are General Dating Sites that are free for members to join, post, search, and contact other singles. Free Dating Sites are 100% supported by advertising such banner ads or selling your profile information to advertisers. They usually have no customer support, no screening process, and tend to attract poorer quality postings (ie, mail order brides).
Examples include PlentyofFish.com and JustSayHi.com.