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Regardless of your age or dating history, you've likely felt both the stress and excitement of trying to find your perfect match. Trying to be in the right place at the right time to meet the man or woman of your dreams is a lot of pressure. Most people spend a good chunk of their time at work; outside of that they might hit the gym, go to the store, or socialize with friends. Meeting a future spouse at one of these places is limiting when there are so many singles elsewhere.
Online dating is becoming more popular than ever because you are able to meet hundreds of potential partners with the click of a few buttons. Everyone has a list of characteristics and values that they hope to find in a potential spouse, so online dating platforms are a great way to narrow down the pool of singles who fit what you're looking for. For many people, one of the most important things to agree on in a relationship is religion. Fortunately, there are many sites designed to help Christians find each other.
Wednesday, February 8th
Christian Cafe has been in the business of online dating since 1999. Because of their platform, over 25,000 couples have met and gotten married. Whether the couples lived close by each other or on opposite sides of the world, they have found success with finding a partner. Christian Cafe is independently Christian-owned, so you don't have to worry about whether or not their best interest is trying to connect people with similar faith and values.
10 Day Test Run
Before paying for a membership with Christian Cafe, you can give the platform a 10-day test run. By providing information about yourself like your birthday, gender, marital status, appearance, faith, lifestyle, family background, school and employment, you can create a free profile. From there it's a good idea to add photos and fill out the written answers about your personality, what you're looking for in a relationship, favorite activities, goals, and more. The more thoroughly you fill out your profile, the more serious you come across to other users about your intentions to find a partner.
Browse For Free
Like most dating sites, you can browse other users by looking at their profile pictures, age, location, and what percentage they "match" your profile and what you're looking for. To have full access to email users and the features that Christian Cafe offers, you'll need to sign up for a membership. You can choose from a 1 month ($34.97), 3 month ($49.95), 6 months ($79.98), or 1 year ($99.96) plan.
Participate In Forums
In addition to browsing and meeting other Christian Singles, you can participate in forums about topics specifically for men, women, single parents, people 50+ and so forth. Discussions might include current events, health and fitness, music, travel, or anything faith-based. This is a good way to meet other members who have similar interests as you and stay current on dating trends and current events.
Thousands Of Positive Customer Testimonials
Christian Cafe has an A+ rating from the Better Business Bureau. There are thousands of testimonials on their website from couples who met and are engaged or married because of this dating service. Christian Cafe works hard to keep high Christian standards on their website.
Highest Rating
Christian Cafe is fun to use. It's easy to use their platform, create a thorough profile, and find other users with a similar background on Christian Cafe. They have earned our highest rating for Christian dating sites.
Christian Mingle boasts that they are the largest network of Christian singles online. Their community consists of over 15 million members. This site's goal is to help men and women find God-centered relationships built on faith and love. The service is owned by Spark Networks, Inc., who also manages over 35 other dating sites specific to various religions and races.
Strong On Religious Values
Christian Mingle seems more committed to having their user base have religious values than some competing sites. It is required that you specify your religion during the profile creation process. When viewing the profiles of others, the first information you see along with their photo is their location, age, religion, and career field.
One Of The More Expensive
Compared to other Christian dating sites, Christian Mingle is one of the more expensive options. For access to profile viewing data, emailing, and browsing profiles anonymously (all essential features), you can pay for a membership for 1 month, 3 months, or 6 months at a time. One month is $42.99, but this drops to $24.99 for 3 months, and $19.99 for 6 months. You'll want to be serious about your search if you subscribe to the services provided by Christian Mingle.
Impressive Number Of Success Stories
There are 153 pages of success stories dating back to 2006 that you can read on Christian Mingle's site. The couples have given updates on what first attracted them to each other, if they are married, what their wedding was like, and their experience with using Christian Mingle. The amount of success stories you can browse is extremely impressive and adds credibility to the effectiveness of this platform.
Dating Safety Guide
We were happy to see that Christian Mingle has a dating safety guide for their members. When we see this, it tells us that the service has its members' best interests at heart and wants to protect users from scams. People new to online dating might need some basic starter tips and you can find them here at no cost.
Customer Complaints
The Better Business Bureau (BBB) only manages complaints for companies within the United States - and since Spark Networks has relocated to Berlin, Germany, the BBB isn't able to continue updating users on issues that might be occurring for people who use the site. However, the last rating they were given was a C+ because of a large number of complaints from members. They mentioned that many user profiles seem illegitimate and it is extremely difficult to cancel your account. However, this is not necessarily a reflection on Christian Mingle, but rather collective problems that different people have run into on one of the many dating sites that Spark Networks runs.
Solid Choice
Even though there have been some reported problems with people using the different dating sites that Spark Networks operates, we like their sleek platform. Since it is attractive and up-to-date, we know Christian Mingle must be attracting new members. We are impressed with the many success stories that have come from this service and believe that there is a lot of potential for Christian singles here. Although they haven't earned our highest rating, we recommend giving Christian Mingle some serious consideration when choosing an online dating site.
Eharmony is one of the better-known online dating sites for Christians and non-Christians alike. They host platforms for Asians, Blacks, seniors, and Hispanics. Their company operates within the US, Australia, Canada, and the UK. They have an A rating from the Better Business Bureau, but they don't get a lot of love from people who have used their site. Unfortunately, there are hundreds of complaints against them that can be found online.
Compatibility Quiz
You'll start with a compatibility quiz when making your profile. It takes about 20 minutes to complete, which is both good and bad. Good because it might weed out people who aren't serious about dating or using eharmony for the right reasons. Bad because this is one of the longest sign-up processes for any online dating site. Questions gauge what you're looking for in a relationship, what your values are, habits, preferences (down to the temperature you prefer your house at!), interests, and other things relevant for eharmony's algorithm to match you with other members. Interestingly, when creating your profile, you can select from a long list of different religions including Christianity. This tells us that you might get matched with non-Christian members while using this service.
Matched With Members
Then you'll be matched with a short(ish) list of members who seem to match up with the information you provided during the sign-up process. The algorithms are designed to use the long questionnaire you filled out to give you highly specific matches you can quickly connect with. You can always broaden your results by changing your match preferences to include other types of people of different ages and backgrounds.
6 Month Minimum
To look at the profiles of other members, you need to cough up some money! Even to view non-blurred profile photos, you need to be a member yourself. Unlike many competing Christian dating sites, eharmony does not have a 1-month plan. The minimum amount of time you can sign up for membership is 6 months! The cost for this is $59.90/month (ouch!). For the 12 month plan, you'll pay $19.95/month, and for 24 months you'll pay $14.95/month. This is definitely one of the most expensive Christian dating sites in our review.
Helpful Dating Information
More than just the normal online dating features, you can also read safety tips, dating tips, date ideas, and get relationship and dating advice from eharmony and other members.
You Don't Usually Find This
Something unique about eharmony's dating site for Christians is that it allows gay and lesbian women to create profiles. Since some more traditional Christians might not feel comfortable with this, it isn't something you usually find with Christian dating sites.
Customer Issues
Overall, eharmony seems like a reputable option for Christian online dating because their brand is widely recognized. However, over the years they've built up an unfortunate amount of criticism about their pricing, low number of local matches, and inactivity of users on the site. Many people felt that after paying for the service, they regretted it because they didn't find anyone to talk to in their local area and profiles of non-paying members were displayed, so they weren't able to message them.
Mixed Results
If you're a young Christian single who is serious about dating, eharmony isn't the worst place to go, but you'll probably find more luck with one of our higher-rated sites. For older singles, eharmony is a better bet because this service will resonate with older generations who know more about the platform and aren't jumping from one dating site to another. We would best describe eharmony as an average Christian dating site and have rated the service accordingly.
Christian Cupid is one of many online dating sites run by Cupid Media. They have 28 other platforms specific to cultures or religions like Caribbean Cupid, Columbian Cupid, Interracial Cupid, Military Cupid, Thai Cupid, and more. Cupid Media has been around since 2000 and boasts that they've helped over 30 million people look for love across the world.
Browse Other Users For Free
You can create a username and password and immediately see a list of profiles of other users in your area for free. By viewing their photos, location, when they were last active on the site, and an overview of who they are and what they are looking for in a relationship, you can quickly gauge whether or not you're interested in contacting them. To send messages is easy, but you'll need to upgrade your account.
2 Membership Plans - Gold Or Platinum
Depending on whether you want unlimited access to everything Christian Cupid offers or just want the basics to allow you to use the site, you'll choose between a platinum or a gold membership. The platinum membership ranks you above other members, allows for more profile space, gives you a VIP profile highlight, unlocks advanced matching algorithms, and translates messages into your language. The cost for 1 month of platinum Christian Cupid is $14.99. You'll save between 33% and 67% each month if you sign up for a 3-month ($29.98) or 12-month ($59.99) plan.
Easy To Use
Christian Cupid is easy to use. You can see who liked, favorited, and viewed your profile to quickly determine who is interested in you. If you're having issues with certain users, you can block their profiles so that they can't message or access your information anymore. When searching for other Christian singles, you can narrow your results by location, appearance, lifestyle, background/cultural values, and more.
Hard To Find Local Members
An icon on the platform shows how many members are currently active on the site and ready to chat. For us, we had around 110 when we logged in, which may seem like a lot, but these people had all different backgrounds and were located in places like Russia, Colombia, Philippines, Brazil, Mexico, and more. Most members will find that they are extremely limited in finding active members within a reasonable distance from where they live.
Mixed Customer Experiences
Cupid Media is unrated by the Better Business Bureau and users have mixed things to say about their experience using the site. Like with most dating platforms, Cupid Media and Christian Cupid have their fair share of critics who say there are too many fake profiles and scammers. However, there are also those who feel like this is a legitimate company that they trust with their information and money. Many people have found success meeting people through Christian Cupid.
Worth Consideration
Since Christian Cupid has competitive pricing, an easy-to-use platform, and an active (though not very big) member database, we think they could be a good option for Christian singles to try. You might not meet as many people as you would with a higher-ranking site, but it is still worth considering. We've given Christian Cupid an average ranking among online Christian dating sites.
Christian Mate is a way for Christian singles to meet and connect online. They are owned by Premier Dating Network, also known as Friends Worldwide. Unfortunately, this company has an F rating from the Better Business Bureau. They've had a list of complaints filed against their business without responses. Many people say they are continually being charged without receiving services from Christian Mate. Let's just say red flags are popping up everywhere with this site.
You Can Browse Members, But Are They Active?
After creating a username and password for a profile, Christian Mate has users fill out their marital status, eye color, hair color, height, body type, and ethnicity. Right away we were shown who was online and could view profiles of other members. Most of them lived across the United States, so if you want to find someone local, you'll need to use the advanced search option. There were more local members for us to view than we found at some other competing sites, but it was unclear how active they are on the platform. We weren't able to see the last time each person logged on to their profile, so it worried us that many of the displayed members were inactive on the site.
Standard Or Premium Memberships
To interact with other singles through messaging, a standard or premium membership is required. To fully dive into the Christian Mate platform, you'll probably want to go with a premium membership because it allows you to read and reply to emails, use advanced search features, start new conversations, and see who has viewed your profile. The bummer about this is there is only a 3- or 6-month plan. It's $20.99 per month for 3 months ($62.97 total) or $16.99 per month for 6 months ($101.94 total). These aren't cheap options, especially if you're unsure about wanting to commit to Christian Mate and were hoping to try it out for just a month. A standard, one-month membership without the bells and whistles is $24.95.
Both Religious And Non-religious Members
You are not required to be Christian to use Christian Mate, so don't be surprised if you get a mixed bag of religious and non-religious members to match with. The only thing that really mentions Christianity at all once you create a profile and start using the platform is a "faith" category that allows users to provide their religion in their profile. This really is just your run-of-the-mill dating site where you can browse photos and chat with anyone who looks interesting. We are definitely not blown away by any features or the overall aesthetics of the site.
Negative Feedback And A Failing Grade
Our main concern with Christian Mingle is the F rating from the Better Business Bureau and negative feedback from users. Memberships auto-renew and it seems very difficult to cancel them. It is unclear based on their website and other places we searched online how exactly they expect people to go about cancelling their membership. We don't have trust in the policies and procedures of Christian Mingle, so they've earned a low rating from us.
When you land on the Christian Lifestyle website, you might think you've unearthed an ad from the early 90's. A picture of a man giving a woman a piggyback is just the cheese to make us think there aren't a lot of people using this site and there's not much work going into maintaining it. There was also a spelling error right on the front page, which is unprofessional and doesn't build trust with us. For this reason and quite a few others, Christian Lifestyle has earned our lowest rating for Christian dating sites.
Pricing Schemes
Once you've provided some basic information, you are taken straight to the membership option page. You can do a 5-day trial with Christian Lifestyle, but here's the catch: it costs $0.80 every day which means you have to provide credit card information no matter what. If you don't cancel after day 5, you'll automatically be billed $23.95 every 30 days, which is crazy since a 1-month membership is only $19.97. The 3-month plan is $39.98. If you're not careful during sign-up, you'll also subscribe to a 3-day trial with another online dating site called Like Christian and be billed $14.93 every 30 days unless you cancel that. If it's not already clear, it seems like Christian Lifestyle tries to juice you for every penny and ensure you pay them something regardless of how long you use their service.
Filled With Click Bait
You can browse profiles without paying for a membership, but you can't use any features like messaging. If we're being honest, even browsing profiles was unappealing because this website is so outdated and full of click bait. A lot of links take you to external sites that are the type to put a virus on your computer. Nothing about Christian Lifestyle is geared toward the Christian faith besides their name. There is no way to ensure that other members share the same beliefs as you since it isn't highlighted in the profiles unless the user adds it to their bio.
Difficult To Use
There are a lot of users who don't have profile pictures and the results "near you" are all over the place. It is not easy to read all the information presented on this site or clearly sort through the profiles of others. Christian Lifestyle needs a major overhaul to attract new members.
Skip It
The Better Business Bureau has not rated Christian Lifestyle. In fact, it's hard to find any feedback about their platform online. This isn't surprising to us, because we doubt there are very many people who actively use this site. It might have had some glory days in the past, but those are long over and we don't suspect there are many successful matches happening. Skip Christian Lifestyle and use a higher-rated Christian dating site to find a match with similar values while having an enjoyable online experience.
BigChurch's big motto is to "Meet People with the Same Spiritual Beliefs as You". The site is run by what was formerly and more commonly known as FriendFinder and is now Various, Inc. In addition to BigChurch, they also run an adult dating site called Adult FriendFinder, which is a large sex dating and swinger online community. It goes without saying that this does not match up with the Christian values portrayed by BigChurch. Various, Inc. and its group of other dating sites have been criticized for the number of fake profiles they contain and scammy practices that cheat people of their money.
Doesn't Add Up
Before creating an account with BigChurch, some stats are displayed about their "active community". For us, we were shown that there were 570 members in our area, 38 currently online, and 0 total members. What? The math doesn't add up. When we clicked to view more about the 570 members in our area, we were taken to a page that says there are actually 10,916 members near us. The definition of near here could mean people who live clear across the country. Needless to say, it seems like membership is low at BigChurch and they are trying to make it seem otherwise.
Getting Started
If you're determined to give this online dating platform a try, you'll select if you're a man seeking a woman or a woman seeking a man, your age, country, state, and zip code. You'll be shown a list of profiles near you (most of which won't have photos). To view them further, you need to create an account. You can do this by choosing a username and password, adding your body type (seems like a shallow question to be #1 on the list, don't you think?), marital status, relationship with God, and denomination. From there you get to upload photos, write a bio, add your location, interests, career information, and more.
Silver Or Gold Membership Plans
To search profiles, view them, and send messages, you'll need to pay for a membership. You can either buy a silver or gold membership that can be paid one month or three months at a time. The gold membership allows users to get top searches, tech and profile support, as well as all the silver features which are watching video introductions, adding more photos, and contacting others through email. The cost for one month starts $29, or you can save by getting a 3-month membership for $30. If you want to commit to a 6-month membership, the cost is $79.99/month.
Ghost Town
The owner of BigChurch - Various, Inc. - has an A- rating from the Better Business Bureau. However, they have 1.65/5 stars on their profile page and a slew of negative feedback online. All of the FriendFinder websites, including BigChurch seem to have lost their steam over the years and many describe these sites as "ghost towns". It is best not to waste hard-earned money at BigChurch and use one of our higher-rated Christian dating sites to find a partner. BigChurch has earned our lowest ranking.
When using a dating site, you'll make a profile and provide photos, details on your background, educational history, hobbies and interests, what you're looking for in a spouse, and other relevant information to help you find and attract matches. You can browse the profiles of other users and start communicating with those you want to get to know. Eventually the goal is to meet in person and have a long-lasting, enriching relationship with someone special.
Before choosing a Christian dating site, we suggest you keep the following criteria in mind:
To help you identify the best Christian dating sites, TopConsumerReviews.com has reviewed and ranked a variety of options. We hope this information helps you find your perfect Christian match!
Meeting potential candidates at a dating website is far more effective and convenient than scouring the bars and night clubs week after week. Meeting singles online has many benefits including the amount of singles to choose from, the ability to learn important details about a person before you even talk, and the opportunity to preserve your privacy. Your approach with dating websites will be far more effective if you follow these tips:
A well written, honest profile that is upbeat is a great way to capture the attention of potential candidates that would make a good fit. Sign on regularly to look for communication from potential dates but make sure you aren't too quick to share personal information with those you meet online.
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