MatchAffinity Review: Online Dating for the UK Single

Published on April 29, 2010

Often when dating online, you will find yourself on a date with someone you quickly realize you are not compatible with. Simple profiles frequently fall short of revealing the true character of the people we date. MatchAffinity helps address this issue by taking the compatibility of you and your dates into account before you even see each other’s profiles. MatchAffinity incorporates an extensive compatibility questionnaire to determine your interests, values, beliefs and goals and then uses this information to connect you with the best singles based on who you are.

While this idea may not be new, MatchAffinity has created a service specifically catered to singles in the United Kingdom that also offers flexibility lacking from other matching services available today.

How Does MatchAffinity Work?

Generally, dating services fall into one of two categories:

• Match Based: Match-based sites use your personality to provide you with a limited number of singles who match best with you. The good is that you only see those people who you are likely to get along well with, the bad is that you are only seeing the people the site believes you should date.
• Browse Based: Browse-based sites allow you to browse through all of the dating profiles and select exactly who you wish to contact. The good here is that you have total freedom in who you contact, the bad is that you’ll find yourself on dates with people that you get on with poorly.

The Best of Both Worlds
MatchAffinity has taken these two service types and combined them. The users of the service are provided with a comprehensive affinity test to allow the service to provide them with recommendations on who they should be dating. However, the service still allows the single to have full control on who they communicate with, even to the point of ignoring the compatibility scoring altogether. While ignoring your compatibility score is generally not recommended, the freedom to do so is still a big plus.

Sign Up Process

The sign up process at MatchAffinity is an extensive one due to the fact that you need to provide information on your personality, values and interests. This information is then used to provide you with the best matches. Some of the questions are very straight forward, such as how well you deal with stress, while other areas of the profile creation are more mysterious, such as the question that has you select which color describes you best. You will want to set aside 30 minutes or so to fill out your affinity profile questions.

After you’ve finished with the personality test, you’ll fill in additional information such as what you’re looking for in a partner, the ability to upload a photo of yourself and a section to write about yourself.

MatchAffinity Features

Compatibility Based Matching
MatchAffinity helps you meet the people you’ll match best with. This is perhaps the most important feature of the service and will help you better determine who you will be contacting.

Contact Anyone You Want
While the service provides a great compatibility system, unlike other service you are not limited in who you can contact. Not interested in the matches you’ve been provided with? That’s not a problem, you can contact the people you want to regardless of how strong your compatibility is.

Advanced Searching
To find other singles you wish to contact, you can use the Advanced Search functionality. This allows you to search for singles on dozens of different areas such as race, religion, interests and so on.

Online Coaching
This feature really sets MatchAffinity apart. Many services will offer profile advice but always at an additional cost to the user. MatchAffinity on the other hand has rolled this feature into the service itself. The cost of a professionally written profile can often be as much as the dating service itself so this feature bring enormous value to the dating service.

Video Coaching
A small feature but still very nice: MatchAffinity provides many videos with advices ranging from just starting at the service to moving your relationship forward.

Available Options by Subscription Type

	Basic Membership		Paid Membership
Affinity Personality Test	Yes		Yes
Browse Other Members	Yes		Yes
Video Coaching	Yes		Yes
Telephone Coaching			Yes
Read Your Messages			Yes
See Other Member Photos			Yes
Contact Other Members			Yes

MatchAffinity Subscription Pricing

3 months: £29.00 per month (for a total of £87.00)
6 months: £19.00 per month (for a total of £114.00)
12 months: £14.00 per month (for a total of £168.00)

If you think these prices are too expensive consider the fact that if you did sign up for 3 months you would only be paying around £7 a week. Most people will spend more than that at the pub each week without meeting anyone at all (or when they do meet someone, odds are the compatibility will be missing). I believe your time will be better spend chatting with other singles that match well with you rather than leaving everything up to chance and still spend as much or more. In the end, I think you can spend less and have more success with MatchAffinity than many of the “traditional” methods.

Final Thoughts on MatchAffinity

Overall I feel MatchAffinity brings a very strong service to the world of online dating. It’s concentration on a single geographical area should benefit its users, it has an easy to use system and the affinity matching system will help singles avoid some of the bad dates that other services can’t avoid.

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