81: evaluating the different sites

Christian Café offered me 2 free days this morning to entice me to come back. So I checked my inbox. I was greeted with a message from a 20 yr old saying "You say you have no appeal for 40 year olds. What about guys in their early 20s?" and a message from a 28 yr old saying "You'd make a good wife, dear." What a way to start a morning! *cracks up*

Someone asked me if there was a specific online dating site I'd recommend. So here's my evaluation.

eHarmony: eHarmony requires you to take an extensive personality quiz at the beginning and then matches you based on your answers. (It was co-founded by Neil Clark Warren, who has written books on how to find the right match, so you can tell that is his heart.) eHarmony sends you about 7 matches a day (until the database starts running out of good matches), and you can only view the matches they've sent you. When you are ready to begin communication, you go through a somewhat lengthy process before jumping to actual e-mails (although you have the ability to skip this process). Using lists provided by the service, you exchange several multiple choice questions and 0 must have's and 10 can't stands. Then you ask three questions to which the other can reply in paragraph format before jumping into actual e-mailing via eHarmony. As a non-subscriber, you can receive and view profiles, but you cannot see pictures, send messages, or know who viewed you.

Christian Mingle: This is the shopper's paradise! You set your own parameters and can change them whenever you want. You can view your matches or you can search for anyone and everyone. You can even search profiles by keywords (I've searched all the profiles with "homeschool" in them. :-P) Without paying a subscription, you can do almost everything--view pictures, profiles, who viewed you--except read your messages and participate in instant messenger.

Christian Cafe: Christian Cafe is similar to Christian Mingle in that you can search for your own match (but not by keyword). One of the distinctives of Christian Cafe--which is interesting since it is endorsed by Boundless--is that you are required to display on your profile what kind of relationship you're seeking (marriage, open to all possibilities, friendship?) and whether or not you have/want children. Without a paying subscription, you cannot access Christian Cafe, though they give you a several day free trial period when you create a profile.

Which would I recommend? eHarmony is a good starter since it's not as overwhelming as the other sites. Christian Mingle has a great selection of profiles if you are ready to sort through hundreds of them. Remember that each site has different members (though I did see a cross-over once between Cafe and eHarmony :-P), so it doesn't hurt to try more than one service. I would recommend shorter subscription periods (1 month, 3 months) until you know if you really want to try to find someone via the internet.