DatingDirect

Although DatingDirect is open to international members, its roots are in the United Kingdom, where it enjoys the status of one of the longest-running national dating services.

Getting Started

After following the simple home page registration form, you'll be directed to a questionnaire which consists of four sections covering your personal circumstances, your lifestyle, interests, and who you'd like to meet. You'll need to set aside a good 20-minutes to complete all parts of the questionnaire. You can then optionally upload a photo.

Finding people

Once inside, simply input where you are, who you are looking for and where, and your matches will appear.

You can also specify your postal code if you want to find somebody who's reasonably close and not living the other side of the country. Profiles have pictures of a good size! No magnifying glass required. The picture is on the same page as the profile, with all of the details spelled-out underneath. You'll need to upgrade if you want to contact someone.

Profiles are Descriptive

The profile details include occupation, smoking, drinking and eating habits as well as physical traits. There is a brief portion where they can comment, describe themselves further or explain who and what they are looking for. Many members don't specify exactly what type of person they are looking for, so you will probably see many people who don't seem very fussy who they meet!

A table at the bottom points to what type of relationship they are looking for, what age and status of a potential mate. Relationships can be straight, gay or lesbian in nature. No adult content is allowed on the site, and all content is moderated before being published online.

Membership

A free basic membership is available, as well as a Premier membership for a monthly fee. Premier memberships have access to all of the contact features, whereas free memberships do not. The site claims over three million member profiles worldwide listed and with pictures - however many of these are no longer active.

A Bit of History...

DatingDirect was taken over early in 2007 by Meetic.com, and unfortunately since that time, membership number have fallen. You can find the same people on Meetic Uk as DatingDirect, so both sites seem to share a common pool of members.

There has also been a number of negative comments about the changes. The main complaint being that contact forms and online support are not available on the site (or at least are not easily accessible), and that there does not appear to be a way of removing your profile and canceling subscription payments once you are registered.