FDating Review — What Will a Free Dating Site Get You?

If you are in the market for a free dating site, Fdating should sound intriguing. Want to know what the user experience is like? Is it really free? What are your chances of meeting real partners? Read our Fdating review and find out.

— Pros and Cons —

Pros

• The site is free
• Very easy to use and navigate
• Fast and easy registration

Cons

• Lack of native mobile apps
• Rudimentary search engine
• Majority of profiles are inactive or fake
• Presence of ads
• Very low matchmaking probability

— Intro —

Just because your cash flow might not be in its best condition does not mean that you have to live the life of a hermit. Sure, funds for discretionary items such as imported beer or premium dating sites might be in short supply but there are alternatives. Hey, domestic or store-brand beer is better than no beer at all and as far as online dating sites —well, there are some free options.

Yes, we know — the general opinion of free dating sites is that you get what you pay for. No, this does not mean that you get free dates on free dating sites. If you meet someone on a free dating site you still have to scrape together enough dough to at least be able to grab a cup of coffee together or split a bag of Cheetos at a public park before hooking up. (Yes, for the satirically challenged, that was a joke)

You know what we really mean, free dating sites have the reputation of being cheesy, slow, outdated, spammy — the list goes on and on.

Fdating.com is a free dating site that on the surface presents itself as a viable and effective option. It goes as far as announcing on its homepage that the platform is “100% free and have no paid services.”

— Appearance and Usability —

When you first visit the Fdating.com homepage you will notice that the design is simplistic —some may call it outdated.

If you are concerned that in having such a look Fdating is also lacking in security, allow us to ease your worries. The site does not have any overt security failings that we could detect. It complies with what you would expect from any safe website on which you will be posting private information. It uses HTTPS and does not contain any malware.

For those of you accessing Fdating on a browser without an ad-blocker, you will notice the presence of ads. This is one of the ways that the site monetizes. The ads are not obtrusive or bothersome. Our testers did not encounter any pesky pop-ups during their time on the site.

The site navigation is old school — very reminiscent of a basic HTML site from a decade ago. While this may not give it the flashy appearance that we are used to today on other dating platforms, it does make for an easy to use experience. Unless you have never been on the internet at any point in your life, you will find the interface intuitive to use. You will not get lost.

— Finding Matches —

The make or break for any dating site — be it free or paid — is how effective it is at helping its users find potential matches. Fdating relies on a very simplistic search engine to accomplish this task.

Each user can enter his or her search parameters. These include the basics such as gender, age range, and location. In order to fine-tune their search results, users are given the option to expand their filters to include those for the physical attributes of hair color, height, weight, and eye color. Other filters are also included for lifestyle and personality attributes, such as smoking and drinking habits, relationship status, religion, spoken languages, etc.

The data used by the Fdating search engine comes from the users themselves when they complete their profile. Unfortunately, on free dating sites only a small percentage of users actually provide their full details on their profile. Worse, on free sites, users will be more prone to enter false and misleading details about themselves.

— Will You Meet Real People on Fdating? —

Our testers spent three days on Fdating in order to get a complete feel for the platform and to allow for sufficient time to measure the level of user engagement. The results were not impressive.

The low-barrier to entry for new users allowed by Fdating has plagued it with a large number of fake and inactive profiles. By our testers assessment, over 85 percent of the site is made up of such profiles.

This results in a poor user experience. Even if you were to rely on the “last logged in” and “last updated” timestamps visible on every user’s profile, at best you are only filtering the inactive users. Our testers found that the users with the most recent timestamps tended to belong to fake profiles.

Out of 125 attempts at engaging with potential matches, our testers only received two replies and one of them was highly suspected of being from a catfish.

— Other Peeves With Fdating —

Obviously, the biggest peeve we had with Fdating was the very low probability that a user has at meeting a real match on the site.

There were, however, additional annoyances. One of these was that even when applying location filters, our testers frequently received suggested matches belonging to profiles thousands of miles away — most from overseas. Another annoyance involved the fact that Fdating lacks a native mobile app. Browsing the site via a phone’s mobile browser made for an awful experience. This means that you are essentially tied to a desktop or laptop if you want to use Fdating.