Flirty9’s lack of moderation has opened the doors up to scammers of all sorts. Here is our in-depth flirty9 review. It is a must-read if you’re thinking of joining.

— Pros and Cons of Flirty9 —

Pros

• It’s free (that’s it, there are no more pros)

Cons

• Full — as in packed to the rim — with fake profiles
• Full of scammers
• Even with such crappy service, they still try to upsell you on a “premium” service

— In-Depth Flirty9 Review —

In the world of online dating sites, the word “free” is often used as an enticement as opposed to a genuine description of the service. Free trial memberships are offered by the majority of dating and hookup sites in order to allow potential new members an opportunity to evaluate their service.

This is not to imply that there are not any authentically free dating sites. While they are in the minority, they do exist. They tend to function using advertising as a means to monetize their service. Usually, however, the level of service and the user experience that they offer to their members falls short when compared to paid sites.

Flirty9.com is a dating and matchmaking site that promotes itself as a free service. It goes to the extent of posting a promise on its main site stating that they will never charge for their service.

Being free does not spare an online dating site from having to meet the expectations of its users. This is why we took Flirty9 for a spin — to determine if it offers users something beyond being simply free. Here are the results of our review.

— How Flirty9 Works —

Flirty9 uses a simple process to help its users find potential matches. It involves registering on the site, conducting manual searches, and “friending” those whom you feel are compatible. If one of the members whom you friended friends you back, you can open up an online chat with them

The registration process is straightforward. You start at the Flirty9 main page and select your gender and the gender of the partner you are looking for from a drop-down menu. You are then directed to a page where you must enter a valid email address and then choose a username and password for the site.

You are then redirected to another page where you must enter your birthdate, fill in a text box for the “about you” section of your profile, and enter your country and city. You also have the option of uploading a profile picture at this stage. This is all of the information that is required to register on Flirty9.

We must interject an observation regarding profile pics at this stage. Once you enter the site you will come across many profile pictures that are of a graphic adult nature. We found nothing in the site’s terms of service that permits or prohibits this practice. So, use your own common sense when choosing which picture of yourself to upload.

One more point before concluding with the description of the registration process. During our test, two of our testers never received a confirmation email following their registration. One tester, however, did — four days after the fact. In the three days that the testers were on the site, the lack of having clicked on a validation link did not impede them from having full use of the site. We honestly do not know whether clicking on the validation link is mandatory.

— Flirty9 User Experience —

When you enter Flirty9 you are greeted by tiled images of the most recent people to join the site. They are not filtered by any sort of criteria. In order to do so, you must click on the green button labeled “Filter” on the upper right-hand corner, above the images.

When we got our first look inside Flirty9 — especially at the profile images — our expectations for the site dropped. Nine out of every ten images belonged to women — supposed women. The images were consistent with what we have seen on sites that are plagued by fake profiles. As we opened the profiles of these images, we discovered that most were written poorly or missing entirely. Again, a classic sign of a fake profile.

While we were digging through these questionable profiles, we took notice of the navigation menu located on the upper portion of the page. There you will find the “loves” section. Loves are Flirty9’s version of flirts. The “profile visits” section, the “chats” section, the “settings” section, and the “friends” section. The latter shows you the members that you have friended and those whom have friended you and are awaiting your reply.

Even though our testers had only been on the site for a few minutes, the number of profile visits and loves that they were receiving was growing at a brisk pace. In the first hour, our testers had more than seven loves, 20 profile visits and 15 friend requests each.

When we started probing to see who the people that were expressing such interest in us were, we confirmed our suspicions that we were dealing with a less than adequate site. These profiles belonged to scammers trying their best to make us contact them on their private email accounts or to send them text messages. We accepted a few of these invites — not using our real emails, of course — and in the six test cases, ALL eventually tried to lure us onto bizarre sounding web pages and one even tried to pass off a sob story about a family tragedy to get us to wire them money in Senegal.

It seems that due to the fact that the site is free and the membership screening is practically non-existent, scammers of all types open up profiles trying to lure gullible Westerners into cyber-based honey traps. Obviously, this creates a terrible user experience. In the three days that we tested the site, the situation never improved. We did not engage with any profile that, in our opinion, was genuine.

— It Gets Worse —

Remember how we mentioned at the top of this review how Flirty9 states that it is free now and forever — that it will never charge its users? Well, on the navigation menu you will come across a menu item titled “premium.” Yes, you guessed it, Flirty9 does, in fact, have a way to charge its users. You see, in order to see who “loved” you, it is necessary to pay with virtual “coins.” 100 of these coins will cost you $3 — 1,000 coins will cost you $15. These coins are needed to unlock the identity of those who have “loved” you. They can also be used to improve your positioning when you turn up on the search page of other members.