Over 90 million registered users
Fantastic Free Options
59% Male | 41% Female
Over 90 million registered users
Fantastic Free Options
59% Male | 41% Female
Plenty of Fish is one of the largest dating sites in the world, with over 90 million registered users. It’s also one of the oldest, having been launched originally out of Canada in 2003. Across its nearly two decades in the business, it’s garnered fame from celebrity references and extremely popular marketing campaigns. It became so popular, in fact, that the Match Group ended up buying the site for a staggering $570 million in 2015.
But even as a part of the mega-dating conglomerate in the Match Group, Plenty of Fish has done a remarkable job making sure it always stands out. With 90 million users and 3 million logins daily, their methods seem to be working wonders. However, Plenty of Fish used to be known far and wide for its modernity.
With so many other dating platforms providing competition in recent years, can Plenty of Fish still claim that modern look at dating almost 20 years later? We created a profile to find out! Read on to see if Plenty of Fish still has what it takes to keep up with the ever-changing seas of online dating.
Easy to use application
Fast registration process
Affordable premium plans
Not for younger demographics
No video chatting feature
Per month: $19.35
Total: $38.70
Per month: $12.75
Total: $51.00
Per month: $10.18
Total: $81.40
Plenty of Fish is a bit of hybrid site. Starting in the early days of online dating it functions as a matchmaking service, alongside a location-based dating service. However, because it has old school roots, many of its features have an old school feel. Sign up is the first place that’s felt.
Instead of signing up and letting you loose on the site after linking a social media profile, Plenty of Fish guides new users through an extensive questionnaire where they are asked things like: gender identity, gender of interest, ambitions, desires, careers, types of relationships, and quite a bit more.
That’s also something important to emphasize during the sign up is that Plenty of Fish prides itself on being a standalone platform that doesn’t integrate social media to expedite the whole ordeal. It’s on the whole, old fashioned, but it does help to keep your dating life and your social life only as connected as you’d like them to be – rather than inexorably intertwined.
As old and in some ways outdated as Plenty of Fish is, it still very much caters to a younger audience of around 25-34 and they make up a majority of its user base. That user base skews about 59% male and 41% female, but the divide doesn’t seem as intense when you take in to account just how many registered users Plenty of Fish has – over 90 million.
That being said, the site can be a bit overwhelming at first, particularly if you’re not used to online dating already. There are also some reports that the site is less than scrupulous about screening out fake profiles. However, that is to be expected with a free to use site – the wider the net, the more fish you catch, but you might not want all of them.
One big reason social media connectivity isn’t found on Plenty of Fish is because the site intends to function a lot like a social media site itself. It encourages the community not only to reach out to one another, but to engage in forums and share postings or funny dating stories. To emphasize this community-feel, Plenty of Fish offers a compatibility rating through the ‘POF Chemistry Predictor.’
The chemistry predictor is only the first step, however. After that, the matching process on Plenty of Fish can be broken down into two parts. As we mentioned, it’s a bit of a hybrid dating platform and the first half of it functions similarly to many location-based dating services with features like “MeetMe” or “Nearby” to find others interested in casual dating.
The second part of the Plenty of Fish equation is the matchmaking. The site encourages users to use its “UltraMatch” feature for this where, after understanding your likes and dislikes, the site recommends fifty compatible partners for you to choose form. In that way, Plenty of Fish really does offer a lot of autonomy for the users by catering to both short-term flings, and long-term connections.
As we said before, Plenty of Fish is among the dating platforms that can feel like a social media platform too. And, like any social media platform, it encourages engagement. To do so, Plenty of Fish offers a number of forum options and even the ability to livestream videos to allow prospective partners or simply friends to reach out and get to know each other.
That’s where the more basic features of Plenty of Fish come into play, like direct messages and voice memos. However, in addition to that, Plenty of Fish was also among the first to adopt video chats and video dating as an option for users – which only helped its popularity to grow during the pandemic.
Plenty of Fish has an app with all the functionality of its website counterpart. It’s available on both iOS and Android and is immensely popular for its integration of location-based matching and even the previously alluded to video chat feature.
Plenty of Fish is among the oldest and most popular dating platforms around. To stand the test of time, it has continued to innovate and make itself accessible to the younger demographic of multiple generations. While many other dating platforms have trouble standing out amidst the many offerings, Plenty of Fish truly is unique in the space.
With a perfect hybrid mixture of dating site, social media platform, and matchmaking service, Plenty of Fish casts a wide net to bring in the most fish – and, even all these years later, it continues to be a great place to finally find that perfect catch.