I’m tired of hearing people complain about online dating software. What are we going to do about this? For years I’ve made half-hearted attempts at looking into various online dating software packages. From what I’ve learned, most of them I wouldn’t recommend to my enemies.
Let us look at the state of online dating software:
- Lack of strong administration capabilities
- Templates difficult to customize
- Lack of support
- No integration options for third party support
- Upgrading software is a nightmare
- Software isn’t secure
- International developers, language barriers
- Expensive
Overall my experience with online dating software has been uniformly poor, which is unfortunate. I have been recommending SkaDate and Boonex because they are the *only* dating software vendors who have every reached out to me and kept in contact over the years. Both companies are shifting focus to social networks, a telling sign that the dating startup market is changing.
I helped build a site on Dolphin a while back, and I’m familiar with the system and its capabilities. But what about the other 20 companies out there? Which ones deserve thoughtful consideration? Which should be avoided?
I have talked to several vendors over the years,many who dropped off the map. I’m surprised they are not all over this blog. If you’re not actively engaging me and talking about improvements in the software and delivering consistent customer support, it’s hard for me to keep you on my radar. There is just too much ambiguity in the dating software market and a total lack of transparency into which companies are consistently delivering the goods.
Contrast this with social networking software providers. They email, call an keep me up to date on their recent achievements, and most important, clearly show that they are eager to do business an learn from their mistakes.
Part of the problem is the lack of developer support. Lots of people buy a script due to a smooth sales job, then end up paying a developer to learn how to customize the software. Dolphin at least has a fairly strong developer community. This is a huge benefit during the sales and support process.
My work with startups always has a module dedicated to platform selection. In a discussion, I take the time to understand a client’s goals and aspirations. With that knowledge, I am able walk them through the various solutions, starting with free vs. paid, standalone vs. hosted, and all of the pro’s and cons of each. However, when it comes to recommending software besides a few companies, I’m often at a loss. There is simply not enough quality software out there to evaluate.
I always like to have three types of vendors in any area. Cheap and quick, medium-priced and powerful, expensive and the sky’s the limit. This is practically impossible to do in the online dating market.
I was able to meet team Boonex at iDate and spend time talking about their business, the software, and what’s coming next. It’s reassuring to know that that a company flew from Australia to Miami to meet the online dating industry in person. That’s why I’m letting them sponsor this blog. They are committed to new software upgrades and aware that in the past the system was not as robust as it should have been.
Of course people complain about software. People love to complain about anything. Many customers have never run a website before, let along managed developers. These issues, compounded with flaky software and bad customer service, lead to negative comments.
SkaDate’s reputation has been questioned as of late, supposedly this is all from competitors, but I don’t have enough time in the day to chase down all the accusations. I hope they are able to react accordingly and take a presumed negative situation and turn it into a positive.
In this case, the best way to silence competitors is to deliver a superior product. End of story.
I will do what I can to get dating site software developers to work harder, deliver better customer support and work with dating companies to help them grow. It starts with you. It’s *really* important for people to share their experiences with online dating software companies. How else are we going to learn which software is worthwhile?
Image is from DatingSoftwareReviewer (update your site!)
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I just found a new cool website for singles, Postitos.com. It only cost a one-time $5 fee to keep the riff-raff out and you can create a mycon if you are to shy to post your own picture. It allows you to meet and flirt with other members without having to give up your personal email address.
http://www.Postitios.com. i think you should check it out!
Sandy,
You miss the point of this forum. We are discussing dating site “Software”. Not dating sites. And, I have to tip my hat to Andrew on the development so far of Dolphin 7. Looked at Beta 4 and it is great. What is the best improvement thus far is the ability to download and install updates on an easy to use interface. Reminds me of the Wordpress plugins page. Keep up the good work!
That’s because you haven’t dealt with us yet. We are located in Portland, Oregon and we are Wazzum.com. You will find no language barriers with us. We are constantly striving to make our software better. We always take customer input and put those features into the dating software and the community software.
Michael
503-935-7461
dating soft ware is an a intersting soft ware…………..i dont know about it self…………………please tell me in detail any one…………..
I quite like osDate. It has a lot of options, but not enough plugins for my liking. I’m going to check out one of the others
Hi all,
I agree that there is not lots of sites to choose from. But there are those that you should avoid. My personal experience is with Wazzum.com. DO NOT BUY anything from this vendor. The script is useless, you don’t get the features they say they have, they have poor customer service, they are rude. It’s a scam, and you should stay away from them. They are so daring that Mike now calls himself Roy, a new owner taking over from Mike to make things better. They got me good, don’t let them get you too!
Emeeting works well and is cheap for the basic package. After reading so much crap on the forums from goofballs like Mike Pennington and others masquerading as normal posters and writing negative comments about other software, I was at my wits end trying to come to a decision about what software to go with. Personally, I think all of this software is about the same; nothing special about emeeting or skadate or pg dating, and certainly nothing special about vldpersonals….so I went for the cheapest…and that is Emeeting, period. And the negative comments about not being able to customize is false…the basic package is all you need and I have had no problems with customization. I have had to contact support maybe 5 times thus far, and I received prompt response…the longest wait was about 5 hours….most waiting time was about 30 minutes. But like I said, nothing special about any of this software, and the BBB reports on all of them are good, the exceptions being abk-soft and wazzum, both of which have poor ratings by the BBB. I also did not like OSDate…looks cheap, but it’s free…so if someone knows php and css really well and can tighten security on that software, go for it. Vldpersonals I decided against because I read on the forum that it has no affiliate program included and the chat is buggy, and both of those things are important. So I purchased Emeeting and shelling out more for a dedicated server each month than what the one time purchase for Emeeting is. The one negative of Emeeting is that the Instant Chat and Chat Room are integrated for Userplane, and Userplane costs over 80 a month for 50 simultaneous connections…
That is the best approach I’ve ever seen. You get what you need and that’s the point.
I just would like to add some technical points of view. I do templates for different CMSs for several years and do premium templates for vldPersonals for almost two years.
These are the things you or your developer don’t wanna see in your dating CMS’ templates:
- outdated table-based design (some still use it and it is really slow and hard to customize)
- bad separation between functional code and markup
- heavy code(php/asp) usage inside template files
- bad and unreasonable/pointless usage of variables
- bad/unstructured template system
- bad logical base
- bloated template system
And probably the last one and very important point is that: you don’t have to edit the functional code to customize the look of the website.
I’ve seen a lot of backend stuff as you may imagine. From my point of view vldPersonals is has a perfect technical base. It is very solid. It is very easy to customize it not to mention that it is totally flexible. The other thing is that you don’t have to deal with php inside templates. It uses it’s special language, sort of, which is very understandable. This is not an advertising but my point of view as a experienced developer.
VLDpersonals sucks. It is a marketing sales page for a script without full documentation.
But none of that matters. What made me stop using them was support. It is actually one guy behind this. I had enough of this when hidded charges became unhidden. Asked for cirties plugin > Charget. Someone wants to connect to my server make the chagne , without giving me any documentation. That is violating like all principles off software dev , security and maintainability. I do not take of my time normally to post on the web …. but sorrt VLDpersonals , customer service will GET BACK TO YOU !
Hi,
what software will you recommend me today to start a small dating site?
Thx
Check out this site they offer a cool free dating software and free Installation and tech support which is good. http://www.northeasthost.com/datesoftware.html
Between the grammatical errors on the site and the fact that its targeting technical people, I would be skeptical about the link above.
I am looking to start a social network and I feel that I have a new idea but I am not a computer person. Would you recommend a software that is easy to use and easy to understand so I would be able to set it up and maintain. I really do not want to get a partner of someone I do not know or like and then they might take my idea and then do it their selves.
There are several to choose from. Some advertise on this blog like Boonex and SkaDate and Social Engine.
Hi
I have been using eMeeting for the past 2 years – STAY AWAY. The script is full of errors, not stable and the support sucks. They got a forum where members can ask questions, but most of the admin feedback is as follows – read the documentation, or it will be fixed in the next update (you have to pay for it)
Just do a Google search “scam emeeting mark fail”
Regards
Ps – Can anyone give me info on SkaDate since I’m looking for something better.
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