POF.com, or PlentyOfFish.com, is a dating website especially designed for singles who want to either date casually or look for a lifetime partner. Signing up to the platform is quick and easy with just several multiple-choice questions you need to answer before you can begin your search for potential matches.
The site offers a variety of free features, including live streaming and limited instant messaging. But you can only view the full profile of a person after you sign up for a paid membership. Created back in 2003 in Canada, POF.com has somewhat become a household name for almost 20 years in the dating scene.
Through all those years, POF.com has been featured in music videos of top names including the likes of Jason Derulo and Lady Gaga, gaining significant clout from its early marketing campaigns. The popularity of the site made it one of the best-known matchmaking and dating services boiled into one. Match Group bought it in 2015 for a whopping price of $575 million.
But even after it gained the attention of a dating industry giant, POF.com has managed to maintain its own standing distinct from the conglomerate. For the past few years, POF.com continues to boast its own extensive user base with more than 3 million daily logins and a one-of-a-kind livestream feature that has become the norm in this post-COVID new-age dating scene.
Having said that, with all the different matchmaking services and dating sites out there, is POF.com really the best all-in-one one-stop shop for your different dating needs? Or is it nothing else but another old fish that was left behind swimming in the ocean that bigger newcomer fish will swallow up?
Sign Up Process
One of the first things you will probably notice about POF.com right from the get-go is the fact that it is somewhat old school. Once you sign up for the site, you will be asked several questions from different questionnaires to develop your profile with as much information as possible, similar to what matchmaking services have long been known for. Here, you have to indicate your gender identity, types of relationships you prefer, gender of interest, desire for kids, ambitions, and the like.
But while this is not really out of the ordinary, POF.com sticks to its principles as it doesn’t allow any crossover with social media during the signup process. Through this, you can be sure that there is no easy connectivity that links your Instagram or Facebook, giving users access to other bios or photos. Everything on POF.com is exclusive to the platform. While it may sound a bit old-fashioned, it gives more autonomy when showing all the things you wish to see and avoiding those you don’t, such as an awkward Facebook photo tagged to you.
Membership
POF.com is a global service but it is particularly famous in the UK. With daily logins reaching 3 million, you can be sure that there are lots of activities waiting for you here. But it seems that it skews more toward a male audience with almost 20% more men than women. On a positive note, out of these members, it seems that the site caters more to a younger audience, something that might be a bit strange considering the long years it has been in the industry. In fact, most of its users are between 25 to 34 years of age.
In addition, the reason why it stays away from any connectivity with social media is that it functions almost similar to a social media platform itself, with a close resemblance to Myspace. Having said that, the community of potential matches makes forum posts to form a connection.
To help with this, POF.com also provides a compatibility rate through its POF Chemistry Predictor. It is accumulated from signup and further grown through interactions.
Pricing
- £38.70 for 2 months at £19.35 a month
- £51.00 for 4 months at £12.75 a month
- £79.92 for 8 months at £9.99 a month
Matchmaking
POF.com has a two-fold matching process. On one end, all you have to do is scroll through members similar to Tinder, searching for your potential match according to your criteria. Through this, it functions almost similarly to a dating site. In this regard, the platform also has subsections for Nearby or MeetMe to look for other users who are open to meeting up on the fly.
On the matchmaking end, however, POF.com also offers the so-called UltraMatch where you allow the site to take the wheel and generate 50 compatibility partners for you. The main benefit here is that the juxtaposition of ideas allows you to accommodate exactly what you are searching for, whether it is a shorter-term fling or a long-term relationship.
Contact
Counting on all the bare essentials, POF.com encourages several fundamental chat conversations. The site lets you message other users and even receive messages, provided that it is someone that you didn’t block yet. But more than that, you are also allowed to send voice memo messages, a feature that you won’t probably find in other services. In addition, POF.com has also adapted to the current COVID dating scene as it now offers video chat and livestream, both of which are big pluses for the platform.
The Bottom Line
At the end of the day, there is a very good reason why POF.com has managed to stick around all these years. As a matchmaking service and dating site that has already been around almost ever since the start of the entire online dating phenomenon, just like Match.com and eHarmony, the site has had enough time to work out all the quirks and truly stand out as a free and premiere dating service.
Although it might be a bit lacking in terms of updates that you can find in other modern services, POF.com got the necessary goods where it matters. With its extensively active membership base, several options to contact, and separation between matchmaking and dating catered to your specific preference, the easy conclusion here is that there are lots of fish in the sea of POF.com, and even more ways for you to play and explore the waters.
