Online Dating

Match.com will let you preview the site for free, but if you want to make contact you'll have to pay. Match.com comes with a guarantee: if you don't find someone special in six months, you'll get the next six months for free (your first six will cost you $19.99/month). Match.com has advice and video messages from TV advice guru Dr. Phil to help guide you through the dating process.

eHarmony has you fill out a long questionnaire to evaluate your personality, and then it matches you with people in your area who are deemed a good fit. eHarmony caters only to heterosexual couples and is well regarded in the Christian community. If you want to contact any of your matches, you have to pay for the service (about $21/month).

Perfectmatch.com evaluates your compatibility with other members on the site and sends you possible matches. Unlike eHarmony, the site is open to "all lifestyle choices" and you can search for your own matches on the site. Perfectmatch also offers free photo cropping and image enhancement to help you look your best.

Chemistry.com has questionnaire with more than just the run-of-the-mill personality questions; there are pictures and even games to test who would best match you. If you've got a half hour or so to spare, it's actually kind of fun (and free to fill out). You'll pay anywhere from about $27 to $50 a month to subscribe to the site and actually be able to contact other users. This site is a partner of Match.com.

Singlesnet.com is a nice break from the busy, ad-heavy dating sites that you'll usually find online. This site allows you to sign up for a free trial account quickly (the site says 30 seconds, but it's really more like a few minutes). After you've entered your profile information, each time you click on "search," Singlesnet automatically generates matches based on your profile; you don't have to enter any search criteria except zip code. Paying for this service makes your profile show up as one of the first results when other users search for criteria that you match. Payment also gives you the ability to send and receive e-mails with other users; this upgrade costs about $25/month or about $90/year.

Lavalife has a free sign-up, but you'll have to pay to communicate with other members (about $30 a month). You can search for matches in three different areas: Dating, Relationship, and Intimate Encounters, and you're allowed to post three unique profiles. Overall, this site is aimed more at the casual dater.

PlentyofFish has a compatibility test feature, which is something that most paid sites have but very few free sites offer. Although Plentyoffish.com is lacking in the design department, for a free site it offers more features than you would expect: IM, e-mail, compatibility matches, and site censorship that deletes any profiles with nudity, to name a few. Mind the advertisements between your upper navigation bar and the page content and you should be able to make good use of this site.

Mingle2 is small but growing. Send messages, "nudge" users who you are too shy to write, post up to 10 photos of yourself, even write a blog on the site. The clean and simple design of this site (and that it is nearly void of ads) make it more pleasant to use than lots of other free sites.

4ppl is an international dating site that allows you to browse user profiles without making you create a profile first (as many of the other sites do). This site is still in Beta mode so some of its search features aren't the greatest, but it is a simple and straightforward way to look for love online.

Yahoo! Personals is a quick and easy way to get started browsing personal ads from other users. You'll be able to read full profiles for free and see what they are looking for in a partner. The price to send e-mails and chats is about $25 per month, $50 for three months, or $75 for six months.

Kizmeet helps give you a second chance at missed connections. The site is designed to let you search and post messages for that person who caught your eye on the bus, at a concert, or anywhere else, but you didn't get the opportunity to talk to at the time. This site would be much better if it also searched for missed connection postings on other sites and in newspapers. But who knows? Maybe you'll find that special someone you never thought you'd see again.

Verbdate is a free dating site that is integrated with a program called Skype that lets people talk over the Internet. This lets you talk to potential dates without having to give out your home phone number. The inconvenience of not being able to search for people by location (you search by gender, age, and interests instead) is mitigated by the site's services being entirely free.