PlentyOfFish review
PlentyOfFish. Free online dating. Are there really plenty of fish on the site, or is it worth what you pay for it?
My first impression of this site was that it was really easy to set up a profile. It’s a two-page sign-up process; the first page asks you what you’d like to be called, what country you are from, your password, and similar. The second page is where you add information about yourself; the form is not very long, and you are asked not only about yourself, but also what you would do on a first date, and for a list of your interests. You are also asked for your photo. You don’t have to upload a photo, but it’s always recommended to do so, if you have a good one; you may find our article on good profile photos of interest. The image is sized to 179 x 250 pixels, generous compared to most dating sites, and a small PlentyOfFish logo is superimposed at the bottom-left.
My preferred headline is in the form of a question, and I noticed that the question mark was stripped from it. It appears that there is a size limitation of 40 characters for your headline. I changed it to a shorter statement with an exclamation mark and that worked fine.
On to the most important part of the site: the search. Do they have people in my local area? Although the site accepts members from many parts of the world, it is geared towards USA residents, so I suspect that there is a greater inventory of US profiles than for other countries. I was shocked to find no profiles within 100 miles of where I live. I didn’t believe that could be right, and I decided to remove my post code from the “Zip Code” box. This did the trick, but there were still only 37 profiles of women between the ages of 18 and 30 within 100 miles of Cardiff, the city in which I live. It soon became apparent that all of these profiles were in fact Cardiff residents, so it appears that the search within 100 miles of your target area doesn’t work for UK residents, and I would hazard a guess that it only works for USA searches. Indeed, when I searched for Newport results (the nearest city to Cardiff, about 10 miles away), I got a whole different search page, giving 17 more results. This shouldn’t stop you using the service; it’s just something to bear in mind.
Photos tend to be squashed either vertically or horizontally on this page; I don’t believe I saw any photos that had the right aspect ratio. I would suggest that if you’re uploading your own photograph, you aim to use the right size for your main profile page (179 x 250, as stated above). The pictures on the search page are 75 x 75 pixels. It’s a shame they didn’t maintain the aspect ratio, as then the pictures would not have looked squashed. You can upload up to eight pictures. Photos are reviewed for nudity, and people who upload nude photographs get their account deleted.
By going to your profile page, you can also search for people that share your interests by clicking on links there. This didn’t seem to be very useful, as the search returned worldwide results, and it wasn’t possible to filter it to local results.
Some profiles use crass language on this site, so expect to see it. There’s no way to report it. If you’re looking to avoid bad language completely, the only way to do it is to use a paid dating service; see our review category for more details.
You will not be asked for any money to use this service. It’s entirely sponsored by advertising. The advertising is unobtrusive, consisting of high-quality AdSense ads; the same as used by this site. Sites running AdSense are not allowed to use intrusive pop-ups or pop-unders that are the bane of many a web browsers’ experience.
PlentyOfFish has extremely active forums that are moderated by volunteers. If you participate in these, you get further exposure; your photo is shown to the left of each post. There are well over a million posts on the complete site at the time of writing, and they cover everything from dating tips, though cooking and humour, to politics!
I will add comments detailing the number of responses that I get on the live profile that I’ve set up. In the mean time, I would suggest that the site is well worth registering for! Whether you write a profile now or later, you need to spend the time to do that, so it’s worth trying out your profile on a free site first. If you try PlentyOfFish or have tried it, feel free to share your experiences here!
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May 11th, 2006 at 5:08 am
pof [Plentyoffish] is a fascist site, admin will delete one for any reason, I swear the admin reads the people’s mail on the site. Favoritism rules in the forums. Admin puts down users publicly in the forums. Interesting site but is poorly run from a clienteles point of view. Mods are more than likely paid, it is probably only said the mods are volunteers to prop up the facade that the admin is running the site altruistically.
May 26th, 2006 at 11:44 pm
The forums are censored and pruned arbitrarily. Site moderators are heavy-handed. Threads and individual posts vanish with no warning or explanation. New people sign on, begin to get to know each other, start having fun, and then the moderators scold and banish people for not following rules. Or for asking questuons. Or for speaking up against the unfriendly tone. The result is a hard-core set of regulars who help as minions and snitches, tattling on other users. The best and brightest notice what is happening then leave in disgust for more amicable surroundings. It’s like a bad chat room combined with your favorite neighborhood dive. It’s a great place to waste time if you enjoy rancor and pettiness.
June 6th, 2006 at 12:25 pm
John, thanks for your comment. You’ve obviously had a bad experience with PlentyOfFish!
I seriously doubt the administrators read private mail on the site, unless they are investigating a complaint such as spamming. I haven’t used the forums, so I can’t comment about them. I do know that it’s a very popular site.
Whereas the site is free, the staff (all two of them, as far as I know) make a large amount of money every month from on-site advertising, so your comment about the staff representing themselves as altruistic is probably true.
Does anybody else have any experiences, good or bad, with PlentyOfFish?
June 22nd, 2006 at 12:31 pm
Paul, your comment was caught up in the system for a while. It’s a shame that people seem to be generally having bad experiences with the PlentyOfFish forum.
June 25th, 2006 at 2:50 pm
I have been using the site for three years now. I haven’t found who i am looking for yet. The site from a mans point of view consists mainly of a great number of divorced women with children, which is alright if that is what your looking for, but i am not. So i use it mainly for the forums for now, which cover a variety of topics. The only advice i can give you is to follow the rules on the forums or your profile can be deleted. I find the moderators have favorites, so you dont stand a chance in a debate with them.Also those favorites wont hesitate to snitch on you, so make friends with them, if they will let you. If you dont become a favorite be careful what you say. As for me, i am not a favorite, i like to speak my mind.
June 26th, 2006 at 12:38 am
Thank you, Pete! It’s good to hear these real opinions, especially if the PlentyOfFish forums contain a lot of censorship. It’s a real shame that this is obviously the case; the only comments I have had to my article above have been about this; and I hope it’s something that Markus Frind will seriously seek to address. I’m sure he’s losing out on popularity and revenue with his site because of it.
Also, if the site mainly contains divorced women with children, I agree that that will not be attractive to the bulk of men. I wouldn’t be looking for this type of woman.
June 27th, 2006 at 1:52 am
David just to add. I want everybody to know what happened to me. I was in a debate in the forums with a divorced woman with kids over an issue. The next morning my profile was deleted. I was given no notice, no reason, no opportunity to check my mail or delete it or respond back to mail . I opened up another profile under a name close to the one i had and i found out my profile was deleted by a moderator who happened to be a divorce women with kids. She gave me no explanation to this day. Imagine your mail delivery person , taking your mail box away with your mail in it, thats basically the same what happened to me on that site. Its an invasion of your privacy and no courtesy for the user.That just shows that the majority of divorced women with kids rules on that site.
July 4th, 2006 at 5:48 am
The people complaining above were banned for creating a lot of fake profiles and nearly 50 complaints from users, putting them in the top 10 all time pests. You can see they tried to spam wikipedia and alexa to and basically every site on the net that allowed posting.
There is no staff, and the handful of moderators have no power other then deleting forum threads and preventing users from posting. Nearly 80% of the threads deleted per day are done by the million + mini mods. Ie 7/10 of them need to agree on deleting a thread before it gets nuked.
All in all my approach is the only way forums work on dating sites. Its no big coincidence that all free dating sites to date have copied my forums and TOS to a letter. Also lets put some perspective on this, several hundred thousand people access/use the forum a month of those less then ~15 get banned a month. Also there are only 4 moderators who watch 200+ forums in their spare time, given the 10’s of thousands of posts per day does anyone really think they even review a tiny fraction of it?
July 11th, 2006 at 1:29 pm
First of all Markus, my profile was not deleted because it was fake and/or because of spam. My profile was very much real and serious, but it doesnt matter anymore now. You say your moderators have no power except for deleting threads and preventing postings…..well to me that is a lot of power and you can basically shut someone out. Now POF [PlentyofFish] is a good site but needs improvement when it comes to moderators. Maybe you dont see the favoritism and abuse of power that goes on. Not to long ago i read on the site that a male moderator was abusing a female user by sending her pictures of his penus.I know the pictures were deleted and the moderator was removed and banned from the site when it was found out. But what concerns me is the stuff you dont know about. I would like to suggest that you change moderators frequently and use some that are single ,never married, no kids ….these kind of people have less worry and problems, that they wont take it out on POF users.Do away with your mini mods as they are the ones that are destryoying POF.Someone should also provide an explanation as to why a profile was deleted because i am sure mistakes also happen and there is always two sides to a disagreement. And lastly check up on your moderators to see if they are ganging up together on users, nothing worse then an abuse of authority.Good luck with the site i hope it lasts.
July 14th, 2006 at 11:48 am
It seems to me that there will always be problems running a site as large as PlentyOfFish, and perhaps the only comments that have been posted here have been from those people affected. Has anyone had some good experiences with PlentyOfFish? Perhaps you would care to add to the comments!
Many thanks, Markus, for adding your own comment here.
July 23rd, 2006 at 10:04 am
it seems to me that this site has some issues when it comes to the im, i havent been on for about 2-3 weeks and then yesterday went on to check and see whats up and who’s new and chat with some of my friends, well, to no avail i couldn’t get a response from any of the ladies in my area, never had that problem b4, so i called a friend and had her sign on and then tried to im her, nothing, she was getting no pop up window, so then i had her try to im me, still nothing, so we put each other on favorites list after that she could im me and i would get a window but if i started the im she still didnt have anything come up, seems to me like the women could start the im and i could respond back, but if i started the im, she would have nothing pop up, something seems fishy, no pun intended, so in other words, whether if had a woman on my fav or not i cant get a single woman to respond anymore like i used to with no problem, they are not seeing any im i send them, ive seen in the forum that other guys are havin the same problem, its not my computer or programs causin this cause i had a female friend get on my computer and when she logged in she has no problem but when i log in still cant get any responses from the women, nothing comes up on there side, i have my pop-up blockers off, still no response from these woman, what gives???
July 24th, 2006 at 3:55 am
The dating part on plentyoffish is fine. You can meet people you want without paying a dime. BUT, the moderators on the forums abuse their power. They delete profiles of users, even someone who has been their for years without any warning. My profile got deleted because four users complained I was under 18. When in fact, I am about to turn 20. There was no way I could prove my age. That would not have done any good either because my profile was already deleted just based on hear say without any warning. There are also what you can call “regular posters gang” whose words are taken to be as truthful because the lick the feet of the “mod gods” . Also, if you ask why your profile was deleted , there is a very good chance of your profile being deleted without warning or you not be able to make any forum post for as long as 30 years.
All in all, I’d have to conclude by saying that, if you become a sycophant, you can post on the forums as long as you want and can even break rules. But if you try to rebel, you are out without any warning.
Thanks.
July 24th, 2006 at 4:16 am
I did forget to mention something else. One of the moderators did contact me and sent me a threat mail. He lives in a state close to mine. He emailed me once, disagreeing with something I had said on the forums. I deleted his mail without responding because someone had already warned me to not argue with the mod gods ever. He sent me a second email which was very much sexually explicit. Which in the real world could be called “sexual harassment”. Well….I deleted this mail again. So, the next thing I know, I’m banned from the forums for 20 years! There was no reason given at all. And it was done by the same moderator that sent me that email! I did not make a complaint to the admin, because I was already told by a friend on pof [PlentyofFish] that it would not help and my profile would probably get deleted if I did that.
The only thing I want to say is, there is a lot of favoritism on that site. It’s almost like living during the second world war in Germany. Too many [censored] and [censored] there.
My advice would be to never venture into the forums. Just stay on the dating site and meet people. If you join the forums , you will get addicted and when you get addicted , you eventually will have to turn into a sycophant. If you are someone who speaks your mind, STAY OUT OF THE FORUMS FOR YOUR OWN GOOD.
July 24th, 2006 at 7:54 am
Raksha, thanks very much for your comment about your experiences with PlentyOfFish, but please keep your comments in perspective. Use analogies by all means, but comparing the forum to what happened during the second world war is not going to be very accurate or helpful, and could upset people; that’s why I’ve had to censor your comment. However, I appreciate the weight of your obvious strong feelings on the matter.
It seems to me that your most appropriate courses of action on having received the emails would have been to contact the police, given the nature of the emails you appear to have received. If you were felt that you were harrassed sexually, then this certainly should have been done. The net is part of the real world.
Be assured that I appreciate the advice you offer the readers, and hopefully it will benefit them.
July 24th, 2006 at 10:37 am
Very nice work of Markus he made a site and made some money, it is really great that someone does it all by himself (or with a little help)
I also made a site to get in contact with people, date,… all by myself called Me Tarzan You Jane http://www.MeTarzanYouJane.eu
And no I’m not a company, and yes I also started this to learn some aspx. I normally programmed asp but wanted to change to a newer more powerfull language.
The site has it’s share of members in Europe but the rest of the world can also follow now because everything is translated in english.
So guys and girls if you want some real honest site, no fake entries, blogs on the internet just real stuff then support me and sign yourself and your friends up. All free.
Not happy, then contact me via the site and let me know what bothers you and most of the time in the past after hearing something I also implemented new wishes or enhanced the site.
July 24th, 2006 at 4:02 pm
I’m sorry for making references to censored words. I think I got carried away. Therefore, I apoligize. Anyway, my point is, the dating part of plentyoffish is fine. But the administration have to do something about the moderators who love playing God there. When someone tries to speak against them, they get banned. There is no freedom of speech there no matter how much you follow the given rules. I agree with Pete with whatever he said.
Thanks.
August 8th, 2006 at 12:45 am
I’ve read these posts about POF [PlentyofFish] with tears running down my face. And Markus, if you believe what you say then you’re on a different planet to the rest of us. It would seem like everybody here is wrong and only Markus is right. (bear in mind that Markus is the owner and claims to earn $10,000 a day from Adsense ads) POF is badly run by heavy handed moderators with dual standards. One set of rules for them (and thier friends) and another set for everybody else.
PlentyOfFish was a waste of time as far as I’m concerned. I believe there are bucketloads of fake profiles on there, and I turned out to be one of them in the end.
I’m a guy. I joined up with a totally honest profile, waited the three days before you’re allowed to post in the forums, and got posting. I ‘got-to-know’ lots of people over a three month period but I never received a single PM message from a female in all that time.
I then registered a second account, same details as my male account, but as a female. I waited the three days before being allowed to post. In those three days I had over 1,000 PM messages from males, most just wanting sex, and it was impossible to read the forums because of the constant IM message screens that kept popping from more guys. As far as I’m concerned it’s a waste of time.
I saw lots of people deleted for the same fake reasons you’ve just mentioned, multi accounts (I had two but mine weren’t deleted), advertising links, porn and all those untruthful reasons that show up in a deleted person’s profile search. I know some of those people from other forums and it’s just not true. They are real and behave properly on other sites.
Wake up.
August 8th, 2006 at 1:10 am
It’s a real shame about PlentyofFish.
If you’ve had a problem with PoF, perhaps you could do me a favour? If you’re still looking for a date, I’ve just started my own free dating site, and it could really use some profiles!
Cheeky monkey dating is the name of the site. I’ve submitted a press release that will get published today, and it should get the site some real traffic soon, so it may well be worth your while doing this.
It might also interest you to know that I’ve written a list of free online dating sites from a blog post that I found on the web recently, so feel free to sign up with those as well.
Probably the best free dating site on which to list is going to be OkCupid, and I have written an OkCupid review here. It’s got a lot of profiles in it, but I have to say that it’s a little weird in its approach.
August 8th, 2006 at 11:24 am
Hi David, thanks for the reply. I took a look at Cheeky Monkey and I’ll make up my mind a little later. These free dating sites can be very good and may well be the future. Nobody likes all those pop-ups and posting restrictions on paid sites. I wish you all the luck in the world with it.
I just hope these posts have been useful to you in deciding how to moderate it. POF may well be the biggest at the moment, but the bad moderation could well be it’s downfall. There are many more sites popping up these days. I’m registered with a few and the best ones are those that are fairly moderated. They could well steal POF’s thunder.
August 12th, 2006 at 9:42 pm
i have had mainly good experiences with POF since ive joind the site i have lots of new friends and have been on a few really good dates. i give 2 thumbs to plenty of fish.
August 13th, 2006 at 11:14 am
Thanks Jess, it’s good to hear that the site is working for some people.
August 26th, 2006 at 8:15 am
My name is Mike and I own ezdate123. In my opinion Plenty of Fish is the best online dating site on the web. I support Markus and admire his approach. We have recently followed his lead and made ezdate123 totally free as well. I like the concept of free in todays economy and thanks to Google all of this is possible. It is a win-win for everyone… The best to Markus, his members and the online community… Mike
August 26th, 2006 at 8:50 am
Hello Mike. It’s not only Google that makes it possible to run a free dating site; you can sell advertising space to others to make up the money as well, by any number of means.
PlentyOfFish proves that the free dating site model works, and works well. It generates revenue for the site owner, and is not subject to the usual problems of the large paid dating sites where most of the profiles listed have been posted by people who are not subscribers and will never be able to reply to you. I often think that the paid dating sites are selling a dream. They’re very good at it, but it’s still a dream, just the same.
I’d like to wish you the best of luck with your site. I corrected your URL for you in your comment submission.
August 28th, 2006 at 2:18 pm
They keep deleting my profile…I have no idea why…
GAME OVER!
September 11th, 2006 at 11:09 pm
I have to say I agree that someone reads our emails and has deleted my account for no reason. I have not harrassed anyone of any kind or created duplicate accounts. Today I recreated the very same account and it was deleted ASAP with no email of any sort. I’ve used this site for almost three + years with no wrong doing. My ex-girl friend and I have used POF and both of us have been deleted with no reason. I find this really concerning. I asked Markus and no-reply was never reponded to. I agree that POF has its faults but there should be some light into why an account was deleted. All my profile are real and time-date stamped.