Costs:

• Cost of basic membership is FREE.  
• Upgrades to a premium membership are priced as follows:
  • 1 Month: $49.99. At the time of writing this site was only offering a free membership, bought in conjunction with a third party retailer (which they say is valued at $49.99). Please check our Editors Verdict for our take on this. 

Features:

• Create your own profile and upload your pictures.
• Search for other members within your locale.
• Browse members' profiles and see their picture.
• Wink at other members for free
• Email other members using Mingles' internal e-mail system 
• Access a multitude of public and private chat rooms.
• Private message other members in the chatrooms.
• Hotlist  members you like
• Blocklist members you wish to ignore. 

Performing a Search:

• A full search facility is available, allowing members to search by:
  • gender
  • age range
  • marital status
  • location to within 5 miles of where you live
  • relationship desired
  • religion
  • education
  • occupation
  • whether the member has pictures posted
  • ethnicity
  • smoking
  • drinking
  • height
  • body type

Editor's Verdict:

Mingles.com is not one of our favored dating sites.  It seems to be suffering from the intense competition in this field and, in our view, is a second-rate site.  It tries to get some extra mileage out of its technology (which is impressive) by utilizing it both as a dating site and semi-social networking site. Mingles offers a chat room with video capability with seemed to work well. The folks in the chat room were clearly having a good time, but it was nearly empty  (5 users) when we tried it out. So this doesn't bode well for your chances of meeting someone with whom you gel.

In fact, our our benchmark search of the Mingles members' database generated just 10 members and, according to their last log-in information, they hadn't been on the site in over six months.  This log-in figure indicates that Mingles is a dead site and should not be joined as a paying member.  At most, you might like to join it as a free, basic member and use the site for social purposes. 

The site's billing approach with a third party involved is just too weird for us to take them seriously. It works like this: to get a free dating membership, you must sign up for a third party monthly subscription service and get billed until that subscription service is canceled (on their terms). This strikes us as a very unusual way of doing business.  Why would that be necessary if they had something worthwhile to sell you? This makes no sense to us and on that basis we feel this operation can't be trusted to do a good job for you.

Another thing that  didn't seem quite right is the heavy advertising and redirecting of the members. It really does resemble a struggling social networking site. While we try our best not to give negative reviews we still have to be honest with what we encounter.

Value -wise we can't make a judgment.  You are buying another company's product and getting a dating membership in exchange (how weird is that one?). In our experience, Mingles is not going to offer a good opportunity for dating. It may be worth exploring as a social networking site and through that experience you may make some friends. However, as a dating location we have to give it a thumbs down. We suggest you try one of the top ranking sites we have reviewed and see what a top site is likely to deliver. But definitely leave Mingles off your dating dance card!

Click on the button below to check out Mingles.com for yourself...