Costs:

• FREE basic membership!

• Standard memberships are priced as follows:
  • 1 Month: $24.99
  • 3 Months: $34.99(renew for $13.33 per month)
  • 6 Months: $ 59.94 (renew for $9.99 per month)

• Premium memberships are priced as follows:
  • 1 Month: $29.99 (renew for $29.99 per month)
  • 3 Months: $51.99 (renew for $17.33 per month)
  • 6 Months: $77.94 (renew for $12.99 per month)

Features:

In the table below, you can see which features are available to free members compared to subscribed members:

• Over 7 million registered members
• Members mainly from USA, but also from 200 other countries around the world
• Sign-up for free.
• Flirt feature allows you to send any one of a number of pre-written one-liners to another member to signify your interest in them. Choose from any of 50-60 one-liners, divided into the following categories: Sincere; Romantic; Humorous; Flirtatious; Poems; Movie Lines; Holiday/Seasonal; and Songs. Available to free members.
• Click feature allows you to quickly express an interest in someone else. At the top of every member profile you'll see the question "Think you'd Click?!" to which you may answer yes, maybe or no. If you answer yes, then the person is automatically informed of this by Spark. Then he/she can choose to answer the same question on your profile. If she clicks yes on your profile then you will be informed of this and you can both then choose to take things to the next level if you desire by upgrading to premium membership and making first contact. This is a great way to break the ice and a great way to know whether it's worth upgrading to paid membership or not.
• Five Month Promise - if, after you sign up for the five month membership plan, you don't find anyone in those five months then Spark.com will give you an additional five months absolutely free! Now there's no arguing with that!
• Free members can read all member profiles in full, perform advanced searches and view all member photographs.
• Free members cannot access the audio/video messaging tools, access the chat rooms, instant message other members or freely use the email tools. Only subscribed members have unlimited use of these features. However, if a subscribed member contacts a non-paid member, the non-paid member can reply to the email without having to pay for a subscription.
• Subscribed members may use internal email to contact whomever they like.
• Subscribed members can access the chat rooms where you can chat publicly or privately with other members. Divided into rooms based on location, age range, interests, etc. Don't find anything interesting? Start your own chat room!
• Subscribed members can instant message other members.
• Subscribed members can use video and audio messaging facilities.
• Add members to your hotlist, ignore list, and see who's online.
• See when members were last online. This can be a really useful way of knowing how active a member is on the site and whether or not it's worth e-mailing them. For instance, it may be pointless e-mailing a member who hasn't been online in 6 months.
• A record is kept of who you hotlisted and flirted with, as well as who hotlisted and flirted with you (you can view these lists at any time).
• Color Code personality test is a unique matching system that tries to match you with other members.
• Choose (as many as you like) from the following types of relationships you wish to search for:

  • a date
  • long-term relationship
  • activity partner
  • friendship
  • email/chat
  • intimacy/physical chemistry
  • marriage
  • marriage and children.
• Sort matches by newest, most active, closest to you, and most popular.
• Create and send customizable e-cards to other members.
• Complete privacy protection - no one will know your identity unless you explicitly tell them!
• Excellent technical support.

Joining:

Sign-up for free. You must complete a reasonably detailed profile and must include a photo. So don't start the sign-up process if you don't have a photo on hand. You can of course change your photo and profile details at a later date.

A significant downside of the registration process is that it does not reveal the subscription costs until you have completed your free membership profile. This means that you have to invest your time in this particular dating site without knowing how much it will ultimately cost you to become a subscribed member.

Also, please be aware that some dating stites change their subscription plans quite regularly, as new features are added to the site, and although we try to update our reviews regularly, the prices stated in our review may be slightly different from the current prices on the merchant site.

Performing a Search:

• A full search facility is available, allowing members to search by:
  • gender
  • age range
  • marital status
  • location to within 1 mile of where you live
  • whether the member has pictures posted
  • ethnicity
  • smoking
  • height
  • plus any other features of a member's profile

Editor's Verdict:

Spark.com is another heavyweight of online dating, with over 7 million registered users. It recently took over AmericanSingles.com and still focuses very heavily on American Singles. However, although the majority of the users are from the US and Canada, the site does have plenty of members in over 200 other countries around the world, notably the UK, Australia and some parts of Europe.

To sign up as a free or paid member you need to choose a username and password, fill in your e-mail address and date-of-birth, answer some mutiple choice questions about yourself, write a one or two line introduction to yourself and upload a profile photo. After that, you will have full access to the site and you can begin searching for other members in your area immediately!

Spark.com is a very user-friendly site - there are no banners or advertisements, the layout is clean and tidy and the site is extremely easy to navigate, even for internet newbies!

Spark.com is packed with handy features to make life easier for you, such as the "Click" feature, which asks you if you think you would "click" with another member based on his/her pics and profile. If you say yes and the other member also says that he/she thinks they would click with you, then this could be the start of a beautiful friendship!

Then there's the "Flirt" feature where you can send a pre-written one liner to a potential match, by saying something like "I was bowling for love, and you're right up my alley. Ready to strike?" or perhaps something less cheesy! There are about 50 or 60 one-liners to choose from, divided into many categories. (You can read a full description of the Click and Flirt features in the features list above.)

If you're a free member you can respond to an e-mail that a subscribed member sends you. This is one feature that distinguishes the top ranking dating sites from the lower ranking sites in our list of Online Dating Sites.

Although, Spark.com has all the features to be a great online dating site, it doesn't rank top of our list of online dating sites for a few reasons. Firstly, you must complete the sign-up process (which includes a profile photo) before you can see the pricing plans. Although, on their homepage, Spark.com make a point of being cheaper than some of their competitors, they fail to list their pricing plans there. Also, unlike some of its competitors, Spark.com does not offer an online webzine with articles, tips and stories available. Whether this is really a disadvantage will be totally up to your personal preferences - some people love the webzines, some people never read them.

Having said all that, Spark is easy to navigate, easy to use, has a massive database of over 7 million members, and is very competitively priced. If you sign-up for the 6-month standard membership plan, you will get membership for $54.94 per month, and will also get the option to renew at the very low rate of just $9.99 per month. That's one of the best value membership plans around!

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