Costs:  

• Free to join.  
• Upgrades available for premium membership priced as:
  
  • 1 month:   $29.99
  • 3 months: $59.85   ($19.95 per month)
  • 12 Months:$119.88   ($9.99 per month)

Features:

• Place your photos and profile on site for others to check out
• Browse members profiles and photos 
• Perform detailed searches for prospective partners.
• Send virtual gifts (by purchasing credits through the site)
• Send winks and e-mails (only when you have a photo posted). One send per receiving member. Free members can't open emails to read them.
• Fill out your date card with your preferences and ask other members for their answers to selected prepared questions (from hundreds available).
• Friends Box
• Instant Messenger 
• Icebreakers  (prepared questions you can answer or receive answers from other members)
• Forums 
• Foreign language Forum: available in three languages, Spanish, Italian, French 
• Buy Credits to enhance your profile placement, your photo on the Boost Feature or impress other members by sending virtual gifts.
• Ignore list 
• SMS notifications available (premium members).
• See who's viewed your date card (premium members).

Performing a Search:

• A full search facility is available, allowing members to search by: 
  • gender
  • age
  • height
  • religion
  • children
  • narrow distance in searches to within 3 miles
  • relationship status
  • ethnicity
  • education
  • politics
  • has photos

Editor's Verdict:

Launched in December 2007, Zoosk.com is a relative newcomer to this field but is already extremely popular, with more than 50 million members (A.K.A. "Zooskers") based in 40 different countries around the world. In fact, it is regarded as the fastest growing social dating network/community.

It is certainly one of the largest memberships we've seen on a "dating only" website, and as we know, internet dating is a numbers game: the more members in the database, the more likely you are to find someone that appeals to you. Therefore, it is sensible to use an online dating site's membership base as an indiactor of your chances of finding a match, especially when a site has an active membership. The more often a member returns to the site, the better, in our view, as it shows that they are keen. When a substantial portion of members haven't been around for two weeks or longer, that spells trouble for a member interested on finding good prospects for relationships. So we were a little disappointed to find that on Zoosk.com, there's no "last online" feature to let you to check the activity levels of members. Zoosk does have an indicator that says if a member has been "recently online", but this term is vague. This is one of the few shortcomings of Zoosk.com, but it is a significant one in our view, as activity levels are one of the key factors which separate good dating sites from poor dating sites. If this deficiency was fixed, then Zoosk.com would definitely rank much more highly in our online dating category.

When we performed our benchmark search we got back over 160 members.  When we narrowed down to our true torture test for available members we still got over 70.   That is a very impressive number.  We've only seen one other site deliver a number like that for a narrowed search.  The high membership numbers no doubt give rise to these good results. It also suggests that there will be a substantial local membership for most searches.

The listings give the usual basics of age, height, location, and the distance they are from your location.  Zoosk have also added a number of other pieces of info (presumably to save you from opening the profile if you would rather do a quick browse), including: astro sign, religion, children status, ethnicity, how many photos are posted, and if they've been 'recently online'.  That's a lot of info for starters and you could browse the listings quickly & effectively with this level of info available.   We see this as a sign of a progressive site that has its attention on members' needs. 

Profiles are available in full.  The information is very easy to review, as it is broken into sections.  There are spaces provided for writing narrative inputs:  'about me', ' what you're looking for' and  'your ideal first date'.

Photos are handled beautifully here.  More than 80% of the members in our search have photos with their listings.  They permit just six photos per member, but those are handled very well.  Some photos enlarge to a larger size than others but all enlarge beautifully and the quality is outstanding.   Zoosk.com gets good marks for profiles and photos.

After finding a nice number of good candidates here, of course you'd want to contact them.  Zoosk .com does allow you limited e-mail and "winks" access as a free member.  You can send one message to another specific member.  You can't open e-mails though, so it's more or less a dead end.  Premium members can respond but if they initiate a message you won't be able to respond, (unless you have a Premium membership).  Still something is better than nothing, and this does give you at least a taste of how the site functions.

When it comes to valuing a site like Zoosk.com we have to give them much credit.  They have a huge membership, a sensible free member approach, a good number of useful features for member involvement (like their instant messenger), and  some interesting innovations like their virtual gifting feature. With the latter, Zooskers can buy Zoosk coins, which can be used to buy more than 30 virtual gifts, such as roses or chocolate-covered strawberries. According to Zoosk.com, in 2009, Zooskers exchanged more than 1 million virtual gifts as a way to break the ice or deepen a friendship / relationship. With a membership that exceeds 50 million even a small percentage of return will enrich the coffers of Zoosk .com nicely. So this virtual economy is a very creative way to raise revenue across the site.

Zoosk Mobile is another great facet. It allows Zooskers to remain in the loop, even when they're away from their computers. Zoosk.com certainly seem to have their finger on the pulse and represent a new breed of online dating site. 

In summary, we consider Zoosk to be very good value for money. The Premium membership gives full access with rates that, at the time of writing, are fair, particularly for a site with such a sizable membership. Our advice here would be to use a free membership until the necessity of communicating with the members takes priority. Remember they have an instant messenger that you can use to chat and ask questions of those you meet to get even more familiar with how happy and committed the members are.   Zoosk .com gets high marks from us and will be giving our top ranking dating sites a lot to think and worry about as the competition heats up.

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