Adult FriendFinder Dating Site Review

Pros

Large member base
Live chat and video options
Points earning program

Cons

Single month cost high

9.8

Overview

Adult FriendFinder is the first and most popular adult dating site on the planet. Joining AFF means you are become part of the world’s largest online sex dating and swinger community. A legitimate and active community, full of like-minded people, other adult dating sites just can’t match. The Adult FriendFinder membership comes with a multitude of site features designed to help you connect with and meet with others. And while not all these features come free, it doesn’t subtract from the fact that AFF is well deserved as our categorical top choice.

Signing Up

The signup process to sample some of Adult FriendFinder’s features is simple, and free. New visitors will be greeted with a quick survey to identify what their interests are. The survey covers questions regarding who they are and what they are looking for, a chance to write up a little introduction for the community when they join, and an email for verification purposes. There are plenty of things to look through, even at the free membership level. AFF does a great job giving users a taste of the full complement of site features to explore and set up during those first hours of the user experience.

Personal Profiles

Members are able to build large, detailed profiles with as much or as little information desired in terms of interests, lifestyles, sexual aspirations, etc. Built in tools are offered in the My Profile interface by way of optional multiple choice or fill-in-the-blank surveys. It is recommended that members take some time to provide as much detail as possible to better one’s chances at being matched with members who are suited to them. We also highly recommend people upload multiple photos. The option to upload nude and explicit pictures is available, but what’s nice is they also offer users a filter so exclude the explicit images, just in case more safe-for-work browsing is required. AFF doesn’t skimp in this regard. Image quality can be rather high and for the most part, members we’ve come across are putting the effort in to make sure their photos show them in the most flattering ways.

In addition to photos, members looking to express themselves to the community can upload videos. This is probably the best way users can show off their best attributes. If a picture says a thousand words, a video of your voice and dat ass is a great way to tempt others to connect with you. It’s a commonly used and attention getting tactic and useful for showing people what you’re bringing to the table.

Searching For Members

Finding and sorting through members is made with the site’s Search tab. Adult FriendFinder offers one of the most in depth searches, with dozens of options to help target those who suit their social, physical and sexual needs. Searches for men, women, couples, and geographic locations are just some of the criteria that can be applied. Regardless of preference, members ought to be able to find matches here. Gold members gain full access to all the advanced search options to narrow down potential matches.

Members can also receive automated matches, which are produced based on the information provided in your own personal profile. These results can be tailored to appear right on the member homepage upon logging in. For example, if you prefer women of a certain age or ethnicity, it will be more likely to match you with those members. This is a time saver and also allows you to view profiles which you might not have originally noticed. The ability to see profiles in their complete entirety is reserved for Gold members. This includes viewing, commenting and “favoriting” members’ full-size photos and full-length videos.

While you’re browsing through the site, you will come across Gold members. They are easily identified by a gold crown icon next to their Username. This helps users identify who is able to reply to messages through the site. Unfortunately, at the free membership level, contact with other members is heavily restricted. Having a Gold Membership is everyone’s first step towards genuinely interacting with the rest of the AFF community that is also at Gold level and up. There’s also a useful Standard Contacts upgrade which you can pay for, which allows free members to reply to a Gold member messages sent to them. If a Gold member sees a new member (who hasn’t upgraded) and is interested in talking to them before anyone else, this upgrade is a real bonus.

Standard vs. Gold

Adult FriendFinder, like most adult dating sites, allows visitors to choose from a Standard (Free) or Gold membership. In order to interact with other members, including e-mailing them, messaging them, and chatting to them over your webcam, you will need to upgrade to their premium-level Gold membership. Sending friend requests and “flirts” are exclusive to paid memberships as well. The advantages of Gold membership are many and varied and will really let people get the most out of the site. But in the end the main reason you'll want to upgrade from Standard mostly boils down to being able to initiate contact with other members or reply to other members who've contacted you. While I wouldn’t say it’s impossible as a Standard member, the Gold membership is a huge and essential element to hook up with other members in the real world (off-line) with any degree of success.

AFF Chat Features

Adult FriendFinder capitalizes on their huge members' database by offering a variety of tools to allow members to contact one another and play together online as a prelude perhaps to meeting in person. One of these tools includes the enormous selection chat rooms, which are broken down as:

Instant Messenger

: Sometimes referred to as IMC, allows users to chat with other members using Adult FriendFinder's built-in instant messaging tool. If a member has a webcam available, people may also chat using voice and/or video chat. Users can filter the members in the chat room similarly to the Search function for finding members. Search by gender (man, woman, couple, groups, TS/TV/TG), their age and whether or not they have a webcam and are currently broadcasting. When I go over to this section, I’ll usually find over 15,000 members chatting on the IMC! Standard (free) members can only start 5 instant messenger conversations per day, so going Gold is required to have unlimited chat and take proper advantage of this feature.

Adult Chat Rooms:

Pick a chatroom by geographic location or by topics of interest like the Cybersex Room, Hot Tub Room, BBW Room, and even the newcomer friendly room called the Lobby.

Interest Group Chat:

This feature offers a more bulletin board discussion style area allowing users to chat with other members who share a similar interest. There exists over 180,000 active interest groups on Adult FriendFinder, comprising over 3.5 million members and over 10 million discussions! You can browse the interest groups by region or topic, or search for a group by keyword. It offers a wide range of topics and isn’t limited to adult matters so members can share thoughts on pretty much anything.

Live Model Chat:

This feature is powered by Adult FriendFinder's sister site, Cams.com. Much like the high bar of service and quality AFF provides, Cams.com stands shoulder to shoulder with them in their live adult cam offering. The models come in all sorts of categories, but a private chat in this room comes at a fee. Models here are available around the clock if there comes a need for a bit more “instant gratification” arises.

Live Member Broadcasts

Members can also use their webcams to offer broadcasts, and many of these are free of charge. Many exhibitionists on Adult FriendFinder choose to broadcast their webcams publicly and, believe it or not, users can watch these members playing live on their webcams without having to upgrade from the Standard membership. Watching other members indulging in various sexual acts live on camera is highly-addictive. Users can access the webcams by selecting “Live Member Webcams” from the Live Action tab of the home page. Once inside, you can filter the webcams by gender (man, woman, man+man, woman+woman, man+woman, groups or TS/TV/TG). You can also search the webcams by member's gender, location and age, and sort the results according to newest broadcast, distance, the number of members watching the broadcast, or the webcam broadcast's user rating. From here Gold members can also send the members a quick message and access their full profiles. It’s not uncommon to see over 1000 live member webcams broadcasting to the community.

Member Verification

Probably one of the most useful features that Adult FriendFinder has, and one that is lacking on most other adult dating sites, enter ConfirmID. They understand that being verified while remaining anonymous is very important. ConfirmID is free third-party verification service that confirms a member's non-identifying attributes, like gender and age. This establishes trust, and verified users become more approachable in the online space. This adds a dimension of safety to the site, which is particularly important for any female members, and gives them added confidence that the person they are talking to is who he claims to be. If you're a male member of Adult FriendFinder, then obtaining a free ConfirmID certificate can significantly boost your chances of success with the opposite sex.

Adult FriendFinder has genuine profiles of genuine people. Far too many other adult dating sites have been accused again and again of using fake profiles of sexy female members in order to entice male members to pay to upgrade their subscriptions. A recent article in Rolling Stone cast some light on this practice.

In short: Male members upgrade in order to reply to the e-mails sent to them by these (allegedly) non-existent women, but once they upgrade, the new member hears nothing more from the female members who initially contacted them. This practice gives the whole adult dating industry a bad name. No dating site can guarantee that all its member profiles are genuine. However, dating sites seem to operate by one of three policies. They actively seek out and ban fake profiles; they decide to not worry about fake profiles, as long as the cash keeps rolling in; or they create fake profiles, in order to entice men to upgrade their subscriptions (or so it has been alleged). Based on our experience, Adult FriendFinder ardently follows that first type of policy, as they normally do their best to get rid of any fake profiles they find. This is just one of the many reasons why Adult FriendFinder has remained in business for over 10 years and has amassed more than 68 million members.

Value

The costs for a paid membership on Adult FriendFinder are very competitive, especially when you consider all the advantages AFF has on offer over other similar sites in this category. Having over 68 million members and growing is something that can't be overemphasized. With so many members to choose from, Adult FriendFinder should be considered the hub for people looking to hook up. Their member count means they’ll have plenty of active individuals participating in their grand selection of chat rooms and their groups and discussion boards. All in service of catering to the diverse and wide range of adult subjects, demographics and fetishes and just about anything else really.

Paid subscriptions also net users live member webcam broadcasts, as discussed above and the feature to post your own adult blog or read someone else's blog. This is one of the emerging features on many adult dating sites and Adult FriendFinder adopted this feature very early on. Full access to Adult FriendFinder's Sex Academy, is also included in the Gold Membership. These are online courses designed help people achieve their potential online through a number of workshops to help them in a number of different areas, such as helping to get more success online with the site, helping users improve their sex appeal, and more. They even distribute an online magazine, updated more regularly than on most other sites, with lots of features, articles and hot gossip.

Pricing

All these features and priority customer service and it’s not hard to recommend a Gold membership. Also, keep in mind that committing to a longer membership will earn you the most value per dollar, but we have no qualms about going for the short term. Factoring in 68 million members and the rates are still some of the lowest you’ll find in the industry.

Gold Membership for 1 Month - $30
Gold Membership for 3 Months - $60
Gold Membership for 12 Months - $180

Points Program

You’ve made it down this far in the review so I’m going to offer up some information about AFF that might change how you approach this site and others like it. Whether a user has decided to be a Standard or Gold member on the site, Adult FriendFinder also implements a points program to encourage users of any level to be contributors to the online community. Yes, people earn points just by using the site. The actions required to earn points can range from referring friends who then join the site, to smaller tasks like posting on comments or liking another member’s video. Points that are accumulated are good toward upgrades and more! When enough points are earned, they can be cashed in for special features and prizes. These too are wide in scope. Things such as special icons, called “Bling”, that can be added to your profile to make it pop, to more tangible benefits like being able to email any member, including those you normally wouldn’t have access to because of membership restrictions. Those who are particularly dedicated to the site can even earn a Gold Membership Upgrade for a month. And if you are gaga for these points, for instance, you want to really “Bling” out your profile or want to try highlighting your profile in the member search for a month, AFF gives you the option to purchase those points direct. The takeaway here is you could conceivably pay for site features as you go along and get more and more familiar with the site and the members you meet. It’s our opinion that the value the Gold Membership is there, Adult FriendFinder offers everyone a choice.

Bottom Line

If you’re looking for a reliable and active adult dating network then you should try AdultFriendFinder.com. Even with all the more significant features placed behind a pay wall, overall AFF still earns our #1 spot. You can upgrade if you want to, or with Adult FriendFinder’s Points Program, just buy points every once in a while. Having a standard membership can be enough, it’s just a matter of how you choose to use it to your advantage and find some real fun.