Love is beautiful when one finds it. It is like being in a locked room, and its intimacy lies in giving that one person a key. Falling in love has been found to be beneficial health-wise.
While falling in love is somewhat easy, falling in love with the wrong person is a dismal affair. All the positives of falling in love can quickly turn to a story excerpted out of a horror movie. Finding the right person is essential, and to achieve this, one must use all the tools available to boost your chances.
Online dating apps is one of such tools that can increase your chances dramatically. Two of such platforms that you may use have been set against each other to help you pick out which one you think would be great. It’s Plenty of Fish vs. Meet me. Read on to find out who wins.
Plenty of Fish vs. MeetMe
Comparison of History
Plenty of Fish is headquartered in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. It’s poetic that it resides there given that it was built by Markus Frind, a graduate of British Columbia University. POF is by heritage Canadian but is open to the world. It was launched in 2003, in the early days of the internet.
Today, the dating platform is owned by one of the corporate behemoths of the online dating world – Match Group, the same corporate giant that owns Match and Tinder. Since 2014, the business has been able to report revenue of $100 million upwards.
MeetMe has had an activity-filled historical timeline. The website was not always known as MeetMe. When a semblance of it came to life in 2005, it was called myYearbook and developed by two high school students.
Over the years, the platform morphed in functionality from an instant messaging platform to an IM platform where users could also play games. In 2012, the platform decided to rename the company to MeetMe because they felt it inspired people to make new connections.
Plenty of Fish started as a platform for online dating, but MeetMe grew to become an online dating website.
Key Features of Both Websites
Plenty of Fish and MeetMe has features they’ve grouped under a free option and a paid option. You aren’t allowed access to many features under the free tier. The features you have to pay for are usually more exciting. On MeetMe, you can register an account for free, create a profile, so other users get to know more about you, and there is a chat feature that enables you to send messages to other users.
MeetMe has a live stream service that you have access to on the free tier. However, there are ads on the free tier also. Paying for a premium account removes ads, gives you a powerful search functionality and allows you to browse other members’ profiles anonymously. You can also decorate your profile with beautiful themes.
Tinder made the swiping gesture popular among dating apps, and MeetMe has that feature too.
It is called QuickPick, and you can show your interest to any of the users that are randomly displayed to you or take a pass on them.
Plenty of Fish allows you to do a lot of things for free such as:
- Send messages
- Select favorites
- Send voice messages
- Surf through nearby members
- Get matches
When you pay, you get access to do a lot more like sending gifts to members you like, finding out if your messages were read or not, and frequently appearing on their “Meet Me” feature whose name is commonplace on online dating platforms has nothing to do with MeetMe.
Comparison of the Sign-Up Process
Signing up on Plenty of Fish isn’t fast-paced and can be a little time-consuming. The free sign-up process has measures to keep out bots, and one of such is a robot test that you have to take. In all, it might take you close to 5 to 10 minutes to answer the approximately 20 questions you would be given.
MeetMe doesn’t have a complicated sign-up process as Plenty of Fish. You should be done in 1-2 minutes. You can sign up with a Facebook account or by filling in the sign-up form.
There is a postal code check when you sign-up, so even if you sign up with a Facebook account, you have to be in the area where you registered the account. On signing up, you are taken to a custom dashboard.
User Base
MeetMe operates on a global scale. They have over 100 million users worldwide. Fifty million of those reside in the United States. Their daily logins pale compared to the number of users on the platform; they have 41000 daily logins.
The USA has the most numbers of POF users worldwide. Most of the daily logins also come from POF. Of the 150 million people on the platform, 78 million are from the USA, which is more than half of their entire user base.
Ease of Using Each Platform
MeetMe has no issues in how they’ve laid out the functions you would need to access every day on the platform. Where they’ve failed is in the design of the desktop version of the website. The desktop version looks outdated and has not been upgraded. The app’s design looks great and modern.
Plenty of Fish’s app version looks less cluttered compared to its website version. You can quickly get overwhelmed by how poorly things are organized on the desktop version. The app and desktop are worlds apart when it comes to design and usability.
Success Rate
Plenty of Fish offers a higher percentage of offering you dating success than MeetMe. MeetMe still has a lot to figure out as a ‘dating platform.’ You can tell it wasn’t ever their primary focus from the start. This doesn’t mean there aren’t success stories of people finding love on the platform.
Pricing
Plenty of Fish offers three monthly plans to choose from:
- 8-Month Plan – $81.40
- 4-Month Plan – $51.00
- 2-Month Plan – $38.70
MeetMe’s premium Plan is called MeetMe+, and there is also a credit system:
- 1-Month Plan – $6.99
- 3-Month Plan – $16.99
- 6-Month Plan – $24.99
- 250 Credits – $2.99
- 500 Credits – $4.99
- $625 Credits – $9.99
- 2000 Credits – $14.99
- 3700 Credits – $24.99
Pros and Cons
Plenty of Fish Pros
- Powerful search engine
- Lots of features on the free tier
Plenty of Fish Cons
- Cluttered Desktop Interface
- Presence of Ads
MeetMe Pros
- Modern Interface for the App version
- Fast and simple sign-up process
MeetMe Cons
- Age-restriction is lower than 18
- Very little information is required to sign-up, leaving users little to go by.
Bottom Line
The strengths of MeetMe lies in how quick it is to get set-up and the beautiful designs of its app. In terms of dating functionality, Plenty of Fish edges ahead. From the outside, it looks like MeetMe still has a lot to figure out. When it does, it has the potential to be a really powerful dating platform, especially with the live streaming service it provides.
For Plenty of Fish, they could improve on their web interface because many people still prefer using these platforms with their Macs and PCs. Also, the premium version is worth paying for because of the exciting features present.
Visit the Perfect DM homepage for more expert information & dating tips.
