eharmony Review for 2023

If you’re like me (and I’m about to age myself), you grew up watching eharmony commercials as far back as the early 2000’s talking about a new and innovative way to find someone to marry. Fast-forward two decades later and we still see these commercials from a company that has grown into a giant in the online dating realm.

Couple that with claims of being the “dating app known for the most marriages” and for “helping over 2 million people find love” and you have officially piqued my interest. But here’s the million dollar question—is eharmony worth it? Is this a dating app that you actually want to spend your time (and money) on to find someone special? And even more importantly, does eharmony actually work?

That’s what I want to get to the bottom of today. In this eharmony review, myself and our expert team flipped the site upside down, actually tested the platform (on desktop, iOS, and Android), and even got in contact with the company to get our unanswered questions answered.

Is eharmony Worth It? – The Bottom Line Up Front

Alright, let’s get into this. There’s two questions we want to answer and both of them are equally important. One—is eharmony a great dating app, and two—is eharmony right for you? Because if eharmony is awful across the board, it’s not going to be good for anyone. But even if it’s amazing, that doesn’t mean it will be the right fit for everyone (and we’ll explain why momentarily).

Here’s what our expert team found during our eharmony review.

When it comes to the quality of the eharmony dating app, they not only walk the walk, but they dance the dance, and do any other tricks you could ever want an online dating site to do. eharmony is probably the nicest and most feature-rich dating app on the market.

The app is driven by a complex matching algorithm that helps to curate quality matches for you, which means you don’t have to do any of the searching work. By sharing your answers to a pretty intensive matching questionnaire (takes about 30 minutes to complete), the algorithm uses your answers and compares it with millions of other users to find compatible matches.

The answer to question two is that it depends. Whether you should join eharmony or not depends heavily on what type of relationship you’re looking for.

• If you’re looking for a real relationship, potential commitment, and maybe even marriage one day, eharmony is hands-down the best option for you.
• If you’re looking for casual dating, hookups, or no-commitment, eharmony will be the worst experience of your life (and that is probably an understatement).

That’s really what it comes down to. eharmony drives all of its marketing efforts, features, and matchmaking processes towards singles looking for real committed relationships. And they’re really good at it boasting an impressive 2 million plus success stories to date.

In a recent interview we conducted with eharmony, we asked Kristen Berry, eharmony’s VP of Communications and CSR if eharmony had an ideal customer. Here was her response:

“We don’t have a type – eharmony members represent adults of all ages, demographics, religious beliefs and backgrounds. What our members have in common is a shared desire for meaningful relationships based on something deeper than looks, likes, and location. eharmony is passionate about creating real love for all, and that’s exactly what our members are looking for.”

Kristen Berry – VP of Communications and CSR at eharmony

In terms of drawbacks, there are some things you’ll want for be aware of with eharmony. First, as we stated, eharmony is a hard no for anyone looking for anything resembling casual. Second, and this relates to the first, eharmony is a much bigger time commitment than pretty much any other dating app on the planet. The sign up process takes 30-45 minutes (including the eharmony matching questionnaire), the profile is a lot more robust with more areas you need to fill out, and it’s not a swipe-style app where you can see your matches in 30 seconds.

What’s nice is that all of this gets rid of the casual singles who may be more open to playing games, but it also means you’ll need to be ready to put in some effort. The good news is that you don’t have to do everything all at once, you can do it incrementally, so we would say that the positives here far outweigh the negatives.

All in all, we (and I) think eharmony is one of the leading dating apps on the market for finding real commitment in a healthy and well-maintained environment.

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eharmony Ratings and Rankings

Pros and Cons of the eharmony Dating App

eharmony Review – Table of Contents

How does eharmony work?

While the premise of eharmony has changed over the years, it has always followed a fairly structured roadmap for users—and the same can be said today.

When you first join eharmony, you’ll be asked to take the eharmony Compatibility Quiz. This is a fancy name for an extensive questionnaire asking you about yourself, what you’re looking for in a partner, how you live your life, your values, and what’s most important to you in life. There are even some seemingly bizarre questions asking you to look a bunch of different shapes and share which ones you like most.

This takes about 15-25 minutes to complete, but is the basis for how matchmaking works.

While you’re taking this questionnaire, so are all the other users who are joining. Eharmony takes your answers and the answers of other users and plugs it into their matchmaking algorithm.

From this, eharmony serves you up curated matches based on your algorithmic matching, as well as based on your matchmaking preferences. You’ll actually be able to see how and to what degree you are compatible with your different matches. Here’s a sample of what that will look like:

The compatibility scores of your matches will range from 60 (meaning there is a low base-level of compatibility) to 140 (meaning eHarmony’s algorithm predicts you and that match would get along perfectly well). Most matches will be somewhere in the middle of that range and you’ll want to poke through the specifics a bit more to see what areas you do and don’t mesh. Their general advice is that matches with a score of 100 or higher are probably worth contacting.

Once you’ve found a match you’re interested in, you can send them a message and start a conversation. Beyond this point of the matchmaking process, eharmony functions quite similarly to a lot of other dating apps. You message back and forth doing your best to learn about your matches and make meaningful connections.

Are there any great features?

eharmony has a lot of great, yet simple, features to help make your online dating experience that much more successful. If you’re someone who loves a million different features, bells, and whistles to keep you busy, you aren’t going to like eharmony.

Let’s take a look at some of the more important and impactful features we found during our last eharmony review.

See Visitors to Your Profile

Want a surefire way to know that a match is interested in you? They have it at eharmony! The “Visitors to my profile” feature allows you to see all the latest singles that have been checking you out in a super easy to digest layout.

As amazing as this eharmony feature is for gauging the interest of potential matches there are some downsides. First, you’ll noticed that all the images are blurred in the screenshot above. Until you upgrade to a premium membership you will find this to be the case with any and all user images on the site (it’s one of the ways eharmony works to protect users).

The second downside of this feature is also only applicable to free members. As a premium eharmony users you can see anyone who’s ever visited your profile giving you a ton of options. Free members on the other hand will only be able to see the profiles of the 3 most recent visitors.

In short – this is a great eharmony feature, but you have to pay up to get the most out of it.

The Search Feature?

You may notice when you get onto eharmony that they don’t have a traditional search feature. Nothing like starting the list of features with a feature they don’t have, right? Instead what they do is present matches to you that they think are compatible.

Eharmony really likes to be in the driver’s seat when it comes to helping you pick your matches. Imagine them like your good friend who always wants to play matchmaker, except they are professionals.

Now, you do have the ability to search within your matches and you can change your overall preferences so see matches that fall outside of what you originally set. In a sense, this is a search function, but it’s definitely not what you are traditionally used to and not the method they seem to prefer for you to use.

Why does eharmony have no real search feature? They do this because they want you to trust in their systems and the processes they’ve put in place. Let’s be honest for a minute…if you’re here, you’re obviously in need of some help, and eharmony wants to make sure that you’re taking it. They have such a high success rate with pairing up perfectly compatible people (2 million+ successful relationships) that we’re totally ok with the fact that they choose to do the searching for you.

SMS Verification

eharmony has added in the ability to verify your account through an SMS text message. It’s a simple process, but goes a long way to weeding out fake profiles. All you have to do is add your mobile phone number and eharmony will send you a text with a code. Once you input that code on the eharmony website or app, you are verified!

From then, you get a badge on your profile that shows you have been verified. And while this process is 100% optional, it certainly helps with increasing your likelihood of matches and message responses.

2 Factor Authentication

There’s pretty much no reason anyone but you should be accessing your online dating account right? Well, the team at eharmony fully agree and have implemented this 2FA security feature. Anytime you (or anyone else) try to log in from a new device this will pop up:

You will then need to check your email, get the 4 digit pin, and input in to gain access to the account. It is worth noting that once you’ve verified a device you will not have to do it every time. Unless you clear your cache one verification should do the trick, which is great for those users who love security but hate dealing with 2FA.

Protected Messaging

If you’re trying eharmony as a free member you may not see this feature as a perk, but the fact remains that messaging is a feature reserved for eharmony premium members. If you get a message from a paid member on your free trial you will see something like this:

As frustrating as this may be in some cases, it goes a long way toward making eharmony one of the safest dating apps available. Only users serious enough to pay will be able to message you (which works wonders at keeping eharmony scammer and catfish free).

Free Communication Weekends

For those of you that aren’t quite ready to join eharmony, they have free communication weekends fairly regularly that will let you use a lot of the features for free. What we recommend is that even if you aren’t planning on joining the site, you should create an account just so you can be ready for one of these weekends.

During the weekend, any member of the site is free to flirt, send questions, or write messages/respond to other singles.

There are a few features that you won’t get access to without upgrading, though. These are the ability to see who visited your profile, the What If? function, and the ability to see other member’s photos. The last one is a bummer, but you’ll still be able to interact and start getting to know other members and see if it’s worth it for you to upgrade and join the site.

If you’d like to learn more or get signed up for the next free communication weekend at eharmony, we’ve put together a full guide with all of the important information you need to take advantage and make sure you don’t miss out on this awesome feature.

IceBreakers, Smiles, and Compliments

To this point we’ve established that free eharmony users won’t have the easiest time trying to establish contact with other members. So how can you test messaging to see if other users may be interested in chatting with you? This is where smiles, compliments, and icebreakers come in.

Now, compliments are the hardest of these features to find in the eharmony app’s interface. In fact, if you didn’t know to look for them you may not even realize they’re there. If you’re interested in sending a compliment you’ll want to look for the thumbs up icon on your match’s profile. We’ve included a screenshot below showing what each of these features might look like in your inbox:

Overall we feel these work alright for just poking someone to see if they have any interest in messaging further, but would have to say they’re a bit underwhelming (especially when compared to something like Higher Bond’s guided first messages). While we’re not taking anything away from eharmony’s tremendous success rates, we highly doubt these emojis have had much role in them.

Profile Completeness Requirements

One of the more annoying things that can happen when using an online dating site is getting a message from an empty profile. Nothing says “Hey I’m serious about finding love” like putting no effort into your profile! Thankfully, eharmony has a feature to help curtail this.

In order to be able to send or respond to a message, you have to complete at least 50% of your profile. While this can still be circumvented, it is a nice (and somewhat effective) attempt at stopping lazy messages.

Also, it’s meant reiterating that there are some users on the site without photos, which always bugs us.

eharmony Pricing

Here’s a look at exactly what it costs to get a membership with eharmony. In the past, there were different types of memberships that offered different levels of service. Now, though, all of the memberships offer the same features.

It’s important to point out that eharmony offers discounts and sales year round on most of their memberships. But, here’s the secret! The only way to see these sales is by creating a free trial account. Once you do that and log into your account, you’ll see what current offers the eharmony app is pushing. Often, this can be upwards of 60% off or more in some instances!

For example, here’s the pricing discount we saw the last time we logged into eharmony to update our review. You’ll notice that there is a hefty 60% discount on the 12 month and 24 months plans.

To learn more about pricing, check our out in-depth eharmony cost guide.

eharmony Complaints

While we’re fairly big fans of what eharmony has to offer, you can’t please everyone. And when reviewing a dating app (or anything), it’s important to look at both sides of the argument. One area we like to look is if there are any eharmony complaints from existing users out there. Often, these get emailed to us, and we wanted to share a few here.

Here are some eharmony complaints that were emailed to us.

• User “iclough” says, “How do you allow accounts without pictures? I have said hello to people and they don’t respond one way or the other. They should have to either respond and say not interested or something like that or they should delete the match and not leave someone hanging. When I asked for help they implied it’s my fault for not being flexible in my choices or not reaching out.” 
• Deb says, “Eharmony absolutely needs to be completely removed from your article! NO way in heck are they the #1 dating site.   My nicknames for them are E-UNharmonious, and E-harmful.“
• Sandra L. says, “They (eharmony) have changed quite a bit since the founder stepped out. In their profile suggestions they say not to mention God. They say, separation of church and state. When I fill in the questionnaire the only questions about spirituality were to check off my religion.” 
• Charles J. says, “I would like to tell you that my experience with eharmony was extremely negative.  They do not take faith into their matching process or 29 points of comparability nor political views.  Therefore I was matched with atheist liberal/progressives that I wouldnt have lasted 5 seconds with.  Half the matches have no photos and all of this I pointed out to them.  On top of that I was spoken to rudely by a potential match essentially accusing me of catfishing.  Sorry I look much younger than my age but it was no excuse.  I would not recommend eharmony to anyone.“
• Patti says, “People should be warned that many of the people on the site are predators who eHarmony EVENTUALLY even weeds out as being fraudulent. This would be after spending hours of dialoguing with a person you thought was real and then feeling like a total idiot.

Some other user complaints talked about the price being expensive, not realizing that the entire membership is charged upfront, and that eharmony has a fairly strict refund policy (which they do share before you sign up).

Again, these eharmony complaints do not necessarily represent our views and very well may be factually inaccurate as they are just the views of the commenters that contacted us. Additionally, you’ll notice that some of the complaints could also be construed as positives. For example, one user does complain about bad actors, but then also talks about how eharmony does weed them out. So, a negative at first, but a positive showing the company is proactively working on this.

If you’d like to share your experience with eharmony (positive or negative) with us, please send us an email.

eharmony Alternatives

While we are super high on the eharmony app as a great choice for serious singles, it might not be the right fit for everyone—and that’s okay. If you’re still on the search for someone special, we wanted to share some other eharmony options you may want to consider. We’ve linked below to our review of each dating app as well as shared who we think each is best for.

• Christian Mingle – If you’re looking for a 100% Christian faith-focused relationship, Christian Mingle may be an app worth checking out. The site boasts an impressive 15 million members and unlike eharmony is 100% focused on Christian singles.
• Zoosk – If you made it to our eharmony app review and realized the site is a little too “serious” for you, that’s okay. Maybe you aren’t totally sure what you want in a relationship just yet or you’re looking for some more casual dating. If that’s what you find yourself saying, Zoosk may be worth checking out. There are still serious singles on there, but there are also single men and women looking for more casual dating.
• Match.com – In the early days of online dating, it felt like your only two options were Match or eharmony. Match is still a fairly popular app, though, we feel like they’ve fallen behind on the features and upgrades curve. Still, if you have tried eharmony and need to find a new place to look—check out Match.com. Yes, you will see a lot of people that are signed up for both of these accounts.
• Bumble – While Bumble is a swipe-style dating app, it does have the reputation for a higher quality membership base than other swipe apps like Tinder. You will get some people looking for casual dating on here, but we feel a higher percentage are looking for something more than that. Keep in mind, though, unlike eharmony, only the women can start conversations on Bumble.
• Elite Singles – For those of you who are business professionals or are singles who find education sexy, then Elite Singles could be a better fit for you. The site boasts an impressive 86%+ of singles on there with an above-average form of education. Additionally, a large chunk of the members of Elite Singles are over the age of 30, which may or may not be a positive for you.

eharmony Review FAQ

What is eharmony?

eharmony is an online dating website and app that predominantly markets to single men and women who are looking for serious relationships, committed partnerships, and potentially marriage. While many people think that eharmony is a Christian dating site, it’s actually a secular dating site that caters to all faith walks and age groups.

eharmony is not:

• An exclusive Christian dating site.
• Only for people who want to get married right away.
• A dating site for people looking for hookups.
• A low-budget online dating site.

How do I contact eharmony?

Within the FAQ section of eharmony, if you click on a question and scroll to the bottom, you’ll find an email and phone support option. We would have liked to see these more prominently posted somewhere, but it’s clear they are trying to get people to use the FAQ support first. So, if you need help, go the FAQ section, click on a question and scroll to the bottom. You’ll see the link for email support.

Here is an additional means of contacting eharmony by phone.

• eharmony Phone: 844-544-3173
• eharmony Customer Support Hours of Operation: 8 A.M. to 5 P.M. PT, Monday – Saturday

Is eharmony a Christian dating site?

Questions we hear a lot are whether eharmony is for Christians or if eharmony is a Christian dating site? Let’s answer both questions starting with the second one. No, eharmony is not a Christian dating site. However, so many people believe that it is due to the more serious nature of the app’s approach. What this results in is eharmony attracts a lot of single Christians even though it’s not a faith-focused dating app.

The reason for this belief is that eharmony was founded by Dr. Neil Warren who is an evangelical Christian. While the site wasn’t created to be Christian, you can imagine how a lot of his beliefs were included in some of the setup and processes. In 2016, Dr. Warren stepped down from the company.

So, no eharmony is not a dedicated Christian dating app, but it’s a great site for Christian singles. You will find people of other faiths (or who aren’t religious on the site), but you’ll also find plenty of single men and women looking for religious-focused dating. And the site does come with some great features that will help you to quickly sort through your matches to find people who fit what you’re looking for.

For those of you interested in a 100% faith-focused app, you can always check out our list of the top Christian dating apps.

When was eharmony founded?

eharmony was founded in August of 2000 in Pasadena, California by Neil Clark Warren and Greg Forgatch. As the company crosses the two-decade mark in business, its operations have moved to its new headquarters in Los Angeles, CA. In 2017, eharmony was acquired by ProSiebenSat.1 Media, a German company for the adjusted enterprise value of a whopping $85 million.

Since it’s founding in 2000 up until current, eharmony has remained a privately owned company and is not publicly or privately traded on any major stock exchanges. Due to the company’s private ownership, the availability of user data and information on growth is a bit more challenging to find as there is no requirement to make anything public.

How long does eharmony take to work?

The speed you fill out your sign-up questionnaire and how active of a user you are will have a big effect on how long things take to work. Unlike some dating sites that turn you lose to the full list of singles, eharmony follows a more structured approach. This means you may see options slower, but the quality of options will be better, and you should get better results.

Does eharmony have fake profiles?

eharmony has a dedicated security team that works around the clock to remove and weed out any fake profiles that might try and make it onto the site. Obviously, there will be some that slip through the cracks, but because of the intricate and in-depth sign-up process, there are fewer fake profiles at eharmony than at other dating sites.

Can you cancel eharmony after a month?

You’re able to cancel your eharmony dating account at any time. However, you won’t get a refund, and your account will stay active for the duration of the time you paid for. You won’t have to pay ever again, though, once you cancel.

Does eharmony have a free trial?

Yes! The eharmony free trial is available to daters anywhere around the globe. You’ll get unlimited time to upload profile photos, fill out your information, complete the matching tests and questionnaires, see other singles, and get acquainted with the software

Is the eharmony dating site free?

You’ll be able to sign up for a free trial to eharmony through the links at the top and bottom of this page. For full access, though, you will need to pay for an upgraded membership.

Does eharmony have an app?

Yes! eharmony has a fully functional dating app available for iOS (iPhone) and Android users. The apps can be downloaded through the free trial links on this page or through your device’s app store.

Does eharmony really work?

According to eharmony, over 2 million people have found love through the website and app. If you ask us, those are great enough success rates to say eharmony really works.

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