Fact Checked by: John Stringfellow, CEH
IMPORTANT: Spark Networks, the owner of Elite Singles, is currently undergoing insolvency hearings in German courts. At this time, we are not sure what the future for Elite Singles looks like. We’d highly recommend check out one of our safest dating site recommendations in the meantime, until this is sorted out.
To be fully transparent, when we first heard “Elite Singles”, we thought it was going to be some private meeting of a bunch of snobby socialites who were “too good and too elite for the rest of the world”. Thankfully, our parents taught me to never judge a book by its cover because (as you’ll see) that is not the case.
While we may have had some initial reservations about the name of this dating app, we wanted to find out once and for all if the Elite Singles dating app was worth it or not.
What We Found During Our Review of Elite Singles
Elite Singles claims to be a dating app catered toward singles who are more established in life, have higher levels of education or advanced training, and aren’t looking to play games. According to their website, over 85% of their members are considered “highly educated.”
Do they live up to that claim? Honestly, we’d say so—with a few reservations. From our experience, the app is packed with quality singles who aren’t the snobby socialites we expected to see, but were goal-driven and accomplished people looking for someone to do life with. A large percentage of profiles were doctors, lawyers, businesspeople, and a handful of other professional titles you’d expect to see.
What may surprise you, though, is during our time on Elite Singles, we also saw quite a few people who weren’t in the professional space. This may be a pro or a con for you, depending on what you’re looking for. If you only want to date other professionals, expect to get some messages from people that don’t exactly match what you’re looking for. If you’re open to dating people who aren’t on that grind like you are, this is a nice surprise.
Pros and Cons of Elite Singles
Pros
- Hundreds of thousands of new singles joining every month (381,000+ based on past month averages)
- 85% of members have some form of an above-average education or higher-level certification
- Operates in the US, as well as 25+ other countries, in case you’re looking for something international
- Recently partnered with CitySwoon to offer in-person and virtual speed dating events in select major cities
- ‘Have you met’ feature, which is the site’s swipe-style dating upgrade
Cons
- Limited free trial; free users are unable to see photos of other members unless they upgrade
- User interface is intuitive, but hasn’t been updated in a while
- No traditional search function (only filters)
- Not a lot of details shared about how they determine what they classify as highly educated
- Higher price point than some less effective dating apps
- Low 1.9 out of 5.0 rating on Android devices
Signup is Simple, but Thorough
The signup process of a dating app speaks volumes about what you can expect when you get into the app. Casual dating apps like Zoosk or Tinder have a very low barrier to entry, while more serious dating apps like eharmony have a longer onboarding flow.
EliteSingles is definitely in that second camp with a simple, but extremely thorough signup. They will ask a wide variety of questions to understand your personality, lifestyle, goals, and dating preferences to lead to better matches. Here’s a quick look at part of that process:
While this does take some extra time, our take is that it’s worth it, and we strongly prefer this approach to online dating. That’s because better data leads to better matches.
When signing up for Elite Singles it’s important to give these questions time and thought. The answers you provide will not only decide what matches you see, but also will be used to generate a compatibility score with each potential match. And while there is some ability to filter results (as you’ll see in the video below) it’s much more limited than the search filters you might see on other apps.
Whether you’re a fan of this style of online dating or not, we can tell you that this is intentional. EliteSingles is designed first with busy professionals in mind. They want you to be able to give them good information, and then sit back and let their system do the work of searching.
Pro tip – intentionality yields better results than random swiping. On that note, let’s talk a bit more about the quality of matchmaking at Elite Singles…
How the Matchmaking Process Stacks Up
The next, and arguably most important part of our Elite Singles review is looking at the technology and matchmaking process. At Elite Singles, I’d give these two factors a rating of somewhere between a B+ or an A-. What I like is that there is a curated matchmaking process where they show you matches they think will be a good fit based on questions you answer during the onboarding.
They’ll also show you a score of how compatible they think you are with each of these people. Here’s a screenshot of what that looks like. You’ll see my first batch of matches were all in the mid-80s (assuming a score out of 100).
If you’re someone who is into the swipe dating craze like you see at Tinder or Bumble, you will have an option to do that with the “Have you met?” feature. Here’s a screenshot of what that looks like.
We’d say this is a nice feature, but it’s certainly not meant to be the main feature of Elite Singles, so don’t expect to get mutual matches as quickly as you might with a swipe-only dating app. In some of the other Elite Singles reviews we read, we found a lot of users complementing this feature, so maybe it gets more use than we experienced.
Pricing
Pricing is a bit more expensive than other dating apps out there with memberships starting around $45 per month. We did like that each membership comes with all features, so there isn’t any big decisions to make other than how long of a membership you want. It’s also worth noting that Elite Singles often offers discounts (especially for new user).
In the video below you’ll see a sale from the app on already discounted rates:
Overall, we’d say that the price of the membership is worth the quality of the dating experience you’re receiving. Additionally, there is an Elite Singles free trial that you can take advantage of to test things out at no cost.
Complaints and Drawbacks of Elite Singles
No Elite Singles review is complete without sharing the things that need improvement. At Elite Singles, there were just a few things that stood out to me. First, there weren’t hard requirements for users to complete their profiles or upload photos before being granted access. While this is nice if you just want to quickly check things out, it does leave quite a few empty-ish feeling profiles you have to sort through. There were plenty of robustly filled out profiles, but it wasn’t 100% across the board like I’d prefer.
Second, the Elite Singles for Android app has a pretty bad rating. When I first checked out the app years ago, it got a 1.9 star rating. It has improved to a round 2.7, but that’s still not great. That said, I found the Android app to be pretty good. Sure, there were things that could be tweaked, but it certainly got the job done and shouldn’t be a reason not to try Elite Singles.
Testing Results for Elite Singles
| Test Category | Results (out of 10) | Weight | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Safety and Security | 7.4 | 20% | Good security, but some data shared with ad providers |
| Profile Engagement | 8.3 | 15% | Profiles seem to be largely legit and filled out |
| Feature Effectiveness | 8.1 | 15% | Straightforward process with matching quiz and traditional process |
| Pricing | 8.3 | 15% | Can be pricy, but expected in this type of niche |
| UX and Usability | 7.8 | 10% | Good UX reviews on iOS; lacking on Android |
| Popularity | 9.1 | 10% | Large user base, strong niche |
| External Reviews | 7.9 | 10% | Polarized reviews largely based on personal experience |
| Feature Growth | 7.1 | 5% | Limited new features being released, but still maintained |
| Overall | 8.02 | ~ | ~ |
Learn more about how we test and review dating apps.
Safety Testing Results
| Test Category | Results (out of 10) | Weight | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Privacy Policy | 9.6 | 15% | Well laid out and clear privacy policy |
| Third-Party Data Usage | 7.5 | 15% | Some data shared to offer more targeted ads |
| Encryption | 8.1 | 15% | SSL encryption; no mention of E2EE but most likely present as is with most Spark Networks brands |
| Block and Report | 8.3 | 15% | Fraud detection systesm and manual profile review (not immediate) |
| Account Verification | 8.5 | 10% | ID authentication and profile verification, though some reports of bots still |
| Data Minimization | 7.3 | 10% | Collect quite a bit of information, though on par with a lot of the industry |
| 2FA | 0.0 | 10% | Does not offer 2FA |
| Terms of Service | 8.1 | 5% | Fairly clear but lacks deletion guarantees. |
| Strong Password | 8.3 | 5% | Encourages strong passwords, but not required |
| Overall | 7.43 | ~ | ~ |
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