Love And Friends Review

LoveAndFriends Intro

With so many online dating platforms to pick from, it's easy to think that finding the right match online will be an effortless experience. But with most online dating sites targeting a mainstream audience, it can still be tricky to come across compatible matches.

For some, it may come as a surprise, but there are hundreds of niche dating sites around. These specialised dating platforms primarily target specific audiences in order to deliver a more streamlined and personalised experience.

One exclusive and unique dating website that has been around for a while, is love and friends. Its journey began in 1999 after its owner's built love and friends around the concept of their matchmaking service, drawing down the moon.

As a result, love and friends had a unique dating platform that provided compatible matchmaking for an educated and professional community. Since then, loveandfriends have seen a lot of success over the years and recently launched a new modern version of its website.

But does this mean loveandfriends UK still caters for the same crowd? What kind of features does the website now offer? Does the platform still provide compatible matches?

These are some of the questions we will try to answer amongst many others during this review. We will explore love and friends from start to finish. From their registration process to providing you with tips on using its features, we will reveal every detail of this unorthodox dating platform.

By the end of the review, you will once and for all know if loveandfriend.co.uk is the place for you to find your match.

What Type Of Dating Site Is LoveAndFriends?

• Casual dating
• Making friends
• Serious relationships

Love and friends is not a hookup site, although there is a casual element where you can make friends and network. The main ethos of the site is finding a long-term relationship.

Who Is LoveAndFriends For?

• Heterosexuals
• LGBTQ
• Non-binary
• Educated or working professional singles
• Expats or people in the UK

LoveAndFriends Stats & Infographics

• UK-based dating site targeting UK based users or British expats
• Only available in English
• Most users are in the UK, France and Australia
• Most popular with 30+ age group

LoveAndFriends Registration Process

Registering on love and friends is fairly straightforward, all you will need to do is go to loveandfriends.co.uk. From their landing page you can fill out your details, but be aware that you will need both an email and a phone number to register.

You can save time and sign up using Facebook, but we advise against it. See our section on the site's safety and security as to why.

Due to love and friends using a questionnaire to determine potential matches, the whole process will take around 15 to 25 minutes and be set out across 3 major steps.

Initially, it will start off with registration-based questions such as setting up a password. It will then move on to compatibility-based questions and to cap things off you will be asked to complete your profile.

After finishing, you will be prompted to validate your account, which is a simple process. However, your profile will still need to be personally approved by the admin which is done within 24 hours. Although some might see it as an annoying process, it can be key to stopping possible scammers and fakes from joining the website.

In contrast to other dating websites, there is no need to further complete your profile with additional information. So after your profile is approved, you can immediately begin looking for love and friendship online

Top 3 LoveAndFriends Features

Compatibility

While using the platform, it seems almost obvious that loveand friends is grounded like a matchmaking service. This is due to the compatibility feature, which makes it appear as though you have a personal matchmaker by your side.

The compatibility feature can be used by going to a possible match's profile and clicking on the "view compatibility report" button.

Once there, you may see a more precise compatibility breakdown as well as some interesting differences. This method allows users to genuinely determine whether the profile you are visiting would be a good match for you or not.

Search & Matches

Unlike most compatibility-based dating sites, the search functionality is free to use which is a big plus.

To utilise this function, go to "search" on the top left-hand side of the love and friends homepage. You can then enter your criteria by clicking on "search options". After that, click the "search" button, and the results will offer a variety of profiles with brief information about each one.

You will also be able to select "yes", "maybe" or "no" for each person.

Additionally, if you want to see anyone that has “yes”-ed you, then go to the "matches" option on the top right-hand side of the homepage.

If you're still in doubt and want to know more about the person, you can view their complete profile by clicking on their photo. Loveandfriends will then redirect you to their full profile where you can also select “yes”, “no” or “maybe”.

If for some reason you didn't like the person once you've read their profile, to get back to searching you can hit the back button on your browser or simply click on “search” again.

If you want to avoid seeing the same profiles time and time again when searching for matches, first select "yes or maybe" on all the profiles without leaving the search page.

Then later click on "matches" on the top right-hand side and select the option "who I like". In that section, you can then read more on each profile you're interested in. If you don’t find anyone interesting, you can change your "yes"’s or "maybe"’s to "no"’s.

Messaging

It is really straightforward and easy to send messages to possible matches on loveandfriends UK. Messaging other members can be done after conducting your search and viewing the entire profile of someone you like. To do this, simply click the "message" option on the upper right-hand side of their profile.

On love and friends, free members can't message other free members. However, free and paid members can freely message each other. This is unusual for dating sites, as the majority only enable paying users to communicate with other paying members. 

If you are unsure if a person is a paying member or not, there is a notice just below the message box revealing the user's membership status.

By far the most useful aspect of the messaging feature is that messages sent from free to subscribing members are reviewed.

This makes the messaging option priceless for women. Mostly because it minimises the risk of receiving a barrage of unwanted sexting messages, which is common on many dating sites.

Pricing & Costs For LoveAndFriends

Even though loveand friends is free to sign up to, to take full advantage of the site you do have to pay.

Loveandfriends.co.uk offers 3 different types of subscription packages:

The benefits that you get for premium membership are:

It's vital to take into account that these packages are rebilled every month. Love and friends do not give any refunds under most circumstances. However, cancelling your subscription is not difficult.

Members simply have to press the "Cancel my subscription" button on "My membership" page. This option is accessible from the main menu on the top right-hand side of the love and friends homepage.

LoveAndFriends Pros & Cons

Registration Process

The signup process for love and friends is somewhat quick and simple. But by far the coolest aspect of registering is that your entire profile is completed upon registration.

Mainly due to that after completing the registration procedure, most dating sites require the user to provide extra information.

Having a process where you fill out all of your profile information during registration saves a lot of time and work. As a result, users may get back to doing what they came to the site for, which is finding a perfect match.

Compatibility

The entire purpose of love and friends is, as the site puts it, to "match compatible thinking individuals". From start to finish, the site looks to strive for that result.

Registering on love and friends is brief and the questionnaire asks appropriate questions which is the foundation of the compatibility matchmaking algorithm.

The compatibility results provide an in-depth, easy-to-understand analysis of both the overall similarities and some important contrasts.

This is a fantastic unique characteristic of love and friends due to the fact that other dating sites tend to focus solely on similarities.

Therefore you won't waste time wondering what the individual is like because love and friends identify them for you. As a result, finding some perfect friends love or romance has the potential to be a truly effortless experience on the site.

Design & Layout

Many dating websites leave their visitors unsure what to do after registration and learning to navigate the platform can seem like a hassle rather than something fun.

But on love and friends, the website's menu and layout make using the site an enjoyable and easy experience. Love and friend users can easily figure out what to do next as well as browse around the site without spending too much time discovering.

LGBTQ+ Friendly

Love and friends is one of the few dating websites where you're free to choose who you're attracted to and put your gender down as "non-binary".

Buggy Features

Loveandfriends.co.uk may have modernised but the site is still buggy with a lot of features regularly showing error messages.

For example, one of their features allows free members to earn messages which can be sent to other free members by doing some tagging.

But when you try to find out further information, you end up in a 404 page.

Furthermore, some profiles also appear to have some character processing issues. Most of the time it’s easy to discern what they are trying to say but still an error which needs to be fixed.

Although the “search” feature is free, clear and uncomplicated, it's not entirely user-friendly. Depending on your "yes" or "no" choices, the first profiles displayed in your search results will always be the same.

Consequently, whenever doing a search you will always have to click "more people" to load up other profiles. This means identifying new possible matches gains an extra unnecessary step, after all, who makes a search for new matches and expects the same results?

Another error we found in the "events" section of love and friends. Some users cannot read more about individual events or interact with any of them. The error seems to show up when you click on an event and a new tab opens up, the tab loads in their generic “events” page which does not provide any information for a specific event.

Lack Of Users & Site Decline

If love and friends had an active membership, the buggy features wouldn't be much of an issue. Yet, it's quite clear that love and friends have lost a lot of their membership over the last few years.

This is evidently clear because a lot of profiles shown in the initial results had logins from 3 months ago, and some profile descriptions mentioned lockdowns or that it was 2020.

We can also get a clear glimpse of loveand friends membership decline from their original site design. The old version of the site was once very popular and was the main subject of many loveandfriends reviews around on the web.

You can actually still access it by going to the bottom of the modern website version and selecting "classic site".

From there you can use the same loveandfriends login details that you use to access the standard site. On the classic site you can go to the “community” tab which was last actively populated around 2017.

Over the course of the last 5 years, only a few users interacted on the forum and In 2022 the few messages that were posted were mostly all on heavy political issues. Ironically, the last post by any member was from one regular user complaining that love and friends had turned into a ghost site.

Irrelevant Feature

We found that their "matchmaking" tab is completely unnecessary these days too.

Essentially, it is a sign-up form for the matchmaking services offered by loveandfriends sister company, Drawing down the moon. 

However, because of all the lack of activity and where the love and friends sign-up form is on the site, it makes it seem like the admins have given up and are utilising it as a page to attract the remaining people to their matchmaking service.

LoveAndFriends Safety & Security

Love and friends privacy and terms are fairly standard and similar to most dating sites. However, you should still be very wary of the terms set out on point 5 under Proprietary Rights and Licences. Without getting into too much detail, loveandfriends lets you know that they can do whatever they want with your data.

Love and friends also mentions that they can pass on your data to third parties. Even though love and friends will "oblige" 3rd party companies to not use or pass your data to others. These 3rd party companies can do so if they so wish. So it's important to be careful and read the terms before you sign up.

Another thing to take into account is that it appears their privacy policy hasn't been updated since 2018. Companies should be updating their privacy and terms regularly, otherwise, they can face potential regulatory, financial and operational challenges.

Furthermore, some links provided in their terms such as a link to their copyright policy aren't set up correctly and show an error message.

Consequently, both the out-dated privacy as well as making users adhere to a policy they can't read, raises some serious concerns in regards to their commitment to their member's online safety.

This becomes even more worrisome when you realise that some profiles on the site look fake. The reviews left by “real” users for example use a similar language, all refer to love and friends as L&F and all female members appear to have full membership.

On the other hand, taking into account that loveandfriends UK appears to be going through a transition. It’s possible that their female members were all given full membership as a way to rebuild the site's user base once more.

So taking that into account and given how long they’ve been around, love and friends still seems like a safe site to use.

However, when signing up we would advise against using your Facebook account as it allows love and friends to access a lot of personal and potentially sensitive data that can be passed to third parties.

Instead, use the normal process outlined in our registration process section. During the registration process also take some caution and don't give away too much personal data. This way you can ensure a safer and more secure experience if you wish to use loveandfriends.co.uk.

Conclusion

All in all, love and friends has one of the most efficient registration methods available. Unlike many other dating sites, you do not have to complete your profile after registering.

Additionally, because of the uncomplicated design and layout, love and friends is perfect for anyone new to online dating. Users are not overburdened with options and can easily grasp key features such as the search functionality.

However, despite being easy to use, the search function has its own cons. You're regularly made to go through the same profiles in order to find new people you want to match with.

On the plus side, the profile layout and the compatibility feature are really awesome to use. Profile information, no matter how long, is very easy to digest. The compatibility traits provide the good and the bad, so you can make a better decision to find the right person for you.

This is somewhat unique among similar dating sites because others focus only on good compatibility traits.

Unfortunately, the entire love and friends experience is affected by a critical issue which is their lack of an active user base. On love and friends, you will frequently come across profiles where the member has not signed in for months, possibly even years.

On the plus side, it appears that love and friends are attempting to resolve this issue. For example, they are providing female customers with full membership.

This is demonstrated by the fact that every female profile we came across, including those who hadn't been on for months or years, was a full member.

On the whole, love and friends is actually still a nice niche site, it has its problems but a small spike in user base would definitely help them bounce back. Especially since their core focus has remained the same from day one, which is to provide matchmaking for the thinking individuals.

With so many dating sites aimed at a mainstream audience, overwhelming for users, seedy and a hub for scammers, love and friends could truly have the potential to be a breath of fresh air.

So if you like to think and you're an educated individual or a professional, love and friends could be the perfect dating site for you.

Tips

• Read the terms and conditions before signing up, especially point 5.
• Don't sign up using Facebook so you avoid giving away sensitive personal information.
• Don't rush through the registration process, take your time.
• Be careful not to disclose too much information on your profile.
• Play the long game, don't expect other members to reply back right away.
• Take your time when writing messages, you won’t have much competition.
• To save time from “searching”, click “yes” or “maybe” on the profiles that get your attention and later on go through your matches in more detail.
• Look at the key differences for some of your matches, this could make or break a potential relationship.