Kinky Dating | Bondagepal.com Review

Bondagepal.com is an alternative to other kink dating sites out there, but can you find kinksters who share your fetishes and interests? In line with our vision to be the most trusted BDSM and Fetish community, we asked Victoria Blisse (The Queen of Smut) to look into Bondage Pal for us.
 

Bondagepal.com Overview | Pal or Pest?

Bondage Pal is a free to join fetish lifestyle and BDSM website. It boasts about being fetish friendly, alternative and anonymous, but how many of these claims are true and what can you actually do on the site for free? We investigate!
 

Bondage Pal Visual Appeal | Bright lights

If you've visited any adult or fetish dating sites, you'll know that the colour choice tends to run to black and another colour, often red, sometimes purple or grey.  It seems that dark and brooding is the colour scheme of choice for the discerning kinkster. However, Bondage Pal breaks from the mould and is bright white with pale grey highlights. It's visually refreshing and feels more like a vanilla dating site.

There are only a few options to click on, making bondagepal.com clean and slick looking and easy on the eye.


Bondage Pal - easy on the eye?
 

Bondage Pal Navigation and User Experience | Limited

Sign up at bondagepal.com is quick and easy, with a broad array of gender choices and many sexuality options too. You add your age and move on to adding a first name. It's the only thing you're identified by, and you're encouraged to pick one that isn't your real name. It claims this gets the best response rates and is also a way to stop users from taking offensive names. However, you have to pick a name from a list. There's no way to add your own. I don't like this at all; I would prefer to use something I have a connection to rather than pick a random name from a list.

Next, you add your interests, but the mixture is bizarre.  BDSM isn't listed for example, but there is bondage, rubber and latex, yiffing, feet, affairs, casual and serious relationships. Again, there's no way to add your own options, but at least there is a variety to choose from.

There is a strange questionnaire you have to answer before accessing bondagepal.com which asks if you've ever found porn in a forest or outdoor area. What an odd question! Once you've done this, you're free to fill in your profile and add a photo. Every time you log in to the site, you're asked a survey type question. You can choose to skip it if you want.

Photos aren't easy to upload. You have to use the cropping tool before you can save your photo, and it takes a while to work out how to use it. You can add up to nine photos to your profile.

When you're setting up you'll be asked if you want to compose a flirt message, this is something that is sent to people who the site matches you with. When I first signed up I didn't use this, and I got about a dozen messages over a few days. I was prompted to write a flirt message on logging in, so I composed one, to have the full experience. I got about 30 messages in little over a day.  

However, many of message I got were from people miles away from my location, and several were subs where I was listed as looking for a Dom. So goodness knows how bondagepal.com decides who to send your flirt messages. It could work if you're interested in reaching a lot of people with one straightforward message, though. Personally, I found it useless and also I was unable to deactivate it when I realised it wasn't working for me.

Bondage Pal Community Feel | Lacking

Bondage Pal doesn't have a chat facility or forums, so there's no sense of community at all, it's all about personal connections.  There are many more men than women on the site, 15 times as many in fact. I know this because each time I log in, I get a pop up asking me to invite other women to the site because there are too many men – 15 to every 1 woman, which is something worth considering when you sign up!
 

Is Bondage Pal free to use?

You can sign up to Bondagepal.com for free, but interaction is somewhat limited. Some messages you receive are blurred out, for example.  I assume this is because they're from one of the more popular members. I suspect these may end up being professional dominatrices, but I don't know as I haven't upgraded to VIP to find out.

VIP benefits include:

• International messages
• VIP badges
• No adverts
• No sending limit to popular members
• Help / FAQ

VIP costs £20.95 a month or less if you sign up for multiple months at once.
 

Bondage Pal Help / FAQ | Only if you pay

In the list of VIP benefits is access to Help and FAQS. I have no idea why you can't get this on your free membership, and it certainly makes the site harder to use. There is some information under the 'settings' tab which you find at the bottom right of each page, which is quite useful. It explains how you can block a member and also how that block only lasts for 90 days - something to keep in mind. I find that quite disturbing as if someone is harassing me I want to be able to permanently block that user, not have the possibility of them being able to send me messages again in as little as three months.
 

Bondage Pal Review | Final thoughts

Is bondagepal.com worth checking out? It all depends on what you're looking for. It is visually appealing, has a definite dating focus and has the ability to send a message to multiple users all at once. However, there is no community feel, men outnumber women 15 to 1, and you don't get access to a FAQ unless you upgrade to VIP.

I found my experience to be frustrating; there are so many hoops to jump through. I did get several respectful messages from people though and very few creepy messages, which makes a refreshing change I have to say.

All in all, bondagepal.com is worth giving a go if you're not fussed about the imbalance in the male/female ratio and are willing to put a little work into understanding how bondagepal.com works!

This article was originally published on 6th October 2014 and was updated on 18th March 2020.

Have you tried Bondagepal.com? Do you agree with our review? Tell us in the comments below. Spanks for reading!

Cover image released from Shutterstock.com