Bondage Dating claims to be the number one bondage dating community on the net but can you find kinksters to share your love of being tied up there? Let's find out.
From the colours chosen (red, black and grey) to the magazine layout, Bondagedating.com looks like so many other kinky and bondage dating sites. When you first arrive on the site, you see lots of adverts craftily hidden as aspects of the site. Profiles, messages etc. with the only giveaway being a tiny button that says 'ad' on it. Be careful where you click!
If you have a free Bondagedating.com membership, you'll also see lots of adverts for upgrading to premium. You will get pop-ups every time you click on a feature you can't use as a free member - this can get irritating.
Sign up to Bondagedating.com is quick and easy, though definitely binary. You can only sign up as male, female or a couple. It's a quick and easy process, and once you've done it, you're prompted to upload a photo and fill in your profile. There are lots of questions to fill in, but there are no kink specific questions at all. They're all generic dating site questions.
From here on in, your experience of Bondagedating.com will depend on if you signed up as a man or a woman. When I signed up as myself, I was given a premium account for free so I could view profiles, send messages, access chat and even live chat with customer services.
Being the curious type, I signed up again but as a man. This time I got a free account where the only ability is to see snippets of profiles and who is chatting but contacting anyone you need to pay to upgrade. So, if you're a man, the navigation is easy but frustrating as you can't actually communicate effectively with anyone and are constantly bombarded with pop-ups and ads for upgrading to a premium account. As a woman, you can navigate everything smoothly and use all the features that a premium account at Bondagedating.com gets.
There really isn't a kinky community feel at Bondagedating.com - there are no forums or communal chat rooms, it's very much about bondage dating and personal connections. So if that's what you're looking for, then it's great.
There are far more male than female users. When I performed a search, there were over 500 male Doms in my 100-mile radius compared to 199 female subs and 38 female Dommes. I suspect this is why when I signed up, I got given a premium membership for free.
Are all the profiles genuine? Well, I have my doubts. For one thing, pictures don't always match up with ages. For example, I saw one which was clearly a guy in his 60's professing to be 29 and one of a guy clearly no older than 30 saying their age was 59. That really doesn't make sense, so maybe they're made up profiles? You will have to judge for yourself.
Welcome to bondagedating.com. Bot or not?
I tried to find out why I was given a free premium membership to Bondagedating.com by using the customer service live chat feature (which you only get as a premium member) I was asked for pieces of information I didn't give when I signed up. So I didn't give them (never give personal details out online when you don't need to), but eventually, I was informed I'd been picked at random to receive a premium upgrade.
I am sceptical, to say the least, especially as I wasn't convinced I was chatting to a real person anyway, the answers seemed to be coming from a Bot. So, officially I can't say that all women that sign up to Bondagedating.com get a free premium upgrade. I can only say that I did and when I signed up as a man that didn't happen. Make of that what you will.
Free membership doesn't give you much opportunity to contact other members. All you get are 30 free flirt messages. These are pre-written statements such as 'Hey, I like your profile.', 'Wink, Wink.' and 'If I could rearrange the alphabet, I'd put U and I together.' They are quite cheesy and not terribly useful. Clearly, this is to make you think about upgrading to a premium account for these features:
Prices vary. When I first signed up as a guy, I was offered a special offer that only lasted 5 minutes to get a year's premium account for £59.95. There are various offers, anytime you try to send a message, you get emails offering new ones, so there's no set price. You can get membership as cheaply as £1 for a week, but you need to click around and see what you're offered. There's no set price list.
The Bondage Dating help page is a tiny link at the very bottom of the page when you go through there is a comprehensive list of questions about using the site, buying membership etc. It is pretty useful.
I have no idea where the claim that Bondagedating.com is the number one bondage dating site has come from. I saw very few people into bondage, had very little interaction with other members, and what I did have was with guys when I was logged in as a woman. I had no messages from members when logged in as a man.
Bondagedating.com is almost unusable without a premium upgrade, so it's up to you to decide if it's worth paying. I'm unconvinced. There's no sense of community, and I had doubts about the genuine nature of all profiles. Personally, I'm not attached to Bondagedating.com - check it out and let us know what you think!
Victoria Blisse was an erotic author and sex-positive Reverend. She helped shape fetish.com and FET from the very beginning and we're eternally grateful for her passion and creativity. Sadly, she passed away in January 2024. We hope that whenever her articles are read, she'll be honored.
Have you tried Bondagedating.com? Do you agree with our review? Tell us in the comments below. Spanks for reading!
Cover image released from Shutterstock.com
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