Badoo Dating Site Review

Sometimes, it’s possible for an online dating website to be mixed in with social networking in terms of its’ purpose and function. A mix of Facebook and OKCupid if they got together and had a virtual baby, the result is the popular social dating website known as Badoo.

Badoo is over a decade old and was first created in 2006. Since then, Badoo has shown a continual amount of exponential growth as it expands both its’ membership and its’ overall popularity. It has grown very quickly partly due to the tight-knit nature of the communities that it is creating all over the world.

Compared to most online dating websites, it is easier to interact and communicate within large groups of singles in different countries without too much trouble.

It’s a hybrid of your typical online dating website and a social networking website giving it an edge over other similar websites in this corner of the Internet. It’s very easy and simple to join Badoo and only takes a few minutes to start communicating with various people who use this website.

It’s also quite practical to meet new folks in real life after engaging with them through the various communication features that Badoo has to offer its’ users.

Badoo.com is quite the international website with members being located in over 180 countries. In total, this website is available for use in 25 languages including popular ones such as English, French, Spanish, Italian, Arabic, etc.

In addition to having its services used in the United States, United Kingdom, and Canada, Badoo is used in every continent including Africa and South America.

Badoo can contain some adult content and since its’ a dating website, you have to be of eighteen years or older in order to sign-up as a new user.

Perhaps the largest dating and friendship related website in the world, Badoo boasts of having over one hundred million members who have signed-up since the website first began in 2006.

When you think about it, that’s over ten million members added to the website each year since it got its’ start over a decade ago.

The main goal of the website remains making sure that the Badoo users are able to meet new people without any complications and that they’ll be able to find romance or friendship depending upon their wants and needs.

Lastly, you won’t have to deal with any spam, fake profiles, or fraudulent activity on Badoo, which makes it a much more enjoyable experience for its’ millions of users.

It’s clear from how the website was created, designed, and laid out that its’ founders, software engineers and developers really cared a lot about the final result, which has been extremely successful up until this point.

Badoo Review

Main Features

• Basic Profile

When you begin your free or paid membership with Badoo, it’s important to create a basic profile for yourself, which is required by the website.

During the sign-up process, you will be asked to give personal information about yourself in order to register for a profile. This information will include your e-mail address, your name, your date of birth, your gender, and the gender which you’re seeking to find love or friendship, and your current location.

If you don’t want to divulge that amount of information, you can choose instead to connect your Facebook account to your Badoo account, which will allow you to register using the basic information that can be taken from your Facebook profile.

When you confirm your e-mail address, Badoo will be able to show you a list of potential contacts and friends based on who is in your e-mail contact list.

You can also search for other people on Badoo based on who is in your social networks on Twitter and Facebook or you can meet new people on the website by beginning to fill out your profile.

• Profile Photos 

After registering the profile, you can begin to add profile pictures of yourself, which is required by Badoo. These pictures should only be of yourself and no one else.

There should be no pictures of your dog, your favorite places to visit, or your family members. You should be in every profile picture that’s displayed on the Badoo website.

You can choose to upload personal pictures from your computer files, send them to Badoo from your personal e-mail address, or take some of the pictures from your connected Facebook account if that is the case.

• Personal Information

When you begin to fill out your profile information, you’ll have to complete the ‘About Me’ section first where you can write about your personality traits and characteristics as well as your positive and negative habits.

You can also dive more into your background by discussing your current relationship status, your sexuality preferences (whether you are straight or gay), what is your appearance like (height, weight, body type, eye color, hair color), if you have any children, how often do you drink or smoke, and your level of education. You can also add your current occupation, and how many foreign languages do you speak. If you do not feel comfortable sharing this information with others, it’s not mandatory.

Lastly, you may be able to write freely about your interests in terms of your hobbies and what you like to do in your free time, whether you like to play football, go out dancing, or play an instrument.

In order to make your profile more attractive and alluring to potential visitors and future matches, you can choose from a number of creative backgrounds and images to put on your profile to make it that much more creative.

• Search Function 

Every member of Badoo regardless if they are free or paid users are able to gain access to using the ‘search’ function in order to find other members who they may be interested in and would like to get to know better.

• Communication Options

Also, if you would like to break the ice and contact different members, every user gets 10 contacts per day on the website that they can send private messages in order to start the conversation.

It’s a limited amount of messages especially when you’re a free user but it’s a better than nothing and you’re allowed to contact those matches whom you’re really curious about.

Between the public profile, the personal pictures, the background images, the ‘search’ function, and the ability to message a few members per day, there are a lot of advantages to being a free user of Badoo.com.

Additional Features

Unfortunately, free members who use Badoo will not get access to every feature that is available on this dating website.

In order to do so, it’s important to upgrade to a paid membership in order to get access to both main and additional features.

If you decide to take the leap and spend some money on a membership, you’ll be able to access all parts of the website instead of some parts being off-limit to you based on your previous ‘free’ membership status.

• Spotlight

All paid members will additionally get access to the ‘Spotlight’ feature, which guarantees that your public profile will appear towards the top of the search results when other members use the ‘search’ function.

This especially applies to the certain area or region in which you are located. Your name will be displayed at the top of the search results for those other single members who are close to you in terms of location and distance.

You’ll be able to have an advantage over those free users due to the fact that you’ll be at the top of the search results for not just your immediate town but for the entire region.

• Credits System

When you want to access paid features but you don’t want to upgrade your membership, another option is to purchase a number of Credits in order to afford some of these more exclusive features.

Each feature does cost a certain amount of credits and you’ll have to check Badoo.com for more information about the credit amount needed to purchase these features.

When you buy these credits, you’ll be able to utilize the ‘Spotlight’ feature, become displayed more prominently in the ‘search’ results, send out more messages per day to different users, and get shown as well in the ‘Encounters’ window of the Badoo website.

• Rise Up

‘Rise Up’ is the feature that you will want to purchase when it comes to being able to go to the top of your search results in your current area.

• Super Powers

‘Super Powers’ is another special feature that allows any user to gain more information about other users so they can better decide if it would be worth it to contact that specific member.

All of these features can be purchased individually using the credits system.

When it comes to the costs of the credits, prices will vary depending on how many credits you would like to buy. For example, 100 credits will cost only $2, five 550 credits will cost $10, 1250 will cost $20, and 2750 credits will cost $40.

Luckily, if you don’t have a lot of cash on you, you can decide to pay by credit cards or through PayPal when it comes to purchasing credits.

Costs of Membership

While Badoo is first and foremost a free and public dating website with a lot of basic features that are available to every user, it makes up the majority of its’ revenue from its’ paid membership subscription. There are about four different membership options depending on how short or how long you would like your subscription to be.

• One Month Membership

The first and shortest subscription option is one-month total for only $10 which is cheapest commitment you could make with Badoo but is good to sign-up for if you’re just checking the website out.

• Three Month Membership

The second and more expensive option is a longer commitment at around $8 per month for a total of $25 for three-months total, which is also cheaper than the first option. You’ll save almost 20% when you enroll in this subscription plan.

• Six Months Membership

The third option is even less expensive at about $6 per month for a total of about $35, which leads to savings of about 40% compared to the first paid option.

• Twelve Months Membership

The last option is the cheapest in terms of per monthly payment but is also the longest commitment in terms of length. For a 12-month subscription, you’ll have to pay $5 per month for a total of $60. This plan will save you about 50% per month compared to the first paid subscription option.

It’s important to remember that you must manually change your ‘account settings’ in your Badoo account when it comes to automatically renewing your membership commitment. If you do not desire to continue your membership, you’ll have to set your ‘automatic renewal’ option to ‘off’ in order to enact this change.

Between the ability to purchase credits and the option to enroll in a paid membership option, Badoo gives you multiple options to access all of the features that the website has to offer.

Mobile Option

In addition to accessing your Badoo account through your laptop, Badoo also has a desktop application and a mobile application so you’ll be able to access your account in a number of ways to keep in touch with your matches and your messages.

The mobile application for Badoo is both available for the iOS and Android platforms. As mentioned before, it’s quite simple and easy to connect your Badoo account with your Facebook account as well. Badoo is also compatible with Windows and Macintosh systems so that you won’t have to worry about which operating platform you use when it comes to Badoo.

In addition to the ‘chat’ function and being able to send messages back and forth, you can also receive instant notifications on your computer if you enable this option in your account settings.

You can share up to one hundred unique pictures with other users and set the privacy settings to either public or private.

Badoo also has a ‘help’ or ‘customer service’ section in case you have a question, a query, or a problem that needs to be addressed.

If you’re not satisfied with your experience of Badoo, you’re allowed to deactivate your profile and cancel your subscription at any time. If a user has sent you an inappropriate message or is continually harassing you, you have a right on the website to both report these messages and the profiles of the people who are bothering you.

Positives and Negatives

Positives:

• Numerous Free Features

Compared to many other dating websites, Badoo offers a large number of features that you can access for free without needing a paid membership. Examples of these features include being able to create a full profile with pictures, sending up to ten messages to other users per day, and utilizing the ‘search’ function in order to find certain members.

• Less Spam

Also, when you sign-up to use the website, there’s very little spam or fraudulent activity that you’ll have to deal with compared to other online dating websites on the market.

• Simple to Use

If you share your current location, it’s easy to message, connect, and share messages with other single men or single women in your immediate area.

Negatives:

Badoo has only a few negative aspects to it and is considered to be one of the best online dating websites in the world.

• Pricey

If there were a negative thing to mention about it, Badoo is not the cheapest website to join and you do have to buy credits in order to access some advanced features. Still though, if you’re looking for a unique dating application mixed with social networking features, you may want to give Badoo a try today.

Conclusion

Badoo is truly one of the few global dating and social networking websites on the Internet. On the main page of the website, there is a statement on the main purpose and goal of Badoo which states that is “a community of interesting people locally and from all over the world, ready to share their experiences, interests, and friendship.”

The website itself has a streamlined layout and a nice design which makes it easy to navigate and pleasant to check out. Badoo also doesn’t have a lot of advertisements or distractions, which makes it easy for the average user to focus on viewing profiles, sending messages, and taking a look at their matches.

If you are interested in meeting people not just from your own country but also from different nations all over the world, it might be worth it to give Badoo a try.

You may also like our Hi5 review.

Have you ever signed up for Badoo? Did you have a positive experience with this popular dating site? Help other readers out by commenting below.