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Features
Getting Started
Starting off with ChristianCafe.com is extremely user-friendly, and immediately after registration, you’re free to begin communicating with fellow Christians. While you’re registering with ChristianCafe.com, you’ll be asked to fill out a series of questions, which gives you an opportunity to express who you are and what you’re looking for. The questions will ask about your life goals, education, current job, hobbies and passions, career ambitions and what you’re hoping to gain from the ChristianCafe.com experience. After your registration is complete, a personalized profile is created; your profile will show your picture, physical descriptions, location, personality details and short answers. By paying attention to the finer details, ChristianCafe.com is better equipped to match you with prospective mates.
Matching System
Simplicity and convenience are the words describing ChristianCafe.com’s matchmaking system the best. When searching for dates, you have two options in your hands. You can either initiate a manual search in the old-fashioned way – setting different profile parameters to refine the results – or you can browse the list of singles currently online. You can further sort the results by gender or location. We found it appealing that ChristianCafe.com encourages relationship building between the Christian community, even if no romance is involved. The site is a place where people can meet others with the same beliefs as them, and develop friendships. The “Birthday” tab is especially a good example of this: with this feature you see all the members who celebrate their birthday on that given day. Sending a heartfelt message to someone makes a good impression and serves as an ice breaker.
Communication
Despite the good premise of the matchmaking engine, the communication is the part where ChristianCafe.com’s winning streak falls a bit short. You have your standard tools under you belt, like winking, marking the profile as favorite and most importantly sending an email message. But this is all you can do, really. Live chatting is maybe the most painful missing feature, but the addition of creative postcards or pre-written messages would have been welcomed as well. Still, considering that during the 10-day trial period you are free to get in touch with anyone you like, this is still an attractive choice. As for non-personal communication, you can participate in forum threads and share your opinions, or post unique prayers on the site, attracting the spirit of others.
Mobile
After testing ChristianCafe.com’s mobile support, we can definitely say that it’s one of their strongest points. Very few dating sites recognize the true potential of smartphone usage for their users. People nowadays spend more time with their mobile than sitting in front of a computer. This leads to the natural conclusion that porting the smaller screens would bring a huge boost on user activity. ChristianCafe.com deserves credit for not stopping at a mere mobile-friendly website, and taking the extra mile to actually develop a separate application for iOS and Android devices respectively. Said apps are redesigned in a way to fit the touch-based navigation. The menu items are placed on bigger buttons at the top of the screen, and there is a larger emphasis on profile pictures as well. Sliding between profiles is nice and easy, not to mention writing messages is also smooth on mobile.
Pricing
ChristianCafe.com differs quite a lot from other dating sites in terms of pricing. First of all, you won’t get a free to use account. Instead they provide a 10-day trial account upon registration. The major difference is that your profile won’t remain active indefinitely, but on the other hand you are allowed to experience the service at its full, without any limitations or restrictions.
After the initial trial period has ended you can still reactivate your account by becoming a full member. The subscription fee starts with the monthly subscription, charging you for $34.97 each month. This is quite a hefty price for a dating service, but prolonging your stay provides a large discount. Opting for a 3-month membership only costs $16.65 per month ($49.95 in total), while choosing the semi-annual plan is only $13.32 per month ($79.95 in total). Still, the most cost-effective solution is to commit for a full year, as it reduces the price to only $9.16 per month. ChristianCafe.com often holds limited time only sales to celebrate the start of a new season, holidays and various other occasions. These sales tend to be worthwhile with additional discounts up to $40 off standard rates.
Customer Service
We found ChristianCafe.com a bit lacking on the front of customer support. The site itself is informative enough about the features, and they sport a knowledgebase as well, but otherwise the human contact is fairly limited. The service seems to shy behind the otherwise comprehensive FAQ section, as they encourage users to look for answers there before contacting customer support. In case you still insist to ask for help in the traditional way, you can either shoot them an email or write them an actual letter, since they display their company address. ChristianCafe.com also has a presence on social media sites, but besides their blog articles you only find generic motivational posts.
Bottom Line
Placing ChristianCafe.com among the competition was especially hard, as they tend to follow a different path from the rest of the dating sites. While others like to lure in new members with the promise of a free (but very restricted account), ChristianCafe.com offers full freedom for 10 days via its trial plan. The site also takes great pride in catering to the Christian community, with hidden little extras like the “Post a Prayer” feature and the birthday tab. The matchmaking is solid, and the ability to display online members by different criteria is very helpful. ChristianCafe.com isn’t just about matching singles though, as they emphasize the possibility to develop friendships or just discuss ideas on the forum. Mobile support is an undoubtedly strong point for the service, and even though the starting prices are quite high, you can lower your monthly membership fees to an acceptable level by opting longer.
Positives
- Convenient matchmaking
- Christian features
- Good for finding friends
- 10-day unrestricted trial
Negatives
- Lack of matchmaking extras
- No live chat
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not saying says
I continue to use the oldcafe. I like it. It allows me to easily report a scammer which are quickly removed and the staff thanks me, I like that.
Inis Adams ( mommakat164 ) says
Christian Cafe is the best Money wise and people wise,I have ever been on and I have been on a lot.
The staff are here to help and the friends you make are excellent,
I have been on many Christian’s sites, but Chriatian Cafe is the best one,the Staff is excellent,and the way the pages are set up is really nice, you have no trouble finding the pages you want, and they have had more marriages from this site, then the Christians sites i have been on Christian has many people wanting to find their Soul Mate, And most of them do,I have had many friends to meet on this site and have got married, I can say this is the site for me,
Stuart says
I’ve tried a number of meeting type sites from obscure specialised ones (clearly with fake members to lure you in) to the “big” one with about 400 grilling questions in the same vein of a Subway order. I particularly wanted not just a religious site, but being even more focused, a Christian site to reflect my faith and lifestyle.
Here’s my reasoning: the days of meeting a possible future spouse by going to a church dance – or worse, singing around the piano, went decades ago with my parents and WW2.
I joined Christian Café a few years back with the intention of meeting someone special after my wife died. And meet a few sincerely nice ladies, I certainly have. Being prepared to wait in the right place is the “safe zone” I’ve been looking for: since the emphasis is on quality, sincere members. Christian Café has a Quickmatch function which turns up a surprising selection of members based on similarities from my profile. The difference between the “well known” site and Christian Cafe is that once I want to contact another member, it happens directly with them on the site, and not through a clumsy veil system – even at the free trial stage.
Does it work? Not yet for me, but there’s the “God factor” in all of this, so waiting is part of my journey that I’m very much ok with. However, Christian Café DOES work. My son met a truly lovely lady online at the Café and emigrated to Canada from Australia. Subsequently they married and I now have my first grandchild.
Other features that stand out from every other site I know of are a Prayer section, a helpful Dating info section and a Forum section for those who want to comment and discuss issues that are on their mind. While I don’t use it, it seems other Members like it and are active with it.
Lastly, the biggest hassle with any meeting site is the possible deceit factor from the Members. It comes in the form of out-dated or stolen photos, vague information or dubious identity profiles. On my profile at Christian Café is a button to report the offender if there is the need to. Actually, I’ve used it only a few times. Real Admin folk were very prompt to contact me to sort it out or as in one instance; they declined the other parties’ membership v/quickly. For me, that’s a big plus that they’re looking out for the Members.
Membership price is good; they sometimes have specials, so I’ve taken advantage of that when it happened. Hope this helps anyone reading it.
Russell says
I am a member of several Christian single sites but Christian café is my favorite. They consistently have lots of new members and I like the quality of the members at Christian café. They have an excellent set of search tools that are easy to use so I can quickly limit the number of profiles I visit to ones I would be most likely to find compatible.
Donald R says
To me this site or more than a dating site. It is a site for growth, encouragement, fellowship, and fun too. While I have not had the same level of dating success as my brother who met his wife in less than 6 months on the site. I believe my interactions with others on the site have matured me and given me a better idea of what a godly woman is and who I should be as a man of God too and has helped me better understand and appreciate my sisters in Christ.
The only downside is they did away with chat and this was worth at least 1.5 stars in the features, in my opinion, if they were to bring the chat back I would have even more great things to say.
Art Schaafsma says
A Christian dating website! I am new to it all, and I find this very encouraging!
simon fenn says
I am a journalist and author and I’ve offered my own name (please google to verify) as I want readers to know that this is a genuine review based on a real, albeit horrendous, experience with Christiancafe. One, btw, that is ongoing as I am still trying to get my profile removed from their site. First of all, it is not Christian owned, which can be checked by visiting other reviews such as Singleroots that attempted to verify ownership. Not that you need such verification. Any fair minded person giving just a precursory look at Christiancafe’s operational practices would certainly come to the conclusion that it’s not run on anything remotely close to Christian values. Christiancafe behaves more like an online drug dealer; preying on the most basic vulnerabilities of susceptible Christian believers. For, just like a drug dealer, the first ‘taste’ is free. This is how Christiancafe lures people in, offering a free initial trial of three or seven days etc. You’ll notice that offer everywhere in their promotions. Everything appears rosy at Christiancafe for those first few days – although, you are unaware, (even for paid members) that any emails you send cannot be read by other members unless they themselves are on a free trial or they are paid members. Still, that in itself, being very questionable is not even close to the worst of Christiancafe’s deceptive practices. The real manipulation occurs after your free trial/taste ends. Upon logging into your account and finding the message ‘your time has expired’ on every option of the site, including the ability to search, see who has emailed you or even, if you can believe it edit your OWN profile. Unless you pay you can no longer even hide your profile from view, nor can you change any of the content of own your profile, nor update or remove your own photos. Also, and this is the most frustrating part of it for me, you cannot remove your own profile! There is a visibility button by which you are told you can hide your profile – only problem is it does not work! There is also a function by which (they claim) you can delete your profile overnight but it either does not work or it only works temporarily. So, as soon as you have drifted away and forgotten about it, your profile miraculously re-appears on their site. Deactivated profiles as well as profiles that have long expired are how they entice new members. These profiles, although inactive, also have the mysterious ability to send emails to new members who have recently finished their free trials. Don’t be fooled by these emails. They are just another disgusting and manipulative gesture by the Christiancafe management to get the lonely and unsuspecting to produce a credit card. It is a sad reality of our time and the frail security of online life that sites like Christiancafe can exist but it is my hope in writing this that other believers will practice more discernment than I did, and not be taken in by wolves parading as lambs..