The prices are like paying a salty cover charge for an empty club

The „Wild Card“ feature is EliteSingles‘ way of trying to get you to expand your comfort zone a bit (or a way to make up for the fact that their questionnaire probably isn’t rendering accurate portrayals of everyone, anyway). It’s basically a pool of candidates that fall slightly outside of your pre-chosen match filters, but still might be a good match for you in the eyes of EliteSingles. Adhering too strictly to an algorithm can put the blinders on (like when Bumble made it possible to filter by zodiac signs, but only your sun sign) and cause you to miss out on someone great just because they marked that they get overwhelmed more easily than you do. If you’re a compromiser or don’t feel a certain type of way about some of your responses (like whether your future house is in a suburb or rural area), this might be a good tab to check.

Filters like age and distance are less negotiable. But based on what we’ve gathered from reviews, it’s all too common for EliteSingles to plop people into your feed who don’t match your baseline criteria at all. A Wild Card section is kind of laughable, considering it sounds like EliteSingles won’t listen to your preferences, anyway.

No one expects a good dating site to be free. A service that could potentially speed up the miserable quest for a soulmate – using a unique algorithm that took years to create and perfect – should totally come at a price.

But there’s nothing modern or groundbreaking enough about EliteSingles to make paying around $240 a year worthwhile, and slapping „elite“ in the title doesn’t automatically make it worth more than its competitors. The onslaught of bad reviews that come with a simple Google search don’t exactly help. There is a free version, but you’ll have to pay if you want to message anyone, view non-blurry member photos, or use read receipts.

These prices are actually a drastic improvement from the $40 to $60 monthly membership fee that EliteSingles was charging a few years ago.

The only dating site with prices even close to this high is eharmony. When you’re responsible for 4% of marriages in the U.S., you can be expensive. But EliteSingles says that it produces over 1,000 matches per month, which is vague but offers hope nevertheless.

Room for improvement: Down the elitism, up the authenticity

The footing of EliteSingles isn’t inherently bad. Wanting your life partner to be educated, share your career goals, and have the skills to provide for you or a family doesn’t make you a bad person. Money and work ethic are two huge real-world things that can drive a wedge between a couple.

Match’s user base dwarves that of EliteSingles and still isn’t this expensive

The name „EliteSingles“ is questionable on its own. There are a lot less-divisive ways to describe driven or career-oriented people than „elite.“ EliteSingles could do itself a huge favor by rerouting its calling to people who work hard and are passionate about their jobs, or even people who want a partner in the same field as them. If you’re a teacher, it makes total sense to be interested in starting something with someone who also understands that teacher life.

EliteSingles could do itself a huge favor by rerouting its calling to people who work hard and are passionate about their jobs.

But since the elite experience is what users think they’re paying for, that’s exactly what the users should get: A pool of eligible singles who have been verified to have a similar level of responsibility at work and similar pay scale. That SSL encryption and fraud detection technology mers, but it isn’t stopping people from being dishonest on their profiles. Who knows how many people are stretching their education or salary to seem more „elite?“ Looking at reviews posted by users themselves, lying about the level of degree is way more common than Elite Singles probably likes to admit.