Cupid

Registration Process

Creating a free account on Cupid.com simply involves providing your gender and the gender you’re interested in (i.e. “man interested in women”), email address, zip code, and password. Once you’ve confirmed your email address, you can upload photos, write a 140 character message/bio, specify your age, change your username, and begin browsing potential matches.

Profile Set-up

With a free account, Cupid.com also allows users to provide certain basic details about themselves, such as their eye color, body type, whether they drink, what their income is, etc.

Notification Settings

Cupid.com gives users a range of options for receiving notifications. Users can opt to receive notifications for new likes, new matches, new messages, new profile views, new photo requests, additional info requests, responses to requests for more info, responses to requests for photos, new photo messages, and new member messages. Along with on-site notifications, users can also choose to receive email, SMS, and/or push notifications for member matches, special offers from partner sites, personal alerts, site offers, admin alerts, and any other on-site notifications.

Messaging

Cupid.com uses a traditional chat-based messaging format. Users who upgrade to premium plans can also send pictures via chat.

Navigation

Navigating Cupid.com is a fairly straightforward process. The home page displays the main profile photos of matches in your area, along with their names and ages. You can “like” or initiate chats with matches by hovering over their photos and choosing either option. If you click on a profile picture, you can see more info, and request that a user add information they haven’t opted to include, such as eye color, income, etc. Premium users can also see more/expanded photos.

Filters

Cupid.com allows users to filter or sort their matches based on various standard factors. These include age, sexual orientation, ethnicity, location, body type, piercings, tattoos, and eye color. Users can also choose to see all matches, matches who are currently online, or new users. They can sort matches by popularity, last activity, distance, or age.

Cupid.com offers a few unique features, such as:

Flirtcasts

Flirtcasts allow users to reach out to several potential matches at once with “flirty messages” they broadcast to multiple users.

Like Gallery

The Like Gallery feature mimics the popular Tinder format by letting you quickly indicate whether you’re interested in individual users. It also lets you see which users have “liked” your profile, and which users you’ve matched with (in that both of you have indicated interest in each other via mutual “likes”).

My Favorites

As with the above feature, My Favorites helps you organize your list of potentially interesting users by letting you keep all your “Favorite” profiles on one single dashboard.

Photo Deletion

This may qualify as a special feature for users who’ve had the unpleasant experience of seeing distasteful or offensive photos on other dating sites. When you add photos to your profile on Cupid.com, a disclaimer lets you know that the platform’s owners will remove any photos that are found to breach certain standards. This theoretically limits your chances of coming across photos you don’t wish to see. Additionally, because only users with premium accounts can send photos in messages, you may not have to worry as much about receiving unwanted photos from other users during chats.

Safe Mode

Cupid.com offers three Safe Mode options. If you turn Safe Mode off entirely, all members of the platform can contact you. If you turn on Basic Safe Mode, you can view and contact all members, except those whose accounts have been deemed suspicious. With the Full Safe Mode option, only Verified Members can contact you.

Account Promotion

Cupid.com offers a “Promote my account” feature designed to help users find matches even when they aren’t actively using the platform. It does so by sending promotional messages about new matches and adding them to your Favorites list.

However, it’s worth noting that this feature appears to be turned on by default. Thus, some users may find they receive spammy or excessive messages without knowing why.

Along with the safety features mentioned above, Cupid.com offers an overview of their privacy policy, safety filters, and a list of recommended safe dating tips.