A woman from the Philippines
Here is my quick list of the top five dating sites and apps in the Philippines. I’ll go into more detail in my reviews later in this article.
While I’ve spent most of my time in Manila (the capital of the Philippines), I’ve also traveled extensively around the country. In contrast to a lot of countries where dating online or via your smartphone will only yield results in the big cities, this is not the case in the Philippines.
Whether you stay in Manila or venture out to a smaller town such as Angeles City, you will find large numbers of members on dating sites (such as the ones I will cover below) and dating apps (such as Tinder and Badoo). Dating via technology is very popular and has been since my very first trip to the Philippines way back in 2008.
Unlike in Thailand where there are just a handful of reputable dating sites from which to choose, the Philippines has more high quality options than you can count. A good online dating site has a large membership base and an interface that doesn’t require a rocket scientist to figure out.
Perhaps due to a history of having a large U.S. naval presence in the country, the people of the Philippines are actually quite open to dating foreigners.
If you are an English native speaker, people will be quite friendly towards you and definitely curious to find out more about your background. Fortunately, such a conversation should not be all that difficult as a large percentage of the population speaks fluent English as a second language. Many Filipinos even have family living abroad.
In my humble opinion, Filipino women are some of the most beautiful in Asia. Whether your travels take you to Manila, Cebu City, Quezon City, or Angeles City, you will find jaw-dropping attractiveness everywhere. Rest assured, when you sign up for one of these dating sites that I mention below, you will get to see exactly what I am talking about.
Should you decide to sign up for the online dating sites I recommend below, be sure to read member profiles carefully as you might come across a lot of fake profiles. I’ve also been involved in a number of situations where a woman was nice for the first and second dates, then it became apparent that all she wanted was my money (and to waste my time).
Dating online is not so different from dating in the real world. If you date enough, you will likely have your own experiences just like this.
Don’t forget: Dating is a numbers game. You have to kiss a lot of frogs before finding someone who clicks with you on all levels. Just be persistent, keep reaching out to new people, and don’t give up.
In my experience, the response rate on these sites and apps is 0.5% to 1%, so you have to send out a LOT of messages if you want to have success.
Ok, enough for the introduction. Let’s get into the reviews.
Margarent Nales – Former Miss Philippines (source: Wikimedia Commons)
FilipinoCupid.com is my favorite online dating site in the Philippines. If I only had money to spend on one site, this is the site that I would spend it on.
When I did a search for women between the ages of 18 and 35 who live in Manila and have been active on the site within the last month, I regularly found over 1000 profiles.
Filipino Cupid
FilipinoCupid’s 3 million members make it one of the most popular members of the Cupid Media Network. FilipinoCupid has the same clean website design, easy sign-up process and strong communication features as other Cupid Media sites such as BrazilCupid.com.
As its name suggests, FilipinoCupid is a dating site for those specifically looking to date Filipinos. If that’s what you’re looking for, this site has good enough features for me to recommend it. Be wary of spammy profiles messaging you soon after signing up however.
Sign up Process
Signing up is swift and painless, requiring either your Facebook account or your name, gender, password, and email to start. Signing up with your Facebook account definitely limits the risk of your profile not getting approved, but if you are concerned with your privacy, use your email address.
(Note: I signed up using my e-mail account since I don’t like to connect my personal Facebook account to my dating activities).
After this, simply share a few words about yourself and what your ideal partner looks like, and you’re good to go.
At this point, you can either complete the rest of your profile, or jumpstart your search for matches. When you do decide to dive into your profile, be prepared to spend some time filling it out fully. There are many sections to fill out, though some of the questions in the Personality Profile section are repeated from the Profile and Interest tabs.
How to Locate Potential Matches
FilipinoCupid’s match-browsing feature has four browsing options for you to choose from: Photo View, Basic View, Detail View and Profile.
You also have four order options: Newest Members, Photos First, Last Active, and Relevance.
If you’d like to craft a separate search, you can select between many different criteria, including age, location, education, body type, ethnicity, lifestyle choices (smoking, drinking, etc.), marital status, religion, and even their zodiac sign.
How to Communicate with Other Members
Messaging between Standard, free members on FilipinoCupid is limited to the offline equivalent of flirting from across the room. You can wink by “Sending Interest” or blow a kiss by adding them to your “Favorites”.
Some of these members will come to you, by upgrading, or if you’re lucky, by already being a premium member. At the point you want to take control of the situation and actually talk to people however, really your only viable option is to purchase a Gold or Platinum subscription.
Unique Site Features
The most useful feature for me on FilipinoCupid was the audio/video chat. Both of these features proved extremely useful for making sure matches are truly compatible before meeting in person. That these features are natively supported by FilipinoCupid is an extra bonus, as no one has to give out their phone number.
You can also use these features to send audio/video messages to other members. The only downside here is that these features are only available to premium members.
What is Included in Each Membership Level
- Standard – Sign up, fill out profile, upload photos, customize searches, send interest to other profiles, communicate Gold/Platinum members
- Gold – All of the above, plus: Unlimited messaging and communication with other profiles (text, audio, video, Instant Messaging), ad-free browsing, invisible browsing
- Platinum – All of the above, plus: Better search rank for your profile, double the profile space, access to advanced matching algorithms, message translation, VIP profile highlighting, extra search features
Asian Dating
AsianDating.com doesn’t come up often when people talk about online dating sites in the Philippines, but I really like it. It is also run by Cupid Media and has a lot of members in the Philippines. It also has a good following in Thailand, Malaysia, and Indonesia.
AsianDating.com offers some really good features, reserved for premium members only. I will say that soon after signing up I received a deluge of spam-like messages. I did find, however, that there are quite a lot of real people sincerely wanting to connect through the site.
The site had message filters and used those to filter out the spammers and scammers. If you are Asian and single or just want to meet other Asian singles, I highly recommend AsianDating.com.
Signing up
It will only take you about two minutes to sign up for AsianDating, and it costs you nothing. You can either sign up using your Facebook account, or just enter the basic information: your full name, gender, email address, and your password.
Next, you write a little about yourself, say what you’re looking for in a match and you’re in. Technically you haven’t really completed your profile, but by doing this much you’re allowed to browse around.
If you want to keep your profile up the way it is, you will receive messages from the site asking you to enter additional information in order to continue.
Finding Possible Matches
There are two roads you can go down when looking for a match: browsing around or actually searching. When you’re just browsing through possible matches, you can make it quick by viewing photos only, or you can view entire profiles one at a time.
If you choose to search, you can set up specific criteria that you’re looking for, such as age range, location, level of education, ethnicity, body type, their lifestyle (smoking and/or drinking, etc.), religion, marital status and even their astrological sign if you wish. These customized searches can also be saved for future use.
Communicating with Others
If you’re really serious about connecting with others on this site and hopefully meeting people in person, I would recommend that you upgrade your membership to Gold or Platinum. In the meantime, you will only have a few ways to communicate with other members: visiting the profiles of others, “showing interest,” adding profiles to your Favorites, and sending messages, which can only be seen and read if one of you has upgraded to a premium membership.
Once you’ve upgraded to premium, you are allowed to message anyone you please, and they will be allowed to read your message and send a reply. With a premium membership, you also enjoy other ways of communicating, such as IM chat, audio, and video communication.
Unique Features
A very unique feature offered on AsianDating is the translation of your messages. Using this innovative feature, you are able to have your message translated into whatever language you need. All it takes is the click of your mouse.
Language translation obliterates the barrier which would otherwise prevent you from getting to know this person. There are likely to be some mistakes in grammar, which is to be expected with any type of language translating software, even Google’s. However, by using this tool, you can at least introduce yourself to a lot more members. You should know that this feature is only available to Platinum level members.
What is Included in Each Membership Level
- Standard – Sign up, fill out profile, upload photos, customize searches, send interest to other profiles, communicate Gold/Platinum members
- Gold – All of the above, plus: Unlimited messaging and communication with other profiles (text, audio, video, Instant Messaging), ad-free browsing, invisible browsing
- Platinum – All of the above, plus: Rank above other members in searches, doubled profile space, VIP profile highlighting, platinum-exclusive search features, advanced matching algorithms, message translation
3. Cherryblossoms.com (also known as Blossoms.com)
Cherry Blossoms
Cherryblossoms.com (also known as Blossoms.com) is a popular pay site in the Philippines and is ideal for the guy who is really looking to get serious (i.e. find a wife). I know many people who have used this site with quite a bit of success.
Blossoms.com is a veteran dating site, running successfully since the ancient Internet times of 1995. This company has over 40 years of experience in the game, having started originally in 1974, as the personals magazine Cherry Blossoms.
These days, Blossoms has over 50,000 active users a week. Even with a fairly recent visual re-haul, Blossoms still has a throwback look to its website.
Blossoms has been around a long time for a reason, with strong features, an easily navigable website, strong security measures, and thousands of quality profiles (most of them women!). If you’re looking to meet singles from the Philippines, give this site a try.
Sign up Process
Signup starts easily enough, with your name, email, gender, and password. The next two pages you’ll enter your basic information, birthday, age, location, etc. and finally, a short blurb about yourself.
At this point you are done, though you can confirm your email if you’d like to, for a higher search position. Filling out the rest of your profile includes:
- More personal information, including home and current address (strange additions for me, as I would never share this information publicly online)
- Uploading up to 12 photos
- Selecting a background (from various basic colors – nothing too exciting)
- Top 10 – 10 things you want people to know about you, and 10 things you want to know about other people
You can also edit various profile logistics, such as options for chat, privacy, and mail notifications, and filter settings for chat and messages.
How to Locate Potential Matches
Blossoms provides a number of preset searches for you, allowing you to search though active members that have been online in the last month, members that have signed up in the last 48 hours, members online right now, and who has looked at your profile. You can also make searches of your own, basic and advanced.
Blossoms will also present matches for you, based on criteria you choose, such as lifestyle habits, age, height, location, etc.
How to Communicate with Other Members
There are many options for messaging. Basic features include custom text messages (“emails”), saved template emails and “smiles”. You can also add someone to your favorites, or your friends list.
More advanced features include asking 10 questions (chosen from a larger list, e.g. Do you like to cook, How do you deal with conflict, etc.), Instant Messaging chat, video messages and live video chat. I personally love sending video messages; they are a great way to revive a fading interaction or take a lively conversation to the next level.
Unique Site Features
Blossoms has one unique feature that I would love to see other sites adopt as well: the power to check whether or not a profile is genuine. Each profile includes links to Tineye, to check where their photo came from, and Google, to see if their profile information is repeated anywhere else on the web.
Tineye is a perfect feature for catching fake profiles using a celebrity or model photo as their profile photo, which seems to happen quite often online. If something seems fishy, there are buttons to report or block members right below the profile photo.
What is Included in Each Membership Level
- Free – Create profile, upload up to 12 photos, search/browse/visit profiles, send & receive smiles, 10 questions and email/smile/chat invitations
- Full Service – All of the above, plus: send and receive emails, video messages, and video chats
Bumble
As another option, I recommend you sign up for Bumble. I did a full review of Bumble here.
Tinder
I would only do Tinder as an absolute final option. Tinder is full of a lot of timewasters, so only sign up for this app if you have a lot of time on your hands.
Good luck, and happy dating!
Further Reading
Worldwide Online Dating Site Reviews: Be sure to check out my country-by-country reviews of the best online dating sites in the world.
Worldwide Moving Guide: Everything you need to know in order to plan your move to 65+ countries around the world.
Worldwide Jobs Guide: If you are interested in working in this country, be sure to check out my posts on how to find jobs in this country and other countries around the world.
Worldwide Apartments Guide: If you are interested in renting an apartment in another country, take a look at my articles on how to find an apartment in various countries around the world.
About Addison Sears-Collins
Hey! I'm Addison Sears-Collins, the founder of Visa Hunter. You can learn more about me here. Connect with me by liking my fan page on Facebook, connecting with me on Twitter, or check out my website Automatic Addison where I build robots and embedded systems.
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