As quoted by Musician Foxy Brown, “To find a prince, you gotta kiss some toads.”
Dating is a fancy term for relationships in modern society, and ‘Online Dating’ is its digital form.
For mass, it’s a simple and convenient tool to find a soulmate, but for few, it’s a billion dollar industry. At this modern time, the industry is dominated by apps like Tinder and eHarmony, which together counts for America’s $2.2 billion industry, as covered in a report by The Washington Post. The report further details that the online dating industry is going to grow by another $100 million term each year. You can also research various types of online dating sites and learn how easy it is to chat online.
That was all about defining dating and its market scope. Now, let’s get real with your idea of running an online business, which requires a WordPress setup, a dedicated theme, and one or two plugins to bring the required functionalities.
BEST WORDPRESS DATING PLUGINS
As far as plugin repository for WordPress platform is a concern, there are very few and rare dating plugin options available at this moment. Following is a compilation of only the best of them.
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Additional Tip: – Before you pick any plugin, check its compatibility tab and make sure it’s supporting the latest version of WordPress. The trick is to have the compatible version of WordPress at your domain, even if it’s not the latest!
#1 ARMember
ARMember is the premium solution to finding the best dating membership plugin for WordPress. It features the ability to sell membership subscriptions and has a multitude of options regarding user registration, user profiles, and built-in security options.
This plugin makes it simple for you to create different membership models along with several useful tools that make it easy to build a subscription base for your dating site. Luckily, advanced programming knowledge is not required to use the plugin and if needed, professional support is included with the purchase.
Plugin highlights:
- Customizable login/sign-up forms
- Free/Paid trial option
- Ability to give discounts to potential customers with coupons
- Buddypress and bbPress compatibility
- Integration of PayPal, Stripe and other popular online payment gateways.
- WooCommerce support
#2 Rencontre
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This plugin is one of the most recommended and clearly one of the best WordPress dating plugins you can get without paying anything. It helps in creating an online board featuring different profiles with their personal details like country, name, age, etc.
The plugin offers an advanced search tool with dozens of filters to choose and refine the overall search results. It allows users to share contact details and even send smileys. Moreover, it even supports webcam chat for private members.
Plugin highlights:
- The plugin is available in six different international languages including French, Danish, and Spanish.
- It offers a very powerful and filter featured search tool that can even let your visitors look for astrological matches.
- It offers a blacklist feature to the users and records IP Location details of every visitor for future reference and better geo-based services.
- The plugin never puts a limit cap on the number of visitors allowed to use the service.
- It offers a Facebook login integration which is simplest for users and even offers Google Map powered proximity search.
#3 bbPress
If you’re looking for an authority software, then bbPress is the one that is developed by the official WordPress developers. It helps in running a dedicated forum or member based website and never ask for a single dime. The solution gets deep WordPress integration and brings dozens of additional features which are missed by its competitors.
Plugin highlights:
- It supports single site or multiple sites installations.
- Just like WordPress, the plugin is simple to install, setup and get together to understand and use everything.
- It’s open-source, thus, you’re allowed to bring any change if you know your way around the coding.
#4 BuddyPress
This one works can work in conjunction with bbPress that offers similar feature with slightly better design and visuals. It allows users to create their profile, upload pictures or avatars, mention brief details with social profiles, and much more. In short, it’s a powerful community plugin, which can suit your requirements for running a dating website.
Plugin highlights:
- It can help in running a campus-based social network and maybe an internal network for a single company.
- The plugin gets deep integration with WordPress code, thus, staying perfectly compatible with everything.
#5 WPDATING
This one is more like a software application that is compatible with WordPress, thus getting the eligibility to be called a Plugin. It’s not a free package, and the pricing starts at $149 for the standard variant. The features offered are separated by the user’s role, which is crucial for running a user base social network, in our case, a dating website. Admin users are offered additional features and a complete control on everything at the front end.
The developer not only offers this plugin product for this specific niche but also offers templates to customize further the front-end layout. The number and types of features offered in the package are good enough to justify the price tag.
Plugin highlights:
- The first and foremost the crucial feature for a dating plugin is the Search tool, and the one offered here is advance enough to qualify in any comparison battle. It brings dozens of filters to help your visitors find a perfect profile.
- Users are allowed to create their profile, keep it updated in various manners, and even share their side of the story, which further increases the user engagement.
- It comes with a Near Me feature which searches for the profile based on your geo-location, and thus, helps in achieving a better functional dating website.
- The members are allowed to share photos, videos, galleries, audio files, and they are even streamed online with other members.
#6 WP Live Chat Support
WP Live Chat Support is an easy-to-use plugin that will help you in creating an online chat on your dating site. It uses AJAX, so even if you use a caching plugin, your chat will work without any problems.
This plugin is absolutely free, and it will not display any advertisements, and this, in turn, will create a benevolent impression on the visitors of your site. It includes such features as AJAX chat, display of chat notifications on the desktop, automatic pop up chat window.
#7 Ninja Forms
Why do we need a home page if it doesn’t motivate users to use a site and keep going back to it?
Ninja Forms is one of the most highly rated plug-ins that can be used for a wide range of actions. It helps to make a form for payments via PayPal, event registration, uploading files, subscribing via email, and more. Gravity Forms and Formidable Forms are good alternatives to this plugin.
The plugin also has a convenient approach when it comes to page design. When creating forms, you start by selecting your tasks and adding the required fields by dragging and dropping them onto the page.
#8 Restrict Content Pro
This plugin is sort of must-have in your situation, as it offers a mechanism that puts a price tag in front of a visitor and ask him/her to pay to gain access to the facility inside. Thus, your online dating website can bring a lot of cash if you apply this conversion mechanism perfectly. The functionality required for that to work is covered by this Restrict Content Pro plugin.
Plugin highlights:
- It allows putting a straight price for every visitor or even for specific ones. It also supports the mechanism of discount coupons or codes.
- The plugin comes with the dedicated integration of PayPal, Stripe, 2Checkout, etc.
- It keeps a report of everything which is available for export in CSV format.
Final Words
Before you leave, I’ll recommend reading the psychology of online dating report published by nbcnews, which can help you setting up right strings to convert your visitors. I hope this compilation of WordPress dating plugins helped you. In the case of assistance on any related matter, feel free to share your side in the discussion section. Peace!
