Free Herpes Dating Sites: Which is a Better Choice?

If you’ve decided to try your luck with online herpes dating sites, you’ve probably noticed that there are dozens of different websites you can try. Some herpes dating sites are free, but most of them require a paid subscription. Some of the paid sites have been around for as long as 20 years, while other free and paid sites are quite new.

Should you pick a free herpes dating site because it’s free? Or should you invest more via paid herpes dating sites?

There's an art to finding an using a great free herpes dating site, and it usually involves a lot of care, time and attention. Free herpes dating sites aren't as easy to come by, so combine the two needs, and you may find yourself in a pickle. In this article, you will find the hidden facts between them.

Over the last 10+ years, the review team have tried out all free herpes dating sites, apps and paid herpes dating sites for lots of years. Our experiences may be helpful for you if you’re trying to find a good site to try.

Pros and cons of free herpes dating sites

The free herpes sites have the advantage of saving you money. However, they also have quite a few disadvantages, compared with the many paid herpes dating sites that are out there.

Less active people and a smaller dating pool.

Free herpes dating sites don’t make any money from their members. They do not spend money and efforts to get new members. 80% of herpes dating sites only get less than 100 profiles every day.

Paid herpes dating sites like PositiveSingles spend more than $1,000,000 monthly to get new members. PositiveSingles get more than 2, 000 new profiles every day.

On a lot of the free herpes dating sites we’ve tried, the users aren’t very active overall. If you email someone through the site, you might not get a response back until weeks or even months later. In our experience, paid herpes sites have much better response rates.

Messages that we sent through paid herpes dating sites were 46% more likely to get a response than those sent through free herpes dating sites. Out of all of the messages that were successful, the ones sent through paid sites were 44% more likely to result in a date.

Lower success rates

As we’ve mentioned, we’ve had much lower success rates on free herpes dating sites than on paid herpes sites. Part of the reason is that the people using the free sites usually aren’t as serious about it as the people using the paid herpes dating sites.

People on the free sites are also more likely to be looking for casual hookups, as opposed to long term relationships. That’s fine if that’s also what you’re looking for, but if you’re looking for someone you can settle down with, the paid sites are a better bet. Paying for a subscription incentivizes people to be more active on the site and get their money’s worth, which can work to your advantage.

Even worse, there are a lot more scammers on the free herpes dating sites. Some of them are pretty obvious if you’re even remotely savvy, but scammers get more and more clever every day.

They don’t have good privacy protection.

Privacy is important for multiple reasons, and the free herpes dating sites simply don’t care as much about users’ privacy. Even if they did, they don’t have the financial resources to do much about it. Some of them even leave users’ profiles open to search engines, which you don’t want coming up for your name in a Google search.

Also, you probably remember the scandalous Ashley Madison hack and data leak back in 2015. This kind of thing would be far more likely to happen on a free herpes site than on a paid site. The paid sites have staff and financial resources dedicated to privacy protection and data security.

You’re far more likely to be contacted by scammers.

Free herpes dating sites don’t review new users’ profiles manually before allowing them to go live on the site. Nearly all of the paid sites do this. You have to weed through an alarming number of obvious scammers on free sites, and that’s to say nothing of the creeps that also hang around those places. If you’re new to online dating, you could easily get scammed.

They don’t have mobile applications.

Free herpes dating sites don’t generally have the resources to develop a mobile app, while paid herpes dating sites almost always have an Android app and an iOS app that you can use. Keep in mind that creating these apps can cost hundreds of thousands of US dollars.

The Advantages of Paid Herpes Dating Sites

When people go through the trouble to pay for something, they’re far more likely to actually use it. You can see this effect pretty clearly on the paid herpes dating sites, where the user base is far more active and engaged.

For example, if you check out the blog, forum, and chat rooms at PositiveSingles.com, you’ll see a ton of activity. In contrast, similar resources on free sites have little to no recent activity. Some haven’t seen a new post in months.

People on the paid sites are also more serious about online dating. Their profiles are also more in depth, and the site provides more questions for users to answer. This provides higher quality search results and better matches.

Paid sites are much more likely to lead to a date.

The more someone invests in an online dating service, the more likely they are to actively look for a date there. We found that those who paid either nothing, or very little, were much less willing to choose to go on a date with someone from a free or cheap site.

For example, when the cost of a site was $0, we found that the average length of time that men took to commit to a date was 28 minutes. When the cost was $50, the average time was 49 minutes. For women, the numbers were 13 minutes and 28 minutes, respectively.

People are putting more time and effort into trying to find a good match on the paid sites. This is a very good thing, because you’ll end up with fewer bad dates.

They save time and effort.

As we’ve mentioned, you have to wade through a sea of creeps and scammers on the free sites to find real people that you’d actually want to talk to. When you get an email from someone, you’ll have to spend time trying to figure out if it’s a real person or a bot. Paying the membership fee for a reputable paid site saves you a lot of trouble.

Making Your Decision: Which is More Effective?

Now, you know the pros and cons of free and paid herpes dating sites. You’re probably wondering which particular site would be best for you. There’s no one size fits all answer, but the free herpes sites tend to mostly consist of people with herpes looking for casual hookups and paid herpes dating sites have a bigger user pool.

On the paid herpes dating sites, members are far more likely to be invested in finding a long term partner. If that’s what you’re looking for, you’ll have much better luck on a paid site. There will also have higher quality profiles that are up to date.

Remember, the paid herpes dating sites allow you to sign up for a free account without spending a dime. So you don’t have to pay for anything until you know for sure that a site is the right fit for you.

Best Paid Herpes Dating Sites

Most of quality herpes dating sites require a paid subscription. They need money to cover the cost of maintaining the site. Sites like PositiveSingles.com have 30+ staff to maintain the website. They review every new and updated profiles, delete invalid profiles,and have a marketing team to get 1,000+ daily new pofiles.

#1 PositiveSingles

Positive Singles is unquestionably the #1 and the largest herpes dating site that we used in the past 16 years. It was founded in 2002 and has more than 1,063,538 members as it now. It has the biggest users base among all the herpes dating service.

PositiveSingles hosts 15,000 daily active members and 120,000 conversations per day. On Positive Singles, you have the benefit of privacy settings. You can set your photos to be viewable by all other members, or to be viewable to selected members.

PositiveSingles is a full-feature online dating service which can be accessed via a website and dating apps (includind Apple and Android).

#2 MPWH

MPWH is aother reputed dating site for people with herpes. MPWH has been online for over 10 years.

MPWH used to be a unique herpes dating website, but it was acquired in 2012. And now, MPWH has more than 210,000 members around the world and the majority of the members are from the United States, Canada and the United Kindom.

MPWH used to be a totally free herpes dating site. Members of this dating site were very active due to it’s free. But, in March 2016, it started to charge members for its dating service.

Totally Free Herpes Dating Sites

We have used or reviewed each herpes dating sites for lots of years. Some herpes dating sites maybe were free in 2019 and become a paid herpes dating site in 2022. Our team check latest updates and make sure they're actually free. Here, you'll see the latest top free herpes dating sites in 2022 .

How to Succeed at Finding Love on a Herpes Dating Site

Make your profile attractive and appealing. Take time to write as much as you can about yourself, and to upload photos of your daily life. For your main photo, select the best photo of yourself you can find. After all, you want to make a good first impression.

Update your profile regularly with new content. You don’t want your profile to seem “dead.” Upload new photos and blog content on a regular basis. Plus, if someone wasn’t interested in you the first time, they might notice you if they see you come up again.

Initiate contacts as much as possible. Almost all of the paid herpes dating sites let members with free standard memberships send “winks” for free, which lets you actively make contact with other members. Some of them even let non-paying members post photo comments, profile comments, and answers to questions from people’s profiles. These give you plenty of ways to signal that you’re interested in someone.

Be active on the site’s blog or forum. Many of the most popular paid herpes dating sites have thriving communities and plenty of activity in their forums, chat rooms, and blog comments. This can give you a place to communicate. Some sites let standard members posts blogs and forum content, helping you show other members that you’re active on the site.

Use the “Moments” feature on the app. Many of the paid sites’ apps have a “Moments” feature, where you can post things for your profile on the go. Someone might see it and initiate a conversation with you.