ChristianLifestyle.com (rated 2 hearts)

At first we were attracted by the extensive search interface available at Christian Lifestyle, but after digging deeper, we did not find gold with this powerful search system. We found mud. This dating sites quality needs a bit of fine tuning when it comes to search problems.

Christian Lifestyle Membership Plans:

FREE Basic Membership with limited functions

Basic FREE membership gives you access to everything you need to look around and find if the features, and folks appeal to you enough to pay $19.95 per month for premium membership. Basic Free membership will not allow you to chat or post to the forums, but at the time of this writing, we did get a special FREE 72-hour Premium Membership to try out the chat and forums, plus the other premium features listed below.

3-day free trial premium membership allows access to:

• Participate In Forums
  
• Send Unlimited Messages
  
• Instant Messaging
  
• Activate Invisible Mode
  
• Post more than one photo
  
• Shows most recent log in (good for screening out inactive members)
  
• Contact Preferences
  

We were greeted with a "special" offer; extend the 3-day free trial by an additional 3 days for about $3. Another "special" offer is to automatically register to have your profile posted on the other sites owned by First Beat Media, Inc. by checking the box at the end of the profile creation process. The one choice we were given at that time was DateAMillionaire, even though First Beat Media, Inc. owns many other dating service sites. After clicking the check-box, we were quickly told: "None of our affiliate sites seem to match your profile." in less than 10 seconds...which is good, it shows they have avery fast server and fast conection.

Account Features:

• Summary Total New
  
• Mailbox
  
• Favorites
  
• Blocked Members
  
• Little Black Book
  
• Who's Viewed Your Profile
  
• Can see “Who's Online” now (unless a user chose "Invisible Mode" which allows them to browse the site anonymously with no other uses seeing their online status or movements.)
  

Messaging Features:

• Black Book/IM Chat
  
• Online (0 members)
  
• Offline (0 members)
  
• Awaiting Auth (0 members)
  
• My Requests (0 members)
  

The default setting for Instant Messages is to receive IMs from everyone. To receive IMs from only the users that are in your Black Book you will have to change your IM settings.

Searching is fast and easy based on these criteria options:

Appearance & Situation:

• Body Type (Slim, Athletic, etc.)
  
• Height
  
• Eye Color
  
• Ethnicity (Asian, Black, Caucasian, etc.)
  
• Marital Situation (Single, Married, Divorced, etc.)
  
• Have Kids
  
• Want Kids
  
• Best Feature (Eyes, Legs, etc.)
  
• Hair Color
  
• Relocate (be honest, willing to relocate is a big thing)

Status:

• Education Level
  
• Employment Status
  
• Specialty
  
• Job Title
  
• Annual Income
  
• Living Arrangements: (Alone, With Roommate(s), With Parent(s), With Pet(s), etc.)

Housing Situation (choose one):

• - At Home: There Is No Noise
  
• - At Home: All Is Calm
  
• - At Home: Friends Come Over Occasionally
  
• - At Home: It Gets A Bit Crazy Sometimes
  
• - At Home: Friends Come Over Often
  
• - At Home: There Is Always A Party Going On

Habits:

• Smoker
  
• Drinker

Taste:

• TV Selection (News, Movies, Reality Shows, etc.)
  
• Movie Selection (Action, Comedy, Drama, etc.)
  
• Music Selection (Blues, Gospel, Jazz, Rock, etc.)
  
• Reading Selection (Fantasy, Fiction, Health, Romance, etc.)
  
• Idea Of Fun
  

Personality:

• In High School I Was: (A Quiet One, Outgoing, etc.)
  
• Social Behavior (Friendly, Outgoing, Shy, etc.)
  
• Interests And Hobbies (Exercising, Movies, Religion / Spirituality, Gardening, etc.)
  
• Idea Of A Great Time (The Movies, Relaxing, Sleeping, TV, Travel, etc.)
  
• Friends Describe Me As (Friendly, Someone They Want To Be, Perfect, etc.)
  

Views:

• Religion
  
• - Any
  
• - Catholic
  
• - Baptist
  
• - Charismatic
  
• - Church of Christ
  
• - Christian Reformed
  
• - Episcopalian/Anglican
  
• - Assembly of God
  
• - Evangelical
  
• - Interdenominational
  
• - Lutheran
  
• - Anglican
  
• - Messianic
  
• - Methodist
  
• - Nazarene
  
• - Non-denominational
  
• - Orthodox
  
• - Pentecostal
  
• - Presbyterian
  
• - Seventh-Day Adventist
  
• - Southern Baptist
  
• - Other
  
• - Not sure yet

• Attend Services (Once A Week, Seldom, etc.)
  
• Political Views
  
• Goal In Life (Finish college, get marriage and have children, etc.)
  
• Humor (Friendly, Clever, Dry / Sarcastic, Sadistic, etc.)
  
  

Looking for:

• Attracted To (Intelligence, Good Looks, Humor, Sensitivity, Boldness, Oddities, Money, Power, Flirtatiousness, etc.)
  
• Looking For (someone with a GREAT, LOVEABLE heart, etc)
  
• Relationship Type (Casual, Intimate, Serious Relationship, etc.)
  

Privacy/Safety:

Free members (and paid members of course) can use the "blocked members" function and actually keep good track of unwanted profiles, excluding them from search results and communications.

Positives:

Very simple fee structure, $19.95 a month for full access to entire dating service, chat and forums.

Negatives or Drawbacks:

The database shows signs of neglect. Perhaps they could clean up the Christian Lifestyle database by doing what ChristianCafe.com does--offer 5 days free for reporting duplicate profiles or profiles that have errors in them.

At the time we wrote this review we did a few tests to see if this is a neglected database or one that has received time and attention to help correct profile mistakes. We found 79 perfectly good profiles with nice photos of women and completed info., but men may never find them because these 79 women made a mistake that was not corrected by the ChristianLifestyle customer service team: "Woman Seeking A Woman (#### Miles Away)" was never corrected even though the profiles had headlines like:

"Quality woman seeking a Quality man" or "any good men out there" or "Seeking christian men for friendships." Plus the "Looking for:" essay section on the few that had completed profiles clearly indicated that these women were seeking a "Christian Man..." not a lezzylover.

At the time we wrote this review we did a few more tests to see if this is a neglected database or one that has received time and attention to help correct profile mistakes. We found 76 perfectly good profiles with nice photos of men and completed info., but women may never find them because these 76 men made a mistake that was not corrected by the ChristianLifestyle customer service team: "Man Seeking A Man (???? Miles Away)" was never corrected even though the profiles had headlines like:

"man looking for a long life christian woman" or "looking for a girl to spoil" or "christian musician seeks christian girl" . . .

We found this same problem with the tests we ran on men's profiles as well. We found that if a man's profile reads "Woman Seeking A Woman (#### Miles Away)" and we select his exact "age and location" and do a search under “I AM A Woman" Looking for a Man" this profile will not show up in the search results, which confirms our finding that a man clearly looking for a woman, but makes a mistake and says he is a woman seeking a woman... MIGHT AS WELL BE INVISIBLE, BECAUSE HE WILL NOT BE FOUND BY WOMEN SEEKING MEN. Now, we did find homosexuals+lesbians who where clearly seeking same sex or bisex partners for example: in some profile essays we found homosexuals indicating that they are "Looking for a guy who loves Jesus" and "free of any diseases, a born again Christian, seeking a Christian gay or bi male, any race..."

Another sign of neglect on the part of customer service is the duplicate profiles that should have been deleted. Example: we found duplicate profiles with the exact same photos and text, just a different username. In a quality site there would be no duplicate profiles allowed either by the dating software system or by the humans in customer service.

Excluding unwanted profiles from search results only works if you are a paying member.

Unique Offer or Feature:

Cool Chat feature (paid members only): when searching, browsing, profiles you'll see a flashing message below a member's photo "LET'S CHAT... I'M ONLINE"

=> HELPFUL HINT: be sure to click "View Your Personal Info" to view your own profile and check every little detail, especially your “Woman seeking A Man” or “Woman seeking A Man” preference. Don't be like the singles we found that will never be found because of careless profile-creation mistakes.

QUITE A BIT OF CROSS-SELLING AND WE DON'T MEAN SELLING CROSSES TO HANG AROUND YOUR NECK:

Cross-selling is when a customer comes to a dating site for one purpose and is bombarded with “special offers” to sell other products and services. FOR EXAMPLE: Another “special offer” is to automatically register to have your profile automatically posted on the other sites owned by First Beat Media, Inc. by checking the box at the end of the profile creation process. The one choice we were given at that time was DateAMillionaire, even though First Beat Media, Inc. owns many other sites. After clicking the check-box, we were quickly told: "None of our affiliate sites seem to match your profile." in less than 10 seconds...which is good, it shows they have a very fast server and fast connection. But it also shows that there is not much there for born again, Bible-believing Christians.

FRIENDLY LOGOUT MESSAGE:

“You Have Logged Out Successfully! We are still new and promoting very heavily, so be sure to check back soon! Thousands of new members are joining every day, so there’s a very good chance someone special will be signing up very soon.”

For further discussion about using Christian dating service sites that are not owned by Christians, please see our comments on boycotting BigChurch, and for more information on 2nd Corinthians 6:14-18.