BDSM.com in United States - Review

Check out our brand new BDSM.com review to determine whether the home of fetish hookups is still the hottest site for bondage singles!

Editor’s Summary

If you’re into BDSM, then a fetish dating site is likely to be a great place to meet singles. However, it feels like this website needs to put in some work to offer better functionality and more free functions to compete with the new alternative kinky players on the market.

Pros & Cons of BDSM.com

Pros:

Dedicated kinky date site
Diverse subscriber structure
The sizeable global audience including 520,000 US daters
Joining chat rooms and forums is free
Standard daters can respond to message requests
Hotlist feature to keep track of your favorite users
Filter functions available to all people

Cons:

No app available – although the website is mobile optimized
Sending messages is only possible through a premium subscription
No ability to register via social media
Match suggestions are not available at the point of registration
It takes around ten minutes to sign up
Quite a lot of ads to sit through
Lots of restrictions in functions available without upgrading

Member Structure

Most singles are in the 25-34 age range, although there are older daters. Given the fetish hookup nature of the site, everyone here is into bondage, although there’s quite a mixture of daters looking for a sexy hookup and those seeking a long-term commitment.

Majority male user base with 60/40 gender split
Global user base with most daters from the US, UK, and France
Most users around the 25-34 age range
A mixture of relationship types from married people, singles and a variety of sexual orientations

Search & Making Contact on BDSM.com

There are many filter functions on the site, but frustratingly a lot are restricted to upgraded pages, so you will have to commit to a paid subscription to use them. Those upgrades start at $19.95 per month for a 1-month subscription.

The same goes for searches; you can run a basic filter with a free subscription, but to use more detailed criteria is only possible with an upgraded page.

In terms of options for making contact:

Instant messenger is free, provided the other person is live on the platform
Direct contact option – only available with upgraded subscriptions, and the only way to contact somebody who isn’t live online at the time you deliver your message
Flirt – an icebreaker to let somebody know you’re interested in them
Icebreaker – pretty much the same thing as a flirt, but can be sent to a larger group of people rather than to a specific user

Sign-Up & Login Process

You’re going to need around ten minutes to register at this kinky site, which is a lot longer than most faster hookup apps. There are five forms altogether that you have to complete, most of which are multiple-choice questions.

The sign-up process requires you to enter:

Date of birth
Location including zip code
Email address
A nominated user name
A password
Sexual orientation
Ethnicity
Marital status
Preferred role – whether dom or sub
Account headline

Once you have worked your way through all the forms, you will be emailed an activation link to verify your email address. We can see that the idea is to help deliver more compatible matches, but have to say this wasn’t the sexiest start to joining a bondage lesbians dating site!

Special Features

You’ll find a few different tools and functions on the site, although as before, some are going to be free for anybody to use, while most are going to be paid for.

Be warned that if you haven’t paid for an upgrade, you will see a fair few adverts that can be a little annoying! Extra features include the webcam video function, although we found that most of these are professional webcam models rather than real people.

It takes away from the experience of online flirting when you end up paying to watch a performer rather than interacting with a real-life person you’d like to hook up with!