Active Audience | 64% |
Quality Matches | 85% |
Popular Age | 25-28 |
Profiles | 1 600 000 |
Reply Rate | 90% |
Ease of Use | 10 |
Popularity | 9.2 |
Fraud | Very Rarely |
Rating |
9.1
|
Registration | Free |
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CatholicMatch is an online dating platform for the followers of the Catholic Church worldwide who want to meet someone of their faith and start a family. The platform welcomes only those people who want to find partners for marriage. CatholicMatch was launched by two friends – Jason LaFosse and Brian Barcaro. In 1999 these two guys created the website initially called Saint Raphael, but they renamed it in 2004, making CatholicMatch its official name. Currently, the platform has 1.5 authorized accounts and claims to be the world’s biggest platform of connecting single Catholics.
Like all online dating websites, the CatholicMatch’s functionality also heavily relies on its matchmaking algorithm. For suggesting highly compatible matches, the system requires users’ responses to the Match Portrait questionnaire. The more honest your answers are, the higher the chances of finding your ideal match are. The matching algorithm compares your responses with the results of 1.5 million users’ tests and chooses the ones whose responses were close to yours. All those matches appear in the Matches tab on your profile. After you found someone you like, you should message him/her. The fact that the chatting feature is accessible for only premium users can be frustrating. But if your goal is to find a boyfriend/girlfriend and marry, spending a few dollars a year to upgrade your profile seems to be a necessary sacrifice.
The CatholicMatch platform targets only the followers of Christian faith and members of the Catholic Church. Currently, the number of accounts is 1.5 million, and it continues to grow. The majority of users, namely 1.2 million is from the United States. However, the users’ geography is vast due to the prevalence of Catholicism. There are also members from the United Kingdom, Canada, from European countries like Ireland, Sweden, from South American countries like Brazil and El Salvador. Since most members are from English speaking countries or speak English pretty well, they are active in forums and discussions on different topics like prayers, Bible verses, marriage, etc.
The gender ratio is balanced, which means that the possibility of finding your match is high.
Since the members of the Catholic Church are straight men and women, the website also welcomes only men seeking women and women seeking men for marriage.
The CatholicMatch website’s matchmaking process is based on tools that allow users to have general knowledge about other members’ personality traits and make their own decisions.
The CatholicMatch site is user-friendly in terms of navigation. All main sections and buttons are located in visible parts of the page. Besides, since the background is white and the site uses the blue color for essential buttons and text, it’s hard not to find something you need. The registration process may seem complicated at first sight. But it’s not difficult at all. The process is just a bit long, which is entirely justified since the time-consuming process filters out fake profiles.
The CatholicMatch website’s design is modern and pretty attractive. Like most social media sites, CatholicMatch also uses white as a background color and blue as its primary color. The website navigation is straightforward. Profiles have four tabs – Messages, Matches, Search, and Forums, located on the top of the page. By clicking the Messages tab, you access all your conversations. In the Matches section, you can find all the match recommendations by the CatholicMatch system. If you want to find someone, Search is where you should go. And also join different chatrooms in the Forum section to discuss various interesting topics. In the footer of the page, you can see some helpful links like Help, Terms of Use, Mobile Site, and Privacy. You can also read about the company and some exciting success stories.
In March 2019, the platform launched the CatholicMatch Dating app, which is available for free download from Google Play Market and App Store. The size of the application is 40.54 MB for Android devices and 37.8 MB for iOS devices. CatholicMatch is compatible with devices having iOS 9.0 or later or Android 4.1 and upper versions. It’s only a year that the CatholicMatch application exists, but in Play Market, it already has more than 10 thousand installations, 115 reviews with 2.7 stars in total. Currently, the number of customer reviews is 69 on the App Store, with a 3.6 average rating.
At the bottom of the CatholicMatch website, you can find the Help link that redirects to the CatholicMatch Help Desk. On this page, all frequently asked questions are categorized by themes – overall, eight topics like Safety, My Profile, Communication, etc. If users don’t find the answer to their problem, they can choose one of three options – Create a Help Ticket, Ask Other Members, and Email Us. So, users have the opportunity to submit their question via a request form, ask other members of the CatholicMatch community whether they faced a similar problem and how they solved it, or send an email at [email protected].
CatholicMatch’s registration process is lengthy since besides inputting personal information, users should also describe their appearance, answer questions about their education, childhood, and faith. This time-consuming process is not an end in itself. It’s one of the guarantees that the profiles belong to real people who provide authentic information since the process makes registration of fake profiles almost impossible. After registration, every profile goes manual verification by CatholicMatch’s administrative staff about which users receive a notification email.
To create an account on the CatholicMatch website, you should click the Sign-Up button, and the registration form will pop up on the screen. You can register with either your Facebook account or email address. To register with your email address, you should manually fill in all the fields of the registration form. At first, enter your email and pick a strong password. Next, insert your first and last names. For each user, the system creates unique usernames by combining the first name and the membership number. For example, if someone with the name Bryan registers and he is the 15697th member of the CatholicMatch community, then his username will be Bryan-15697. You should also enter your location, choose your gender, and put a tick in the box confirming that you’ve read and agreed to the CatholicMatch Terms of Use and Privacy Policy. In the case of signing up with your existing Facebook account, the CatholicMatch system receives all this personal information automatically from Facebook, and you save a couple of minutes. However, the next stages are mandatory for both Facebook and email registrants. Next, you should answer several compulsory questions about your childhood, education, job, and, most importantly, the Catholic faith. The last stage of registration is writing a self-introductory paragraph with at least 150 characters.
Since the substantial amount of data users enter during the registration process, the majority of CatholicMatch accounts are informative. The profile includes a profile photo and allows uploading up to 50 other pictures. Right to the profile photo, you can see the user’s age, location, height, attitude to smoking and drinking, information about his/her job, education, and the answers to religion-related questions. Under the photo, you can see the self-introduction paragraph. If you want other users to know your temperament type, you can take the psychological test and allow CatholicMatch to post your results on your wall.
After each registration, the CatholicMatch’s staff investigates the profiles manually. When they verify the accounts, users get emails with login details. CatholicMatch doesn’t have a specific verification process since the extensive registration process already filters out scammers.
In the Match Page, users can find the list of compatible matches, but they can also search if they have someone special in mind. All users can search by applying filters of gender, age, body type, marital status, and ethnicity. Premium membership unlocks several additional filters like education, faith lever, and smoking/drinking habits. CatholicMatch allows saving search results to save time and not enter the same criteria and filters every time.
CatholicMatch’s matchmaking system relies on the results of a questionnaire called Match Portrait. Users should be honest with themselves to answer the questions about their personality qualities, values, point of view on different aspects of life and faith. Later, the matchmaking system compares one user’s responses with the answers of thousands of others and suggests those who are more compatible. Users can see the recommended matches in the Match Page. They can go through the profiles and either approve or ignore them. The disappointing news is that free members cannot initiate communication and can read received emails only in ten days. But premium users can immediately message someone who they like.
Like the majority of online dating platforms, CatholicMatch offers two types of membership – free and premium. Registration is entirely free, but users with standard profiles cannot enjoy too much since free features are limited. To enjoy the full functionality of the platform, users should buy a subscription plan. The premium membership may seem costly, but it has undeniable advantages. Unlike other dating platforms, CatholicMatch has a flexible refund policy. Once you purchase a subscription, the auto-renewal activates by default. If you forgot to deactivate it and your subscription renews, you can write the CatholicMatch support team to stop the membership and send your money back. Another fantastic privilege is the availability of a Matchmaking Guarantee. If you purchased a six-month subscription but couldn’t find your ideal match during that period, CatholicMatch gives you another six-month membership entirely free.
The CatholicMatch premium package includes three subscription plans.
CatholicMatch accepts payments through Visa, MasterCard, American Express, and Discover credit or debits cards.
Once you bought a subscription, you cannot cancel it until it expires. However, if you don’t want to prolong the membership period, you can stop the auto-billing, which automatically gets activated after the first purchase. If you forgot to cancel auto-renewal, and CatholicMatch charged you for another period, you can write the customer support team. They’ll help you to stop your subscription and get your money back.
Keeping the users’ data safe is one of the CatholicMatch’s priorities. The website’s security team manually checks and verifies all new profiles. Besides, they scan the website’s user base to discover fake profiles and accounts with suspicious behavior. Later, the security staff investigates these profiles and removes them from the platform.
CatholicMatch has a large community of Catholic singles who are looking for marriage partners. The users’ journey begins from the process of registration, which may seem too long, but it’s necessary to ensure the authenticity of the provided information. Free services are also restricted, and the premium membership seems pricy to the majority of members, but CatholicMatch guarantees success. Since the security of users’ data is a top priority, the CatholicMatch security staff manually checks profiles and removes suspicious ones to keep other members safe.