Hot or Not Review 2024 — Real Dating Site or Scam?

General Overview

Two friends created Hot or Not back in 2000. Originally they came up with a simple yet brilliant idea to set up a “Rate My Date” type site where people would just rate other people’s profile pictures on the scale from one to ten. Over the years, this idea grew into one of the most popular sites where people are still looking for someone to chat, meet up, hang out with by evaluating appearance first. For some, this idea might seem a bit shallow, but come on, we all know, that first you judge how nice, then you decide how wise. And the enormous amount of members all over the world only confirms the fact that the concept itself is not a terrible one. Besides, the idea of Hot or Not inspired other social networks and has an impact on the popular social media the way we know them today.

Anyway, we tried to do our best and prepared our review on Hot or Not to help you get the impression of your own, and we genuinely believe you will have one by the end of reading the article.

What Can Hot or Not Offer?

Okay, so we know this site is super popular, but why? What makes people sign up and stay with it? Hot or Not operation mode is pretty straightforward: you just swipe users’ pictures and decide whether you liked them or not by pressing ‘heart’ or ‘cross’ accordingly. After that, you can interact with your matches in different ways that we are going to cover below. Keep reading!

People on the Site

When we are saying about the crowd, we know what we mean. Because at the moment, there are around 385 million users on Hot or Not globally. The most significant part of them is naturally from the USA – about 165 million people. It is worth mentioning that over 1,5 million of those people log in the Hot or Not service every day.

Men prevail in women on the site. There are around 60% of males, while females are approximately 40% of the users on the site. It is a funny thing, though, because it seems that Hot or Not is instead a female-friendly dating service. Women here get a free of charge three-day trial premium subscription, while men are required to give more information about themselves to sign up with the site.

Another great thing we cannot overlook to note that there is zero tolerance to violence, abuse, and any discrimination on the grounds of sexual orientation, race, color, national or ethnic origin.

Essential Functionality

Even though the Hot or Not crucial features are now available in other popular dating services, we still hold it as our duty to tell about them, as they make the communication on the site friendly and fun.

• Encounters

That most essential function allows you to look through the accounts by swiping. Suggested profiles filtered by your interests, location, and other filters. Looking at the profile pictures, you can either like them or not. When someone loves your profile, you automatically get higher in the ratings. Do not forget to choose the best profile picture as the primary one.

• Stickers

It is hard to imagine modern communication without emojis. Sometimes with only one sticker, you can tell the whole story. At the bottom of the chatbox, there are smiles, pressing on which you will see all the available stickers. You need to pay credits for them, but once you purchase the pack, it stays with you for good.

• Gifts

The best recipe to show your interest in a person is the gift, even though it is a virtual one. It can be a cup of coffee, a cone of ice cream, or a piece of cake. You can give someone a present directly in the person’s account or the chat section. Gifts are not free, and you can buy them for credits.

Hot or Not Convenience

You will never get lost on Hot or Not. Every feature has detailed, step-by-step instruction. But even without the tutorial, everything is intuitive. Thanks to the straightforward and minimalistic design, navigation is as simple as ABC. There will be no complications even for people who happened to get on such a dating site for the first time in their lives.

Another thing that is worth mentioning that there is no ad on Hot or Not, so the general look is not cluttered.

Desktop Layout and Ease of Use

The Hot or Not website has a beautiful design with bright but not loud colors. The interface of the site is understandable and well, and attentively arranged. It does not take an eternity to find a necessary feature on the site. At the same time, it will take you about 15 minutes, in the beginning, to puzzle out the functionality of the service. Once you do that, you will find it hard to believe that it was possible to create such an accessible dating site where everything is so easy to find and understand.

Hot or Not Mobile Program

There is an available application for Hot or Not for both Apple and Android users. It is free to get, with the possibility of in-app purchases. We enjoy the fact that everything that the website has to offer also contains in the app. It does not make you feel incomplete when being away from your computer. The application itself is pretty easy to use, with a minimalist and straightforward interface. At the same time, everything is here, and you do not feel like you need something more.

Client Service

There is a detailed Help Center on Hot or Not, and it seems that every aspect of the dating site usage is covered. In case there is not enough or no information (which is very unlikely), there is an available 24/7 customer support team. You can contact them via social media like Facebook and Twitter, or use the feedback form on the website and get a proper and fast response.

at the Beginning

Hot or Not does not require much information for registration. To finish the process, you just need to give your name, date of birth, location, and indicate what you are looking for on the site. After that, you go through the simple verification process using your phone number and add some pictures of your own. You are not limited in the number of pics and videos you want to add to your profile, and allowed to mark some of them as private. If the photos are private, only people who requested access will be able to see them.

Joining Process

The site offers you two ways how can you sign up: using your social networks profiles (it can be anything starting from Facebook and finishing with local social media like VK or Yandex). If you go with this option, keep in mind that the information from your social media accounts will get automatically added to your Hot or Not profile.

At the same time, it is not a problem to create a new report from nothing using your email or phone number.

User Accounts

Registration on Hot or Not begins with the necessary information we have mentioned above. Nevertheless, when you go further, you can tell in the profile about your hobbies, favorite films, music, etc. Even though it is not mandatory to fill out this info, a lot of the users have detailed profiles. Probably because most of them realize that this is the fastest way to understand if it would be a good match or not. Also, you can always come back to change or add new preferences to your profile.

It is worth mentioning that in a person’s account, you can see their rating. It depends on how many times other members liked the user.

Hot or Not: How to Look for People

There are not many options for search on Hot or Not, but you can use one of the mentioned below:

• users who liked you;
• users nearby;
• users who visited your account;
• popular accounts;
• Encounters feature.

Naturally, the easiest and the most popular is the Encounter function, where you just swipe for profiles and like the most attractive ones and skip those you do not fancy.

Seeking for people around you is available using filters like gender, location, age, etc.

We liked the Popular account search, where you can sort out Hot or Not users from the most likable to the least one, and can find your gem among those who get less attention.

Interacting With the Users

After you get matched with someone on the site, you can immediately start communicating in the chatbox. Note that even if there is a match with a person, chatting is available only with the verified users. So do not forget to have the account of your own verified, in order not to miss the opportunity to meet someone worthy.

What we liked about the system and its operation mode is that you can talk only to people you have been matched with, and it prevents unwanted acquaintances as well as disappointment in the Hot or Not dating service. If you want to go further with some of the users, you can video chat on the site, which is free of charge. You can also add your most contacted members to the list of favorite people and always have them at your fingertips.

To brighten up your communication, you can buy a couple of sticker packs for extra credits, that will stay in your account forever, but will make the chatting smoother.

Overall, talking to people on Hot or Not is fun, and it does not require too much effort from you, yet you can protect yourself from annoying people as it usually happens on other social media.

Hot or Not Membership Plans

Hot or Not offers two types of membership: free and paid ones. We must give credits to the site as their most essential functions are available in the free version. However, a paid subscription has a variety of perks for a reasonable price, and it is worth trying. Women are luckier users of Hot or Not because they have the opportunity to try the premium version of the dating site for three days without paying for it.

There is another option to get access to some extra features without buying a membership – purchasing credits. You can use those credits for putting yourself to the first places, chatting to more people, sending gifts, etc.

Unpaid Version

Naturally, a quality product has its price. It is even better when an excellent product as Hot or Not has free features you can enjoy before you decide to upgrade your account and buy a subscription. With the free version you can:

• register on the site and get an account;
• add infinite amount of pictures;
• look through the profiles and view other people photos;
• get matches;
• seek for users near your current location;
• communicate with members on the site.

Premium Version

In addition to the unpaid features with a premium membership, you will be able to:

• reverse the ‘No’ decision and return to the profiles you decided not to go with;
• put yourself into the top position in the searching result;
• get your profile presented more;
• make presents (virtual though);
• using stickers when chatting;
• browse the site in the incognito mode;
• view who liked you.

How Much?

As we mentioned before, it is possible to either buy premium subscription or credits. It is up to you to decide if you would like to enjoy all of the paid features without looking back on the credits left, or you can simply get a couple of credits and use a couple of extra features.

For a seven-day membership on Hot or Not, you will pay .99; for one-month – .99, three-months — .99, and a half-a-year subscription will cost you .99. Note that you get charged for the cost of the subscription up front.

For 100 credits, you will pay rdaddphp.99, for 500 credits – .99, for 1250 – .99, and the most massive package of 2750 credits costs .99.

All the prices are in US dollars, and payment options that available are credit cards, PayPal, and subscription via App Store.

Revoking Hot or Not Membership

You can cancel your premium subscription anytime you want. For that in the Payment section, you just need to click the Unsubscribe button. For payments made via App Store, you need to terminate the membership in the settings of your Apple device.

You should remember that refund is impossible, and you will be able to use the perks of paid features until the next billing date.

Data Protection

Another thing we want to give Hot or Not credit for is the high standard of personal information security. Verification of the account is one of the measures they take. Even if you get matched with a person, you will not be able to communicate with the user until they verify their profile.

Also, all the financial information as details of your credit cards are coffined. Twenty years on the market of dating sites and millions of happy and safe customers only underpin the Hot or Not website efforts.

Hot or Not: Anything Else to Choose?

It is funny for us to talk about the competitors because all of them were not the event in the project state when Hot or Not was in the process of making. Yet, you can try with other dating sites that work similarly – swiping. There are such apps as Tinder, MeetMe, Badoo, Bumble, and so on.

Summary

We analyzed everything that Hot or Not has to offer and ready to conclude that the site went far beyond just a dating site. It is a community where people can find not some NSA relationships, but also a penpal, a friend, someone to communicate, and share fun (or not) stories. To some extent, it reminds a regular social network, but only with better conditions and stricter verification process. A straightforward design, user-friendly interface for both app and website make the interaction quick and straightforward.

Overall, we would score the site 5/5 and definitely use Hot or Not again.

Pablo

MS, RD & Writer

Pablo has done various life coaching sources and personal development. He has even worked as a relationship technician and loves empowering other people. Having encountered several hardships in life, he understands what others go through and is willing to help them. His primary focus is on building self-esteem and changing people’s perspectives on their challenges.

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