A free online dating website appealing to a majority of middle-aged med, plentyoffish.com generates more than four million unique visitors in a month with a large following in Canada. The site’s owner, who is the sole proprietor and has no employees, claims that the site is five times larger than any other dating website in service and claims over a quarter million log-ins per month. Forums are moderated by volunteers and the website’s revenue is gained through advertising.

New members fill out a basic profile, including brief statements about themselves and preferences for a first date. Next, members are taken to a self-evaluation questionnaire asking for various responses in regards to hypothetical social situations, preferences, and personality traits. The system then rates the person on five factors: self-confidence, family orientations, self-control, openness, and easygoingness. Members can search for others in their area based on these factors, with the system assigning a percentage chance of a match. Members can send messages via the website’s email, instant message other members, and rate other members based on their profile picture. The system refines search results for a member over time based on their profile, previous searches, member rating, and other member’s searches that match the member’s characteristics. Members can also search based on a list of criteria.

Other features include forums on a variety of subjects (mostly dating and relationship related), see who has viewed their profile recently and take other relationship evaluation tests that provide feedback on a number of relationship needs and traits.