Quick Summary:

Hookup potential: 4/5 Features: 4/5 Design: 3/5 Content: 4/5

• Excellent site for sugar daddies and sugar babes to get to know each other
• Complete suite of communication tools including email and live chat
• Good search and filtering features
• Lots of original content
• Does not filter out members of the gender which I am not looking for by default

The Full Story:

Sugar Daddy for Me is a great site where sugar daddies can look for their sugar babes and vice versa. Those these are the main sorts of relationships the site targets, other kinds of user are catered for, including sugary mommies, a gay sugar daddies, male sugar babies, men looking for extramarital affairs, and women looking for extramarital relationships.

The home page is quite simple but there are several particularly good features. A prominent one is the Control Panel where one can do various things like checking mail, saving search results, managing favorites, making changes to profile information, managing videos and pictures, previewing one’s gallery and profile, checking on who is online, and accessing the site through an iPhone.

Checking who is online is a very important feature because you are able to see those members whom you can chat with. One niggle I have with the site, though, is that I specifically indicated in my profile that I am looking for sugar babes–why then does it show me pictures of men in my search results when I have made it clear that I am looking for women? The site does explain that the first list is not filtered; I just don’t think this is a sensible default.

In the Quick Search feature, I can specify more details regarding the person whom I am looking for by indicating whether she is a sugar babe or a sugar mommy, an age range, and a location. I can also specify that the site will only show those members who have uploaded their photographs. In the Advanced Search feature, I can be more detailed in specifying other features, such as body type, marital status, and race. I agree that this functionality could be helpful but there are plenty of other features that could be added to permit me to further refine the search.

Another way to look for possible dates is through the Browse category in the menu bar on the top of the page. This category is divided into New Members, Most Viewed, In Your Area, and New Photos. If I want to search only among the newbies, I can click on New Members. (This time, it appeared that filtering has been conducted based on my preferences. Only sugar babes were shown.) The regretful aspect of the site I quickly realized by searching is that many of the new members do not have profile pictures. Possibly this is understandable–they are new to the site, but I do not believe that it would take a long time to get a digital photo and upload it to the Internet.

Another problem that I have with the Browse category is that there is no provision for instant messaging here even for those who are online. I have to click on the Online Now link on the upper right corner and then find the specific person again. This is very inconvenient. To add insult to injury, this particular tool shows all of those who are online and does not filter out members that should not be there (such as men) because I am looking for young sugar babes.

Anyway, you may also look for your date among the most popular members in the Most Viewed subsection of the Browse category. They are subdivided based on four age ranges. In the New Photos subsection, you are able to see the pictures that have been recently uploaded. The In Your Area subsection is for searching the membership database for a particular age range, Zip code, and gender. A map is shown and the locations of these members are tagged on the map.

Meanwhile, email messaging is also a great tool to use in looking for possible dates. The advantage of email is that even if a member is not online, you can still send a message to her. However, a more helpful feature here could have been the inclusion of the photo of the email sender.

All in all though, this is a great site for sugar daddies meeting sugar babes and vice versa. If it sounds like you, check it out.

Quick Summary:

Hookup potential: 4/5 Features: 3/5 Design: 5/5 Content: 4/5

• Straight-up dating agency for people looking for affairs and casual relationships
• Direct and to the point. You get a slew of profiles when you search according to proximity, and none of them seem fake.
• Simple, functional design. Just what you need and nothing else.

The Full Story:

This is a nice, easy website for people looking to hook up locally, particularly if it’s for an extra-marital tryst. Ashley Madison’s concept is “a dating agency online”. After logging in, the main options presented are to: open your mail, update your profile, or search for profiles. There are no bothersome ads, no link to this and that. There isn’t even any of the harping cams and videos upsell advertising that many adult dating websites have.

What you see is what you get. Take the search for example. You can do a simple or advanced search. With advanced search, you can filter for fields. You can remove the “attached” people from your results page, if you are only looking for singles, or you can search for them exclusively, if you’re after the thrill of a fling.

Your search results in a list of profiles. You will see the basics elements of the profiles there, such as picture, location, age, what they’re looking for, and their current relationship status. For each result, you’ll see if the person’s online or not. You have an option to immediately chat with those online, if the person isn’t online you can message her or send her an online gift using credit points, which you purchase—a slightly different model than the subscription one used by most site. (A good model, we think—you only pay for what you use.) Profiles also have a private “showcase” link; you will only see the photos in here if you have permission from the showcase owner.

And that’s it. That’s basically the website.

Ashley Madison boasts a higher success rate in terms of hookups and affairs instigated than most other sites; the lack of community chat, webcams, and porn may be the main reasons why. Contact here is one-on-one, focused, personal, and direct. People here know what they want and are determined to get it.

For example, when you send a gift, there’s a standard flirty note there, and a field where you can add your own message. You are discouraged from sending random gifts to random people, because every gift you send costs you credits. When you “wink” at someone, you need to let them know what your wink means. There’s practically no way to avoid getting straight to the point. When you find someone and contact them you’re almost forced to let them know right away what you’re after. To me, that’s how an adult dating site should work. No games.

As for the design, the website is easy to navigate. Your standard links are those to your email, the profile search, and the links to update your profile or account. There’s no confusion as to where you’d need to go.

When you need to contact someone on your search results, you just go into their profiles, and chat, message, or give a gift. These are the only interaction allowed within this dating service, and it’s enough.

Like the site itself, the design is functional, straightforward, and clean – the only thing that bugged me visually was the “100% Affair Guaranteed” banner.

This banner promotes a paid service of the site (it’s an upsell). For almost $300, Ashley Madison Agency guarantees that you’ll hook up with someone when you use their website – so long as you undertake to chat with someone, message someone, and give gifts to someone a certain number of times per month for three months. Failure to do so voids the guarantee. You don’t get anything extra with this – it’s just a guarantee. Unless you’re a real troglodyte I’m pretty sure you’d be able to achieve the same result without the guarantee.

The thing is the banner is shoved in your face every time you load a page. Literally, they show the banner every time they get a chance. And it’s not like you can just click on the banner to close it, or choose to hide it. It stays there until you move to another page. It starts to feel irritating and intrusive.

I guess nothing’s perfect. Overall however, the Ashley Madison Agency seems on to a winner, though, and represents real innovation in the space. You might not be able to do better for your buck.