BravoDate Dating Review: Registration, Communication, Prices
BravoDate is advertised as one of the top Slavic dating sites, but is that due to the quality of services or the excellent marketing strategy? Our team decided to check that, so we bought 750 credits for $149,99 and tested all the features. We share our thoughts on BravoDate, its pros, cons, and costs in this review.
Site overview
Things we liked
- Free registration and viewing profiles
- Most female members have a lot of photos (real photos, to be exact, we used Google search by image to check it)
- Some girls have up to 7 profile videos
- A lot of validated profiles
- Multiple interaction features (some of them are free)
Things we didn’t like
- Watching profile videos is a premium feature
- No mobile app
- No video calls
Who is BravoDate for
- Singles who want to find foreign matches and see how it goes
- Guys who are curious about dating women from Eastern Europe
- Men and women who feel more comfortable when meeting new people online
BravoDate costs
| Price | Credits |
| $9.99 | 20 credits ($2.99 for the first-time buyers) |
| $19.99 | 50 credits |
| $44.99 | 125 credits |
| $69.99 | 250 credits |
| $149.99 | 750 credits |
Creating an account on BravoDate
We’ve done some research before joining the site, so let’s talk about it and its niche in a bit more detail. This is an international online dating platform with about 500,000 monthly visitors that was exclusively designed for Slavic single women and men from different Western and Asian countries who want to meet and date them. Speaking of dating, the site accepts all members (adults, of course) regardless of what type of relationships they are looking for.
We decided to sign up as a male member looking or Slavic matches. It didn’t take much time (5 minutes or even less), and most importantly, we didn’t have to provide any financial data or make that 1-dollar payment. The procedure was a pretty standard one:
- We filled in the registration form on the site—indicated the gender and date of birth, created a username, and provided a valid email address. This was the only part we couldn’t skip, by the way.
- Answered some questions about ourselves (hobbies, favorite music genres, etc.) and wrote a short self-description.
- Answered some questions about women we’d like to meet and indicated our priorities.
- Uploaded a profile photo.
Basically, that was all. After we did it, we saw a few matches (we couldn’t like them right away, but didn’t do it because, at this stage, we couldn’t view their profiles) and accessed the site. We could skip all the questions in quizzes, self-description and upload a photo later—we just didn’t use this opportunity as we wanted our profile to be complete from the very beginning of our experiment.
Tips for those who are going to join Bravo Date
- You can add more than one profile picture, and you can make some of them private—other members will be able to view them only after they start a conversation with you.
- Writing a good self-description makes sense—we met different people, with short and meaningless descriptions and with mini-essays in their profiles. We contacted members from the second group way more often, so yes, the About Me section can really help one stand out on BravoDate.
Free & premium features
BravoDate website is one of the platforms that have a proper balance between free and premium features, and for us, it was important to understand if the number and quality of free services compensate for the price of premium services and if the site provides the good value.
Free features
First, let’s talk about the free features:
- All types of search and the People swiping feature. There are two ways to discover potential partners: an easy one with filters and a fun one—with random matches. We enjoyed both, but the first probably works better if you know exactly what you are looking for.
- Browsing profiles and public photos. All members have free access to profiles, which is great—we probably viewed hundreds of them.
- Following other members, viewing posts on the Newsfeed. Newsfeed works both as the regular feed on Instagram or social media, but it’s also a fun way to meet someone attractive. If you do like someone, you can follow this person for free (most members don’t usually post something as frequently as people on Instagram usually do, though).
- Winks, likes, and favorites. The best thing about them is that a user receives notifications—so, you pay nothing, but there is a chance that this person will reach you (3 women sent us the first messages after we sent a wink).
- Support services. The only way to reach the support is by sending an email to [email protected]. We contacted them twice, and received responses in 5-10 hours depending on the time when we sent a request. The answers were detailed enough and covered our issues, so we assume we’ve received messages from real people. But the absence of live chat was still a drawback.
Premium features and how much do they cost?
So, there are no premium subscription plans, but there are credits you can purchase to use special features. As we’ve noted, we bought the most expensive package—750 credits for $149,99 just because it was the best value ($0,2 per credit compared to $0,5 per credit when you buy only 20 credits), and here is what we could pay for on BravoDate website:
- Live chat—20 credits/$4 for 10 minutes. That’s the communication tool we used most frequently. It’s the cheapest and the most engaging one, actually—you can talk, send stickers, good old emojis, photos, and things like that. In fact, we found out the only serious drawback when using Live chat—we could initiate a conversation only with a person who’s online right now.
- Mails—30 credits/$6 for a Mail (the first mail will be cheaper and cost you 10 credits/$2). Mails are great if you like to write those long letters instead of typing tons of short messages, but we prefer the second option. Still, we sent 4 Mails to different women with plenty of questions and information about ourselves, and for us, it didn’t work as well as instant messaging. It was more expensive and less convenient—we could ask more questions and get more information during 10 minutes in live chat and save 2 dollars.
- Gifts—the cost ranges from about 400 credits/$80 to thousands of credits. There are tons of different items to choose from, but our main goal was to test the communication features, and we didn’t want to spend half of our budget on a gift for a woman we barely knew, so to be honest, we didn’t test this service. Still, if you meet someone special and want to surprise them, gift delivery will be pretty useful.
- Real meeting request—625 credits/$125. We understand what this feature is for—you meet a special person on the site and are ready to meet IRL—that’s when you can send a request (which, however, can be rejected). Still, a user can just ask a girl if she wants to meet you for free, so we don’t think that’s a useful feature.
- Watching videos—50 credits/$10. We watched 3 profile videos and then decided to stop spending credits on this feature just because it was probably designed for people who want to make sure their match looks like their photos. We checked that, and in all three cases, ladies were as attractive as their pictures (otherwise, they wouldn’t probably upload the videos), so paying for it again and again didn’t make much sense for us.
For us, live chat was the number one communication tool—it worked well, it was way more fun than Mails, and most importantly, way cheaper than most other services.
Generally speaking, the BravoDate website is not cheap. But we can assume that if you use it effectively and have a good dating strategy, don’t contact a lot of random members a day, use search properly to meet ladies who really meet your criteria, and don’t continue conversations with someone who is obviously not your type, it can turn into a mid-range international dating site.
How to look for matches on BravoDate?
We tested all the types of search on BravoDate and looked for the matches by using:
- Basic search (there is a Search link on the header)—by age and online/offline status.
- Extended search (click Extend search under the basic filters)—lets applying more specific filters like city, marital status, education, children, habits, etc.
- The People (there’s a separate link on the header, too)—Tinder-like feature to find random matches.
So, what did we like best?
Extended search actually works well for people who have specific criteria. Though we couldn’t use super-specific filters like tattoos, hair color, etc., we tried to imagine a perfect woman we’d like to meet and found 5 pretty good matches.
We could browse profiles in a new window to read all the information first and add ladies to favorites if we weren’t sure that we wanted to contact them right now. We just came back to profiles of ladies we liked later. Other search features worked as expected too, but as we’ve noted above, they are rather for members who want to meet random matches than for singles looking for someone special.
Profiles of female site users
Speaking of profiles, most of them were pretty detailed. We could access any of them just by clicking on a members’ profile picture, and here’s what you’ll likely to see:
- Profile photo and other pictures uploaded by a user on the left.
- Chat window right under the basic information. If the looks are everything you care about, you can contact a member right away. Still, we preferred scrolling down the page to learn more information about a woman.
- Basic details— education, marital status, all the things that we mentioned in the Search section.
- Self-description—we paid special attention to this section because in most cases, the most useful information about a member can be found there.
By the way, most profiles we viewed were validated, and there were profile videos, which is obviously a benefit of using this site—on many other platforms, you can’t always be sure you’re not talking to a catfish right now.
How to interact with members
As we’ve already noted, there are two ways to chat with members—by using a messenger right on the site or by Mails.
There is always the Chat Now button, so you will see it no matter if you are looking for matches using the search or the People feature.
Mails, however, become available only after you click on a member’s profile.
Winks can be sent after browsing a profile, too.
In live chat, you can send stickers and media (if you really need that because stickers cost 5 credits) and attach photos in mails.
There is also the Message section on the Main Menu (header of the site), and a user can see all read and the number of unread messages.
What makes BravoDate stand out
BravoDate has some special features you won’t find on most other dating sites:
- Newsfeed. That’s a feed like a feed on Instagram and other popular social media sites; and like on Instagram, most members post their photos and write a few words that matter for them right now.
- Meeting request. If someone looking for a special woman in Ukraine or Russia meets her through the site, he can use this feature just to get her contact details and address. Request can be rejected, though.
- Contact request. Any member can request personal contacts and stop paying for interaction with a particular member on the site. However, the administration shares a user’s contacts only if the two had a long history of messages and other forms of communication before.
Our user experience
We contacted about 20 different girls—was it a good or bad experience? Well, we didn’t contact them all in live chat—we just sent winks to some of them, sent Mails to some of them, and yes, chatted with some girls who were online. 3 ladies sent messages after receiving a wink. However, all the women who received messages from us responded to them, and their messages looked adequate. They were obviously not automatically generated or anything like that.
Here is another important point—most ladies we’ve virtually met (girls from different countries—Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus) were looking for boyfriends, and some noted they don’t mind chatting, see how it goes, and maybe meet IRL one day. We had a few really nice, deep conversations, so yes, we were satisfied with the experience overall.
How to use BravoDate properly—Tips & recommendations
So, what we realized was you can use BravoDate effectively or waste a lot of time and money without any profit. How to avoid the second scenario? Here are some tips from us:
- Don’t forget to claim your 20 bonus credits—we recommend spending them in Live Chat or send your first Mail and wait until another member responds to you.
- Decide whether you really want to write that long letters in the future—the Mails feature is more expensive than live chat—$6 per letter compared to $4 for 10 minutes in Live Chat.
- Watch your credits—choose the features you like best and use them to contact the best ladies. Decide if you want to watch a profile video (that’ll cost you $10) or if you are really ready to send a meeting request.
The verdict—Our experts’ opinions
“I liked that BravoDate is not one of the sites that promise users to help in finding love—it’s just designed for people who want to meet someone from another country or another continent and see how it goes.”—Sara Wright“It’s a user-friendly site, with modern designed and good live chat—basically, it reminds good old messengers that were upgraded to a platform where you can meet someone attractive, learn a lot about the person, and yes, contact them in enough ways”
—Paul Bloom
