About.com Rating

Overview from Ave Maria Singles

"Our members prefer courtship and romance to casual dating and take the time to cultivate substantial, rewarding relationships. Every person in the AveMariaSingles community is a practicing Catholic with a rich spiritual life."

What Do You Get When You Sign Up and Subscribe?

Ave Maria Singles is most definitely geared towards actively practising Catholics, and those wanting to find a mate to marry.

With that in mind, almost everything on the site is geared towards this mindset and goal, right from the second you join. So for instance, the Terms of Use detail a lot of do's and don'ts along this vein, such as strongly suggesting you only contact those you want to discern, and to avoid evangelizing if you see someone on a person's profile that you disagree with.

As you have to pay for a full membership to even access the site, it's tricky to determine whether or not there will be enough people in your area that will make it worth your while. Based on my own experience (where I plugged in a city of less than a million people) as well as having spoken to several other men and women who have used the site, I can fairly confidently say that the number of users for most folks will be adequate. The only complaint I heard about the site (and I heard it from three separate people with zero ties to one another) was that some of the members came across as judgemental when it came to having children from prior relationships.

 

Unique Features 

It's rare to find a site that will help you automate, or at least make it easy, to let folks know that you'd like to focus on getting to know someone else instead. Ave Maria Singles offers exactly this however, and I applaud them for it. While only available to Premium members (see below for the costs and levels of membership) if you're serious about meeting someone, I highly recommend using this feature.

Another handful of unusual options offered including a section where you can ask questions of now-married members as well as "Father" (a Catholic priest) and "Anthony" (founder of the site), the option to use the site in English, Spanish or Portuguese. You can also opt-out of your image/profile being shown publicly to folks outside of the membership base (this is highly unusual), and

You can also choose whether you're Active(ly) looking, or Non-Active - a great plus to those who get frustrated with zero responses to their emails, because then at least you know the person just isn't around. As well, Ave Maria automatically sticks all members who haven't logged in foe 30 days in Non Active m

Membership Fees

A six month membership costs $99, whereas a Signature membership costs $179, and is sold under the premise, "No renewals, ever", which sounds to me like a lifetime membership. There's also the option to purchase a Premium membership in addition to both of the aforementioned options, which costs $25/year for the first year, and $50/year after that. If you follow them on Twitter (@avemariasingles) you'll occasionally come across discount codes.

The Bottom Line

Of all the Catholic dating sites that I've reviewed, I'd say Ave Maria Singles is my favorite. While I'm far from a fan of the having to sign up before checking the site out -part of the equation, my fears were quickly assuaged once I logged in. It's easy to use, with a decent number of members, and a definite focus on finding faith-based love. I would however read the dating site's fine print before committing to a membership, as there is no mention of refunds or customer service anywhere that I could find. So as always, buyer beware.

Disclosure: The company did not provide free access to this service for review purposes, and the reviewer paid for her own trial membership. For more information, please see our Ethics Policy.