When a dating site wins awards, then you should feel 100% confident in using it.
That’s the type of dating app Christian Connection is. They won the UK Dating Awards’ ‘Daters’ favourite Site’ and ‘Best Niche Site’ for three years in a row from 2015-2017. Not only that, they won an award for their customer service along with their other two titles in 2017, as well as ‘Best Use of Social Media’ — that’s four awards in one year!
But enough about me bragging about Christian Connection; if you’re here reading this review, then chances are you’ve heard all these great things about them already. You want to know if they’re really true and if the dating app is as great as everyone says it is.
If you want to know what Christian Connection is truly all about, and if they’ll really help you connect with the Christian partner of your dreams, then read this in-depth review of the iPhone app.
First Impression
When it comes religions like Judaism and Islam, it’s usually important to date within your belief system! But how are you supposed to do that on mainstream dating apps when your beliefs don’t usually involve casual hookups and Netflix and Chilling?
The weird thing about Christian Connection is that there’s no sign-up button on their app; there’s only a log-in screen upon download, so if you haven’t registered on their website before downloading the app, be sure to do that, so you’re able to log-in.
You’ll also have to find your username to log-in with on your profile in a web browser, which is pretty annoying, and click on the ‘You’ in the upper right-hand corner of the screen to get it.
After doing all that, I finally got logged-in to Christian Connection’s app, and I have to say, it’s pretty underwhelming. The first thing you see is a blank white screen in your ‘Messages’ tab since you’re new and haven’t talked to anyone on the app yet. I’d say reminding someone no one’s talking to them isn’t the best way to get people to use your app.
I switched over to the next tab out of the three on the app, which is labeled ‘Discover’ where you can view members’ profiles. They’re laid out in a grid format, and you just scroll down until the page runs out and go back up to refresh and see more. Clicking on someone’s profile will pull up all of the same information you filled out when signing up, and you can choose to message or wave (I’ll explain this later) at them.
The last tab you can tap on are your settings; here, you can edit your profile, view your subscription details, control your notifications, and a few other things.
Pretty basic stuff.
Features
While you can’t access them through the app version, there are a few other features to Christian Connection that I assume makes them award-worthy besides just messaging.
When you log onto your account on Christian Connection’s website, you can view more features and have access to more tools to enhance your online dating experience with them. For one, the home page is more inviting since it shows you that same grid of profiles you can view in the ‘Discover’ tab of the app, instead of showing you a blank screen. If you click on someone’s profile in the desktop version, you now have the option to set them as a favorite, hide them from search results, block, report or view their board posts.
Waves are still there, which is basically like a poke on Facebook and just a nice gesture to show someone you’re interested in them.
Boards are a feature on Christian Connection where members can post their thoughts on three different categories: The Big Issues, Lighter Notes, and Culture Vulture. It’s your basic forum layout where all members of Christian Connection can interact and chat on. There are lots of different subtopics under each category talking about everything under the sun, and how faith plays a part in it all.
The one crucial feature that Christian Connection’s app lacks is a search tool. I’m not sure why, since it’s pretty standard in all dating apps and is a vital tool, but anyhow, you can access it on the desktop version. Using the search tool lets you filter for profiles that match your criteria in gender, age, and location; a super important factor that would help their app since the profiles that show up in the ‘Discover’ tab are not location-based.
Lists are also accessible on the website which shows you your favorite profiles, your fans, which are people that have added you to their favorites, and see who’s viewed you.
Two other really cool features you can get to on Christian Connection’s desktop version are meetups and their blog. Meetups are social gatherings organized by members of the site that they post as an open invitation to all, and the blog is there to help you with all dating concerns.
Pricing & Membership Benefits
Christian Connection starts you off with a free 3-day trial, so you can try out their service in its entirety to see if you like it or not. I like that they do this right off the bat without asking for any payment information so new members can get a feel for what they can do for them.
That means that once those 3 days are up, however, you’ll resort to a free member and lose some of the benefits you’ve enjoyed during that time. As a new user, you can only send 5 messages a day, but if you want to keep chatting, you can use some preset messages. But once you choose to upgrade your subscription, you’ll have unlimited messaging with all members.
Subscribed members can also reply to messages from their e-mail, view who’s online, keep who you’ve viewed private, and have priority support.
Each subscription plan offers the same benefits, but longer subscriptions provide the most savings. You can get a 1-month plan for $24 every month, a 3-month plan for $48 every 3 months, or a 6-month plan for $72 every 6 months. You can cancel your membership at any time, and will still have full access for the duration you paid for.
Pros
Dating is the central goal of Christian Connection, There are lots of people looking for relationships with like-minded individuals, and there are no extras to the site or app that interfere with that.
Cons
The app design is pretty lackluster and could definitely use some improvements from keeping it from looking so dull and be more enjoyable to use. The desktop version of Christian Connection is definitely way better to use and offers more options for online dating than their app.
The ‘Discover’ tab is also not location-based, so you can get people’s profiles that are nowhere near you; the only way you can be sure to see profiles from people in your area is to use the search tool in the desktop version.
Conclusion & Rating
Christian Connection has won awards for a reason, so the design shouldn’t steer you away from trying it out. With this app, communication is the central focus so all other aspects are denied, which could help or hurt them, but in this case, it’s helped.
It should be noted that their awards were won for their dating site, not the app, so if you’re going to use Christian Connection, I suggest not downloading it to your phone and instead log-in through your laptop or computer.
Christian Connection gets 3.5/5 Stars.