Kinky Dating | Alt.com Review

Alt.com is an alternative to regular dating sites, and it’s right there in its name. How does Alt.com work though - and can you find kinksters who share your particular fetishes and interests? In the spirit of serving our vision to be the most trusted BDSM and Fetish community, we've asked Victoria Blisse (The Queen of Smut) to look into Alt.com for us.

Alt.com Overview | The alt-ernative?

www.alt.com is a website tailor-made for people into BDSM and alternative lifestyles, so you don’t have to dance around the vanilla - you can strut about in your latex catsuit and find others who are into the same thing as you. But how easy is it to connect with other kinksters with an Alt.com login?

Forming part of a larger group that contains the famous site, Adult Friend Finder, the first dating site primarily aimed at finding sexual partners, does an Alt.com login get you all the smooth professionalism you’d expect for all that experience?

Alt.com Visual Appeal | Dark and brooding

I knew I’d come over to the dark side from the moment I arrived at Alt.com. It’s black, with a highlight of grey with white text. It’s completely different from any of the mainstream dating sites which are bright and fresh. However, I couldn’t write an Alt.com review without mentioning how dated it looks. Blocky and crowded, it takes a little while to work out where everything is.

As an example, the message inbox is cluttered, and it can be challenging to work out where your messages are as there are lots of different folders they can end up in. On my first Alt.com login, I spent a lot of my time just working out where everything was.

Alt.com Navigation and User Experience | Old school

I had trouble signing up to Alt.com. The first two times I tried, I ended up being blocked. I’m unsure why, but I suspect because of the *** accounts I used, maybe I looked like a spam account. The process otherwise was fairly easy, but not necessarily friendly to all.

Questions are very binary, focusing on male or female, and transvestite, transgender and transsexual people are lumped together as one group. Also, the only orientations you can pick from are straight/gay/ bisexual or bi-curious. You can, however, select a profile as a couple, not just as a single person which is useful for those kinky couples out there who are looking for more.

Once you’ve signed up all you need to find fun kinksters is in the top bar of the site when you start your Alt.com login. It’s easy to search members, check webcams, photos, videos, join groups or chat with others. However, some of these things you’ll only be able to do if you’re a paid member, more about that later.  Though if you’ve read any other Alt.com review, you might have an idea of what’s coming.

Once you have an idea of what is on offer, it’s relatively easy to navigate. It’s finding everything in the first place that I found hard work. There is just so much, and it’s difficult to search out the specifics that you want. Even when using the various search tools, you get lots of hits for items that might mention the keyword you entered but don’t really have much to do with it.  Compared to the barrenness of mainstream dating sites you are quite spoilt for choice.

The site runs well, I noticed no lagging and when using the IM feature, I didn’t have any problems with it freezing or anything like that. Once you get to grips with the vastness, Alt.com works well.

Alt.com Community Feel | Kinks, fetishes and more

Alt.com has several ways to connect with the fetish community at large, from groups, blogs, and magazine articles, to live chat, webcams, and IM. It’s possible to meet lots of different kinksters. I could put all my kinks and fetishes on my profile so that people can see it at a glance. Meaning there was no awkward moment where I confessed what I was into. You can be honest about who you are with an Alt.com login.

It seems there are more men on Alt.com than women; one source suggests the site is made up of 80% males and only 20% females. What I saw when writing this Alt.com review certainly backs that up. However, the community is filled with practitioners of BDSM, fetishists, and kinksters, so you know that all the people you match up with will be open to kink, and that might make I worth an alt.com login for you.

As a woman, I found Alt.com a little overwhelming. There is no way to block users from messaging you; however, there is a link at the bottom of every page where you can report users for inappropriate behaviors. There isn’t a way to filter your incoming messages, which I found meant I was getting messages from interested parties worldwide.  

If you’re looking to meet people who are only within your local area, this might not be the site for you.  If you’re all about kink all the time, your Alt.com review will be different as there is so much fetish material for you to dig your teeth into.

Is Alt.com Free to Use? A little tease, nothing more

You can sign up to Alt.com for free; however, the features that can used for free are limited.

It is free to:

• Browse the hottest member’s videos and photos
• Use instant messenger, Flash Chat and Live Member Webcams (limited views)
• Read and post blogs
• Post status updates
• Use the groups feature

Everything else, including viewing full profiles and sending messages involves purchasing premium packages which means your options as a free member are limited, which is a definite negative of this Alt.com review.

There are adverts on the site on most pages, they’re not too invasive, but I wouldn’t want to browse the site anywhere that wasn’t private because of the explicit nature of these ads.

Alt.com Review | Final thoughts - a kinky haven?

Alt.com has lots of users, is made for people in alternative lifestyles and has a community feel - but can be hard to navigate. It limits free users in what they can do and looks quite old fashioned. However, sometimes a bit of old-style nostalgia isn’t a bad thing.

If you’re sick of mainstream dating sites and want something fresh where you can send messages as soon as you sign up, you should have an alternative dating experience at Fetish.com. 

This article was originally published on 1st January 2015 and was updated on 7th January 2020.