Kinky Dating | BDSM.com Review

BDSM.com labels itself as a kink community with personals but can you find others with your kinks and fetishes there? In serving our vision to be the most trusted BDSM and Fetish community, we asked writer, Victoria Blisse to take a look and provide this BDSM.com review.

BDSM.com Overview

BDSM.com aims to match you up with others within the kink community, so you don't have to deal with the vanilla, you can get straight into the kinky. But how easy is it to connect with other kinksters there?

Part of a larger group that contains the famous site, Adult Friend Finder, the first dating site primarily aimed at finding sexual partners as well as Alt.com, what makes a BDSM.com review worth it?
 

BDSM.com Visual Appeal | Dark and brooding

Initially, membership is of this kinky dating website is free, but that just allows you inside. It's a pretty hard sell right from the beginning. As soon as you sign up BDSM.com hits you with a page of add-ons that can be bought immediately. These range from “all the bondage movies you can handle,” to enhancing your profile in the listings or enabling standard members to message you directly.

There’s also the option to upgrade to silver or premium membership. Paying in a lump sum is far more economical if you can afford it. In essence, these monetised options allow you to reach out to those kinky contacts you like and to get noticed faster. Additionally, there's the option of round the clock phone support and the ability to create community blogs and live member videos.


BDSM.com cover.  Do you dare to look under the hood?
 

BDSM.com Navigation and User Experience | Clunky and chunky

The signup process was relatively 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, choose a profile as a couple or a group not just as a single person which is useful for those kinky couples and groups out there who are looking for more.

When signed up you'll find everything you want to search members, check webcams, photos, videos, join groups or chat with others in the top bar.  However, some of these things you'll only be able to do if you're a paid member, more about that later. 

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 difficult. There's so much; it's challenging to search out the specifics that you want, and much you can't even use for free.  However, you are 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, BDSM.com seems to work pretty well.

BDSM.com Community Feel | Fetish and kinks welcome

BDSM.com has several ways to connect with the kink community, groups, blogs, magazine articles, 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.  I must mention in this BDSM.com review that there seem to be a lot of professional profiles, possibly fake profiles and a majority of men on the site.

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 it worth a BDSM.com review for you.

As a woman, I found BDSM.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 behaviours. 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.

However, if you're all about kink all the time, your BDSM.com review will be different as there is so much fetish material for you to dig your teeth into.
 

Is BDSM.com Free to Use? A little, not a lot

You can sign up to BDSM.com for free; however, the features that can use 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 seeing full profiles and sending messages involves purchasing premium packages which means your options as a free member are limited and is a definite negative of this BDSM.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.

If you do want to sign up, it's much, much cheaper to sign up for a year in one go. The month by month price is £30.95 compared to just £8.95 if you sign up for the year. However, think about how likely you are to use the site before making that year-long commitment!
 

BDSM.com Final Thoughts | Kink life?

BDSM.com has lots of users (how many are genuine is in question, though) is made for people in BDSM and fetish lifestyles and has a community feel but can be hard to navigate, limits free users in what they can do and looks quite old fashioned.

If you're sick of mainstream dating sites and want something different where you can send messages as soon as you sign up, you should have a BDSM dating experience at Fetish.com.

Have you tried BDSM.com? Do you agree with our review? Tell us in the comments below. Spanks for reading!
 

Cover image released from Shutterstock.com