Sarah Beeny My Single Friend

WhichDate Review – July 13, 2021

SHE'S THE queen of dating tips, and Sarah Beeny's match-making website My Single Friend celebrated ten years in the business earlier this year. By Felicity Thistlethwaite PUBLISHED: PUBLISHED: 00.

Slightly cheaper alternative to Match with much less users. Average age seems to be 32-50.
Lets your friends fill out the awkward bits for you.

1. MySingleFriend began in 2004 by TV presenter and property extraordinaire Sarah Beeny, who’s well known for setting her single buddies up. Nowadays, My Single Friend is one of the UK’s most popular dating sites. The site has banished the stigma associated with online dating and innovated a modern approach to finding likeminded people.
2. Sarah Beeny, founder of MySingleFriend.com, said: 'I love nothing more than meddling in my friends’ love lives, and Date MySingleFriend events are the perfect opportunity for match makers like.

MySingleFriendReview: Everything you need to know before signing up

Below we’ve put together an in-depth review of MySingleFriend that covers absolutely everything you need to know before you sign up, including the cost, features and other reviews from genuine users.

REVIEWED BY: Darren
LAST UPDATED: JANUARY, 2019
BIO: 30 year old Male who lives in the south of England

I was a bit pessimistic when it came to using MySingleFriend, the brain child of Sarah Beeny. My initial thoughts are that it caters more towards females, basically your female friends would probably take the process of 'talking for you' more serious than some of my male mates would. With that in mind, I asked one of my close female friends to help me out.
MySingleFriend is the only online dating site out there that puts your friends in control of your profile, according to them its a 'no-nonsense approach to dating by matching singles through their friends’ descriptions'. I guess this encourages an element of truth but your friends aren't going to hang you out to dry at the same time, so jumping in I was sceptical.
It definitely takes away some of the hassle of writing an online dating profile yourself, you still get a chance to write for yourself but it does give you a new viewpoint - I find it a chore to write about myself, but then again I have used over 50 dating services!!
The site, MySingleFriend was founded by Sarah Beeny, the Channel 4 TV presenter, and her husband, Graham Swift, in 2004 and claims to have over 200,000 users. Since it was launched it has apparently helped hundreds of couples find love through the website’s unique hands-off approach - read below for my take on their service, I've used it and reviewed it as best as I can, enjoy!

MySingleFriend works by getting the people who know you better than anyone else, your friends, to write your profile for you. Of course, you get to approve everything that’s been written before it’s published, but having others write your profile for you not only takes a weight off your shoulders, but paints a better/more trustworthy picture of who you are. Your friends also have the power to recommend other singles already using the site to you if they think you’re a good match, which requires them to use the site for you, I don't really get it.
But don’t worry if you’re the single person looking for a date. You can sign up and create your own profile then invite your friends to become your virtual wingmen by providing descriptions and comments for you.

MySingleFriend has two sets of rates: one for accessing the dating site via the website only and one for accessing the dating site via the app. The rates are pretty much identical, with the exception of a few pence here and there.
For a more detailed breakdown along with tips see our MySingleFriend costs page.

When you choose a subscription, you have to pay for it in full using a Visa card or Mastercard. No Paypal or spreading the cost into manageable monthly payments here!
TOP TIP: When you sign up, your payment will automatically be renewed when it ends. Because of this, I recommend turning off automatic renewal as soon as you pay for a subscription by clicking on ‘My Profile & Settings’ then visiting the ‘Payments & Subscriptions’ page. If you forget to turn off automatic renewal straight away, you can cancel your account and stop any unwanted future payments within 24 hours of your subscription ending.

Signing up for an account on MySingleFriend was relatively relaxed and enjoyable, since the idea is for you not to worry too much about ‘bigging’ yourself up and letting your friends do it for you. I ordered a pizza and had my friend round, so we kind of did it together, so it was a fun night in. There are a couple of simple questions about your appearance and preferences which are quick and easy to answer, thanks to dropdown menus. The most time consuming part was writing a short description about myself. But you only need a minimum of 20 words and your friends will be adding their descriptions later anyway, so it’s not a big deal - I skipped this and just let me friend do there one first.

Add a picture then fill out your friend’s name and email address to invite them to write a dating profile for you and you’re done!
The whole process easily takes less than 10 minutes, no big deal.
You can upgrade to a paid subscription there and then or hit the ‘No thanks, I’ll do this another time’ button and put it off.

After you create your profile, you’ll need to wait for the admin team to review it before you can fully access all features of the site, which is a nice safety feature but also strikes me as 'not many users'. But in the meantime, you can browse your potential matches straight away.
When I first signed up, I had literally pages and pages of matches and was pleasantly surprised.....until I refined by 'last active' - in the county I had chosen, there were only 5 matches that met my search (20-35, last active in 1 month) this point alone should tell you all you need to know about the site.
I went on to check the other counties using my search preference of 20-35 and alst logged in within 1 month and the results are below:
- London 160 matches
- Oxfordshire 4 matches
- Berkshire 8 matches
- Buckinghamshire 3 matches
- Gloucestershire 2 matches
- West Midlands 14 matches I must admit, the majority of the matches that were coming up were quite attractive women and I did contact most of them

Each MySingleFriend profile includes a large photo, several other photos (if the user added any extras) and all the basic info such as age, gender, gender you’re looking for, where you live, if you have children, etc, as standard, plus a short personal description if they decided to write one. If the user’s friends have answered any questions about their tastes (questions that seem unhelpful at first, like are they more TOWIE than Made in Chelsea, but can really help you spark up a conversation later on) these will also appear on the profile, as will any description written by a friend the user has chosen to show, alongside their comments.

Sarah Beeny My Single Friend Cast

One thing that really makes MySingleFriend stand out from the online dating website crowd is that they let you read all your messages for free as soon as you sign up and have your profile approved by the admin team. With a free account, you can reply with pre-set messages to let the sender know you’re interested and with a paid subscription you can write your own message to really tell them how you feel.

These are pre-written texts you can use to reply to any messages you receive if you’ve got a free MySingleFriend account.

Hit ‘like’ on someone’s profile and they’ll be added into your ‘likes’ section, but they’ll also receive a notification so they know you like them.

MySingleFriend’s bookmarking feature allows you to save other singles’ profiles into one place without them even knowing. This is great if you’re not sure if you’re into someone yet and want to wait a bit longer before contacting them. Right now, bookmarking is only available on the desktop and mobile versions of the website, not the app.

'Veto' is available via the MSF app. It basically gives your friend the power to recommend other types of people that might interest you. The idea is to get you to branch out of your usual type. It also acts as a red flag system, so your friend can highlight anyone they think you should avoid - this turned into a fun game for my mates to send me a rare mix of people...most (all) of which were pointless as I 'get in touch with any of them but I get the idea of it.

After you complete the very short application form and set up your profile, you get access to quite a lot of features without handing over any cash. With a free account you can:

• Have a live profile on the site that other singles can view
• Search and browse other singles on the website - including photos
• View other singles’ profiles, including their photos
• Like other singles’ profiles to see if they like you back
• Get your friends to recommend profiles for you
• Send and receive vetoes (only with the MySingleFriend app)
• Read Messages
• Send quick pre-written replies to messages (only if you’ve completed your profile)
• Bookmark profiles without other singles knowing (only with the MySingleFriend app)
• Make notes on the profiles you like (only with the MySingleFriend app)
• See who’s viewed your profile (only with the MySingleFriend desktop website)

MySingleFriend App

The majority of MySingleFriend features are available on both website and app platforms, but selected elements like Veto are only available on the app. I spoke to MySingleFriend and they said they are constantly reviewing platform features and making improvements, so it’s likely that you’ll be able to use all features on both the website and the app in the near future.
The MySingleFriend app is available to download for free on Apple devices, but to actually use any of the features, you’ll need to pay for an app subscription. Even if you’ve already paid to access the website as a member, you still need to pay a separate fee to use the app. The MySingleFriend app does come with a few added benefits, so paying for the app would be my recommendation over the site.
EG Through the app you can bookmark profiles without the user knowing plus your friends can suggest potential matches to help mix up your dating a bit and motivate you to avoid your usual suspects.

If you cancel your subscription within 14 days of signing up, you’re entitled to at least a partial refund. If you haven’t sent a custom message using MySingleFriend’s internal messaging system, you’ll get a full refund for however much you paid. If you have sent a custom message, the following will apply:
1. For subscriptions of 1 month or more: use calculated according to the days active at a daily rate of £1.43 and a refund for the difference.
2. For subscriptions of less than 1 month: no refund.The MySingleFriend customer service team can’t issue refunds for payments made through the app. To get a refund in this scenario, you need to contact Apple, which is pointless to even try!!!!

I try to keep the offers and discounts for the dating sites featured on Whichdate as up to date as possible.
With your help, I would love to make the site the 'Go To' resource when joining an online dating site. If you find a promo code that isn't featured here, please add it to the MySingleFriend promo code page and help a fellow user out - thanks so much

Match.com is one of the most popular dating sites in the UK and chances are, you’re considering signing up for it.
To help out, I’ve put together a short comparison between the two sites as I see it, to help you compare at a glance which one is best for you.
For more in-depth info see our full review Match.com Review.

• 6 Months £13.17 per month
• Hard work of filling in your profile is taken care of by your friend
• £5 for 5 days intro memership
• Nice way to get your friends to help, so you might find new matches you wouldnt have thought about before

• Not alot of active members
• App is only avilable on Apple
• Have to pay separately for app vs website

• 6 Months £19.95 per month
• 4 - 5 Million Uk Members
• Huge number and variety of singles to choose from
• Upgrade-able options to enhance your search
• The app is free
• Free events are included in your membership too

• Less focused on 'long terms relationships'
• More time consuming to look through tonnes of profiles

MySingleFriend Vs Match.com - VERDICT
​
Both sites are traditional online dating sites in that you need to find people to speak to yourself. Match is totally manual and MSF tries to tie your friends into the mix, which doesn't 100% work in my experience - my friend soon got bored after a few days, its a novelty for sure.
Online dating is hard at the best of times and to limit yourself to a site with so few numbers as MSF isn't in your best interests, in my experience, especially as the target audience isn't that well defined - its not as though there are particular set of people live on MSF that you cant find elsewhere.
I would fork out the extra couple of quid and join Match if you are torn between the 2.

MySingleFriend, like any other online dating website out there, can be a dangerous place if you don’t take the precaution of reading some dating safety guides first. Although you’ll rarely find scammers and fraudsters on dating websites that you have to pay to use and MySingleFriend manually checks all their profiles, a few do slip through the gaps and you need to know what to do when you spot them.
If you think someone’s profile is inappropriate or they’re behaving inappropriately, you can click on the ‘Report inappropriate profile’ link on their profile to report them or send an email to abuse@mysinglefriend.com. There’s also a comprehensive Safety page on the MySingleFriend website that goes into detail about the best ways to stay safe when it comes to online dating, from messaging new singles to meeting up with them for the first time.

MySingleFriend is recognised by the Online Dating Association in the UK

4th Floor, Holden House,
57 Rathbone Place,
London
W1T 1JU

MySingleFriend Phone 02074218250

admin@mysinglefriend.com

During the short time I spent on MySingleFriend, I did get chatting to a few women and managed to go on 1 date. Although the small number of matches were good, I couldn't get over the lack of choice, especially if this is your first venture into online dating.
Because the idea is for your friends to write your profile descriptions and suggest potential matches, you’ve got to be entirely open about online dating right from the start. If this is something you’d rather keep quiet or only share with a few of your closest friends, you might be better off going with one of the more traditional online dating websites.
The fact that people have roped their friends into the process makes me feel that they are more serious about the service, so if you do find a good match, they will probably be serious. I do like the concept of hearing what a friends says about the person too, but the number of users was a deal breaker for me.

MY RECOMMENDATION: If you have used other dating sites before, want to try something new and you live in/near a large city, then go set up a free account to see if there are any users in your area. You will quickly see the type of people who are already signed up to MySingleFriend without paying anything for an account so you should be able to get a feel for it.
But, if you are fairly new to online dating, then Id try one of the larger sites like Match / eHarmony or if you want to try casual dating, get on one of the free apps.

The Good Stuff:

• Great free features, you can see what you are getting without paying anything
• Let’s you share the workload of building a profile and finding matches with your friends

The Bad Stuff:

• Doesn’t automatically recommend matches for you – you and your friends have to find them
• Very low number of new users
• The app / site are separate memberships

Sarah Beeny My Single Friend Series

Below are some un-biased reviews of MySingleFriend that have come from real users.
If you have used the site and want to leave a review? Please leave your review below.

Hello

Sarah Beeny My Single Friend Series

It’s really exciting to have a place where I can talk about all the things I spend lots of time on.

I’ve always stood for clarity, straightforward simple advice and value for money. All my projects, however different, stand for the same thing.

We’ve just launched a great new ad for my estate agency, Tepilo. I can’t tell you how satisfying it is to be able to help people sell their homes with all the support they need but without charging them a fortune to do it. The brilliant Tepilo team are saving people thousands of pounds every day!

Rise Hall has hosted some absolutely stunning weddings over the summer, check out the glorious photos on our facebook page, www.facebook.com/risehallweddings

Single people hooking up together is, as always, a huge joy! Over the summer, My Single Friend has become stacked with gorgeous, fun and friendly people…what are you waiting for… www.mysinglefriend.com

My most recent project “Sarah Beeny Home” has been a wonderfully creative process to be part of. Designing decorative handles that work for all styles and project size and coming up with ways to reuse and revamp tired pieces of furniture has been really exciting. I hate the throwaway society we live in, so reusing old, well made pieces rather than chucking out and replacing with poorly made new ones is an absolute no brainer for me!

x Sarah