OurTime.com Reviews (Mar. 2015 Update)

OurTime.com is a dating site for the over 50 crowd. Read our review of OurTime.com from editors and readers.

History

OurTime.com is a dating website geared toward the over-50 crowd, and has been heavily advertised on television and the internet over the past two years.

Although a whois search shows that the domain OurTime.com has existed since 1998, a Wayback search shows that the domain was parked until 2005, and was even briefly forwarded to a reggae site after that. It wasn’t until the April 4, 2011 snapshot that OurTime.com appears as a dating site in the archives. At that time the tagline read, “The place where singles over 50 meet.” It also claimed that “Thousands join daily!” which seems a stretch for a brand new dating site.

Based on the information above, it’s safe to say that OurTime.com has been active for almost 4 years.

Our Profile

We set up profiles on OurTime.com in February 2013 and December 2014 to try it and note any differences. Profile creation is pretty standard fare, comparable to what you’d expect with the typical dating site. In both cases, we created a bare-bones profile for a 55-year old male, and ran some searches for ladies in the Las Vegas, Nevada area.

Searching

In 2013, you could search by marital status, ethnicity, relationship expectations, zodiac sign, smoking preference, height, body type, children, and religion. By late 2014, the search engine for the site seems less robust. If you click the “search” link, you are shown a default set of matches, which you can modify by using the Keyword Search tool.

Using the keyword tool, searchable age ranges include:

• 18-30
• 31-40
• 41-50
• 51-56
• 57-62
• 63-68
• 69-73
• Over 73

You can also manually type in an age range from the search box on the main screen.

There is also an option to search by distance or to include keywords. From the main screen, the search box only includes age range, zip code, online/offline, or profiles only with photos. While you can include such information as religion, ethnicity, and body type in your profile, it does not appear that you can search by these criteria as was once possible.

You also cannot search without first creating a profile, and your profile is invisible until you upload a photo. On more than one occasion, our search results yielded women’s profiles which used photos of men.

“I’m Interested” Feature

There is a feature on OurTime.com called “I’m Interested.” It’s similar to the Plenty of Fish feature called “Meet Me” where you are shown profile photos and asked if you are interested in that person based solely on the photo. If you select “yes” that person will be sent a “flirt” to let them know. Of course you will still have to sign up if you want to communicate with them. You can narrow down who you see by age and location.

You can search the “I’m Interested” section by state, or by the entire country, as well as by age range. On several occasions, we were asked if we were interested in “her” and shown a man’s photo.

Over 50?

Although ourtime.com caters to people older than 50, users as young as 18 can set up profiles.

Fake Profiles?

Within minutes of signing up, it was apparent that fake profiles were in the mix. One telling sign was that several of the profiles in our area offered generic bios, never mentioning anything about life in the Las Vegas area at all. One would expect real profiles to say something about the area in which they live, such as, “I moved to Vegas in 1989…” or “I work at Sunrise Hospital…” and for some profiles this was the case. But some profiles seemed to describe activities not usually found in Vegas, and it even seems as though some profiles weren’t even written by native English speakers. The search results never cease to amaze with the bizarre profiles they return.

After going through dozens of photos in the “I’m Interested” section, we didn’t see a single photo with a Las Vegas landmark, and only a couple that showed architecture common to the Southwest United States. One would expect to see at least a few profiles with a person at Lake Mead, the Strip, or Red Rock – but there wasn’t one that indicated these users were living in this part of the country.

Why have fake profiles? While it’s purely conjecture, it would stand to reason that the only way to get a dating site started would be to start off with some fake profiles in order to lure real people onto it. No one wants to be the only profile for a particular city on a dating site.

While we’re not saying all the profiles here are fake, we believe that a certain percentage of them are.

Chat: Not free

There is a chat feature, and you will be shown many profiles on the side of your screen. If you attempt to chat with another member, you’ll be taken to the billing page and prompted to sign up.

How much does Ourtime.com cost?

While you can browse all you want, if you want to actually contact someone, you’ll have to pay. The cost of ourtime.com appears to be in a constant state of evolution.

As of February 2015, OurTime’s prices are:

• Value 6 months for $107.94 ($17.99 per month)
• Standard 6 months for $89.94 ($14.99 per month)
• 1 month: $29.99

This represents a change from February 2014, when we noted the following prices:

• 6 Months w/highlight: $83.94 ($13.99 per month)
• 6 Months no highlight: $71.94 ($11.99 per month)
• 1 Month: $23.99

Prior to February 2013, the prices were 1 month, 3 months, and 6 months for about $20.00, $54.00, and $72.00 respectively.

Billing Complaints

Be sure to take a look at the reader comments below, as many have expressed frustration with the billing process.

Spam

The email address we used to sign up for OurTime.com was set up solely for that account. After signing up for OurTime.com, that address immediately began receiving junk email.

OurTime “Network”

One curious note in the footer of an email sent to us by OurTime is the following:

OurTime.com is part of People Media’s OurTime Network, which includes SeniorPeopleMeet.com and SeniorsMeet.com. As a member of OurTime.com, your profile will automatically be shown throughout the OurTime Network at no additional charge.

While this is presented as a good thing – “Hey, sign up for one site and you’ll be seen on three!” – not everyone may want to be seen on a senior site. After all, OurTime.com is geared toward the 50+ crowd, and not all 50 year-olds consider themselves to be seniors. Not to mention that there are profiles for people as young as 18 on the site.

See our review of SeniorPeopleMeet.com, which we discovered via our spam folder back in 2013.

Google Trends History

The Google Trends graph below shows search interest in Ourtime.com over time. Interest in the site has been up and down since being registered in April of 2011, but appears to be fairly consistent. A peak surge of interest occurred in January of 2013.

Bottom Line

OurTime.com doesn’t offer anything that the big players don’t already have. In fact, we found that most of the profiles of real people in our area already had profiles on free dating sites such as Plenty of Fish and OK Cupid.

Your OurTime.com Review

Have you used OurTime.com? We want to hear from you in the comments below. Let us know of your experience, and what you liked or didn’t like about it.

Updated March 3, 2015
Originally published February 2013