Match.com

Cost: £22.80 for one month, £45.65 for three months, £65.25 for six months.

Users: 15 million globally, 100,000 new UK members a month.

Unique features:“For people who are serious about relationships”. It offers six months free if you do not find “someone special” within six months. Customer comment: Louise Rimington, 26, says: “The great thing about Match is the numbers. Nothing boosts your confidence like 280 men “winking” at you. It’s easy to use. You write a profile, put up a picture and wait for the winks and e-mails to come rolling in, or get searching yourself. Several bantering e-mails later and you have a date. For me, this is where it all fell apart. I quickly learnt that a shared love of Hampstead Heath does not make a life partnership, and the chemistry during e-mail chats died with the first handshake. I signed off after a month and soon met a lovely man at a drinks party who is still around a year later.

“To be fair to Match, it did not work for me because I didn’t know what I was doing there in the first place. I was too young to be after a life partner and was not ‘looking for fun’ either.”

Rating (out of 10): 8

DatingDirect.com

Cost: £24.99 for one month, £14.99 a month for three months, £9.99 a month for six months.

Users: 3.5 million visitors to the site over the past year.

Unique features: Shows you who is online, lets you add a compatibility test and allows instant messaging. Customer comment: Helen Bromley, 30, says: “The site is really user-friendly and it was easy to filter searches, such as by area or for people who don’t smoke. I was pleasantly surprised by the guys on the site. They were pretty normal but didn’t get a chance to meet people. I met my fiancé within three weeks of signing up and we are getting married in May.”

Rating: 9

Speeddater.co.uk

Cost: Three days for £4.97, seven days for £9.67. For one month, the cost is £17.97, three months is £29.97, six months is £53.82 and a year costs £95.64.

Users: Unknown.

Unique features: Also organises parties, activity days and holidays. Consumer comment: Jackie Hill, 54, says: “I like this one better than other sites because you only need to write a brief profile. On other sites you have to write a lot, which I find difficult. This one seems good for older people; there are a lot of other people in my age group on there.

“The problems are that a lot of men do not fill in the ‘compulsory’ information, such as height, which is annoying. Very often, you message and do not hear anything back, which is a bit dispiriting. I found it daunting at first but have become increasingly comfortable with the site. I had forgotten how much it costs.”

Rating: 8

mysinglefriend.com

Cost: £20.

Users: Unknown.

Unique features: Friends of singles match them up with other users. Customer comment:Marilena Reina, 29, says: “I was not very impressed because, at first glance, you are presented with a lot of faces, without any extra information to set them apart, so you choose based on looks rather than personality. Also, photos can be misleading. People usually choose their best pictures and very often look nothing like that in real life, or the picture does not do them justice.

“I don’t think the idea of getting a friend to ‘review’ you works. Friends will either write a glowing report or something that you do not want them to write.” Rating: 6

Jdate.com

Cost: $40 (£20.38) for one month.

Users: Hundreds of thousands of members worldwide.

Unique features: The site claims to be “the undisputed leader in Jewish dating”. Customer comment:Matthew Harrison, 29, says: “If you want to meet someone Jewish, then it’s the best by a long shot because you have loads of people who pass your basic suitability test. You can also be very specific in your search criteria. If you want a 25 to 30-year-old single, Orthodox Jew who goes to the synagogue every week and speaks French, you can search for exactly that.

The big disadvantage is that you can register without paying, so you have some people who have paid and some who haven’t, but you do not know unless you try to contact them and they don’t answer. This is annoying because you don’t know if it’s because they haven’t paid or because they are not interested.

Rating: 7

A more old-fashioned approach

IF USING your mouse to find love does not appeal, there are other ways to meet a potential partner, Gráinne Gilmore writes. Perhaps the cheapest option is placing a lonely hearts advertisement in a newspaper or magazine. The Times and The Sunday Times charge £19 a line, plus VAT, for adverts on its Encounters pages. Private Eye charges £2.60 a word, with a minimum charge of £26. A coloured box is £15 extra.

If you can’t face the prospect of opening all those reply letters, how about a spot of singles snowboarding? Speedbreaks.co.uk runs all sorts of singles holidays, including a week’s ski trip to Les Arcs, leaving on Saturday, for £469.

If you would like someone else to do all the legwork for you, a matchmaking service could be the answer. The Association of British Introduction Agencies has a list of all approved introduction agencies on its website at abia.org.uk .

Connections, which operates in the Midlands, charges a one-off fee of £295. Caroline Crowther, at carolinecrowther.com, charges between £650 and £2,500 a year for membership, with a £20 monthly fee. The most expensive “Ambassador” membership includes a dedicated personal adviser and advertising in newspapers and magazines.

There’s something for everyone

THE internet has a wide range of niche dating sites for stubbornly single people with a very specific future husband or wife in mind.

CountrySide-Love.co.uk is for people in rural areas who are struggling to find a date. Men who are, indeed, the only gays in their village are also welcome. It is free to join, but to view full profiles, chat and add pictures of yourself you have to pay – from £19.99 for one month.

Loveyoga.com is the dating website for those flexible enough to consider themselves part of “the yoga community”. Pagans, buddhists and practictioners of acupuncture and t’ai chi are also welcome. You can join from as little as £6.95 for 12 days.

Music aficionados should try Music-mate.com , which costs £10 for premium membership and allows you to search for matches based on users’ musical tastes.

Christians unable to find love in their parish can log on to Friends1st.co.uk for the details of potential friends and partners. The site is more expensive than most, with a one-off set-up fee of £50 and an annual subscription ranging from £160 to £300.

Shaadi.com is the world’s largest matrimonial service for Asian men and women, with 700,000 registered users in the UK. The site is confident enough to offer a guarantee that if you do not receive a positive exchange with another member within the first month you can claim a full refund.