What Is Alt.com?
If you’re into BDSM, bondage, or alt sex, you may want to explore fetish dating sites like Alt.com. While it’s difficult to explain to people on mainstream dating sites that you’re into, for example, sadism, here you’ll find your ideal masochistic match. You can explore this and many other BDSM kinks.
This review will cover everything from how to create your profile to the best safety features. It will also explore the best dating features (and there are a lot!), pros and cons, and the quality of other users’ profiles. We’ll break down how much premium costs, and any additional paid features. See our final rating and the answers to some FAQs at the end.
Pros
Active users.
Great free community features.
Live broadcasts all day every day.
Easy and free to create your account.
Cons
You have to pay to communicate with other users.
Site is NSFW – lots of nudity.
Several hidden costs.
No Alt.com app available.
Login Process
It’s reasonably quick and easy to join Alt .com, and the process starts on the home page. You’ll enter your gender (and your partner’s if you’re joining as a couple) and your email address, then click Register Now. This is followed by 5 pages of information for you to complete before joining. The first page asks for your gender(s) again, and the gender(s) you’re seeking.
Next, it asks for your age and location, so you’ll enter your date of birth, country, state, and nearest city or zip code. The third page has your email address from earlier, and you must create your username and password. These will be your Alt.com login details when you want to re-enter the site at a later stage.
Next, you can optionally complete some basic profile information including your sexual orientation and marital status, body type, and race. You can also enter your preferred role, of dom, sub, or switch. Finally, you must add a profile title, and you can optionally write an About Me. You’ll be emailed a link to activate your account, and you can start browsing.
Profile Completion
There’s a super useful checklist under ‘My Account’, to show you how complete your account is. Profiles are expansive on Alt.com, you can expect it to take up to an hour to complete everything. There are 10 items on the checklist, and you’ll notice that Profile Location is the only one that was completed during registration. You would have mostly completed your Basic Profile, the remaining step being to write a few words about your Ideal Person.
The next two sections, physical and personal information, were also partially completed during registration (with your sexual orientation, status, and birth date). To get the green tick for a completed Personal Information section, you’ll need to answer some shorter questions about your lifestyle, like your occupation, willingness to relocate, religion, and whether you practice safe sex or not.
Physical information asks a few questions about your appearance, like your height, hair color and length, and race. You’ll also indicate your preferred role (dom, sub, or switch). Next, you’ll need to add some photos and answer some additional profile questions. You can then do the personality type quiz and the purity test, two short quizzes where your results will be displayed on your profile. Finally, you can verify your ID and indicate your kinks.
User Account Quality
While most of the accounts seem real enough, there are some concerns by members, seen in Alt.com reviews on blog posts and magazine entries, that fake profiles exist or have run amok. This is possible since it’s difficult to police, so almost every adult dating site has some fakes. A good portion of profiles have photos, although profile pictures of an unidentified flesh-tone body part are rife.
You can set your Cupid Preferences to alter the members you’re shown in searches. Your basic preferences include the gender(s) you’re looking for, an age range, and a location range. You can also set additional preferences using criteria like race, body type, sexual orientation, or marital status of matches. While this is helpful, it’s a skin-deep method of sorting through matches.
A more personality-based match can be done by completing the personality quiz in your profile. If both you and your match have completed the quiz, you’ll see their result on their profile as well as a match percentage. A combination of these two matching methods should yield valuable results and could help you find the person of your dreams, both physically and mentally.
Dating Features
Purity Test
A fun feature to add to your profile is the Purity Test. This is a “Have you ever….” Style game featuring a list of 100 items/thoughts/activities, and you can tick the things that apply to you. Some of the items on the list include:
Owned 10 or more devices intended for BDSM play?
Used someone pretending to be an inanimate object by sitting on them etc.?
Required that someone call you Master/Mistress/Goddess/God/Owner/etc. during BDSM play?
Worshipped someone's feet?
You’ll get your result as a percentage, for example, 79% Pure and 21% Naughty. This result gets added to your profile. This is a fun way to see at a glance, how experienced another person is at BDSM and kink, and how well you match up. If you’ve got a high naughty percentage you may want to find someone with a similar score, rather than someone who’s very pure (unless you’re looking for someone innocent to ‘corrupt’, in which case, enjoy!).
Live Member Broadcasts
If you’re feeling naughty, you can go to the Live Action tab and find other members streaming themselves on video for you to enjoy, or you can start your own broadcast. Generally, you’ll see streams of people masturbating, so this is a great place to get your kicks if you’re feeling spicy. You can also use this tab to look for matches because if you like what you see you can add the user as a friend, or send them a flirt or message.
You can also tip them or send them a gift using points, a system that’s explained in more detail below. Sending a tip or gift is a great way to get their attention, but you can also talk to streamers in the chat. You can even give a real-time update on how much you’re enjoying the show by rating it using a sliding scale that goes from an unhappy face to a smiling one.
Model Streams
If amateurs aren’t doing it for you, you can head to the Model Webcams section to see some professionals at work. Here, you’ll need tokens, not points, to view and tip the models. You can purchase these from the site. Member streams are often mostly men, while the model streams have men, women, and trans folk available.
The downside here is that tokens are expensive, and many models simply sit around waiting for tips before doing anything exciting. This feature is only available to male users and couples, single female members cannot access the model streams.
Adult Chat Rooms
There’s a chat room for almost any kink, where you can chat with other members who share that interest. Some of the chat rooms include a Webcam Fun Room, a Newbie Room, a Leather Room, and the Dungeon. There are also areas for different geographical areas, divided by continents and subdivided into countries, provinces, or states.
While this is a great feature, there aren’t many users who are active in the chat rooms so it’s not as useful as it could be.
Two Ways to Chat
There are two ways to chat on Alt dating, via email or instant messenger (“IM”). Emails are longer messages, and your chat history will be saved when communicating this way. You can set up an automatic email system that reaches out to new users who fit your Cupid Preferences with a prewritten message. You can attach photos with both methods.
Instant messenger is fun because it more closely resembles texting and is done in real time, but your chat history doesn’t get saved. You can also send tips and gifts in the IM interface, and easily start a broadcast so that the other person can see what you’re doing. Unfortunately, both of these are reserved for premium users.
Community Fun
One of the best parts of Alt com is the community it creates and maintains. The core of the community is the Blogs, Groups, and Magazine. All these allow members to create posts, and others can reply to or comment on what was said. This can be a way to find users with similar interests, such as joining the House of Kink group where you can chat about your favorite kinks and how to practice them safely.
You can follow someone’s Blog, to see their posts and comment on them. This is a better way to get to know one single user and is the perfect way for someone with an interesting life or fun stories to share their experiences. Finally, there’s the Magazine, where users can ask for advice, create polls, or write articles to educate others.
Bling
If you want to add some pizzazz to your profile, you can add some Bling. These are small pixellated images or gifs, created by other users. If you click on the Bling, you’ll be taken to the creator’s profile and can ‘Take’ it from them to use on your own profile. Unfortunately, since free members cannot view profiles, this feature is reserved for premium users.
Prices & Costs
Silver
The most affordable tier of premium subscription is the Silver tier. This comes with the following perks:
View all profiles and send messages (emails/instant).
Appear after Gold members in member searches.
View users’ videos on their profiles (intros and recorded videos).
24/7 telephonic customer support.
A Silver membership will cost:
1 Month: $19.95
3 Months: $11.99/month (Billed as $35.97 on the day of purchase)
12 Months: $8.33/month (Billed at $99.97)
Note that all premium subscriptions will automatically renew at the end of the period, but you can disable this from the My Account page. Silver is very well-priced and is cheap compared to similar sites.
Gold
A Gold membership is one step up from the Silver membership, and comes with all the perks of Silver, plus:
Appear at the top of searches.
FULL access to users’ videos on their profiles.
View extra-large versions of members’ photos.
Gold membership costs a little extra, and will set you back:
1 Month: $29.95
3 Months: $14.99/month (Billed at $59.97)
12 Months: $8.33/month (Billed at $149.97)
Note the 12-month calculation is incorrect but these figures are taken directly from the site. It is actually $12.49 per month – $8.33 per month for 12 months should be $99.97. It’s unclear if this is an innocent mistake or a dishonest marketing tactic. Gold is at an average price point compared to similar sites, but doesn’t have enough extra features to make it worth the price jump from Silver.
Standard Contacts
This is available as an add-on to a premium subscription, and it functions to allow standard/free members to see your profile, view your messages, and even initiate conversations. You can choose how long you want this to be active for:
1 Month: $19.90
3 Months: $35.90
12 Months: $99.90
This is pricey but worth it. Without this, you’re limited to only chatting with other premium users, while adding this allows you access to any other member.
Highlight Listings
Another optional add-on to your premium subscription is a listing highlight. This will give your profile a colored border which will make your profile stand out among the others in search results. More attention could very well result in more matches, but there’s no guarantee. These cost:
1 Month: $9.90
3 Months: $24.90
Private Chat Rooms
You can host a private chat room to have a “wild chat party”, according to the site. This seems like an odd thing to charge users for when any conversation you have with a user is essentially a private chat room. And since the public Chat Rooms are often empty, you and other user(s) could just enter an empty chat room and use it for free. This costs:
1 Month: $9.90
3 Months: $19.90
6 Months: $33.90
Change Gender
Interestingly, Alt. com charges users who want to change their gender while keeping their profile activity, like blog posts and friend lists. You may want to do this if you’re transgender, or if you’ve entered a relationship and want your profile to reflect that. A gender change costs $9.95, which is reasonably affordable.
Points
The Alt site also has a points system, where users can either buy or earn points and spend them on various rewards. Buying coins costs:
200 Points: $3
500 Points: $6
1000 Points: $10
You can alternately earn points for free by using the site, different actions have different point values. Many, many actions earn points, and these include:
Upload a photo/video: 20 points per item
Confirm your ID: 500 points
Update status: 1 point per status
Reply to blog posts, magazine questions, and group posts: 5 points per reply
Points can be spent on several things:
Highlight your profile for 1 month: 1100 points
Read alerts: 100 points per message
Gold membership for 1 month: 9000 points
Exchange for real cash:
50,000 points for $100
250,000 points for $500
500,000 points for $1000
1,000,000 points for $2000
How Safe Is Alt.com?
Get Verified
The first, and less secure method of verifying your identity involves uploading a photo of yourself with your username visible in the picture. This will be public on your profile and give you a ‘verified’ badge in search results. This shows people that you’re using your own photos but isn’t foolproof. A dedicated scammer could steal someone’s photos and username from another site with a similar requirement and get verified that way – unlikely, but possible.
Get ConfirmID
The second, more effective verification method is ConfirmID, which involves uploading a scan of your official, government-issued photo ID. This could be your driver’s license, ID card, or passport. This scan will not be visible to the public, only to the moderation team, and confirms that you are using your own photos AND that you’re a real person. You’ll get 500 points and a purple ‘confirmed’ badge for your profile.
Someone using their government name on a dating site is much less likely to be a scammer, so you can trust people with confirmed badges (within reason). However, you’re putting a lot of trust in the Alt com team and safety precautions if you upload an official identity document to the site. Remember, never send people money on dating or hookup sites, even if they’ve confirmed their identity.
Report Abuse/Block
If someone is making you uncomfortable or being abusive, it’s easy to report and block them from their profile, any of the chat services, or the broadcasting page. Simply click Report, choose a reason from the list, and optionally add some extra information. The moderation team will investigate the situation and may suspend or terminate the account if they’re found to have contravened the Terms of Use.
You can also block them, which will make them unable to contact you or view your profile. This is a great way to keep members safe from scammers and allows Alt .com to investigate users who may be underage or using fake photos to remove them from the site.
Your Personal Information
Your personal information seems to be reasonably safeguarded. It may get shared with third-party service providers as necessary, for example, billing companies for invoices or credit card processing companies to handle payments. These parties are legally required by Alt.com to protect your personal information.
They also guarantee that they do not sell or rent your info to third parties for marketing, without your express consent. They may share your information with law enforcement agencies if required to do so.
Final Thoughts
Alt.com has many great features, like the thriving community of blogs, magazines, and groups, and the member and model video streams that are active all day. You’re able to earn points for free while using the site, and points can be used for premium features and several other nice-to-have add-ons.
However, it can feel like with every second click, you’re confronted by an order form. A silver premium membership is quite affordable but comes with very few perks, you’ll need to add several more features to have a great BDSM dating experience, and it can quickly become very expensive. All communication and even simply viewing other members’ profiles are locked behind a paywall.
If budget is a concern, it may be worth trying a silver membership with no extras, but if that doesn’t work out, there are other adult dating websites out there that are cheaper. If budget is no concern, and you’re into alt sex, this is a great option to try.
FAQ
Is Alt.com Legit?
It’s a legit dating site with working features and some real people. However, people may still be running alt.com scams, so be careful while chatting and try to verify your match’s identity.
How Much Is Alt.com?
Memberships start at $8.33 per month, but several add-ons could bring the total monthly cost up to $80 per month or more.
How To Delete Alt.com Account?
Hover over your username and go to My Account.
Click ‘Close Account’.
Select the Alt.com delete account button.
Enter your password.
How To Get A Free Membership To Alt.com?
Creating your account is free but, unfortunately, we can’t find any methods to get a free premium membership.
I’m Curious About BDSM And Kink, But Not Sure Yet. Can I Use Alt. com?
Absolutely. Use the free version first and dive into the community features to learn about different forms of fetish, domination, and submission, and safe ways to engage in it. If you like what you see, try the silver membership to connect with other members.
