I am into Software Application Testing industry since nearly a decade now & hence can at least comment fairly on my experience working with an online application. I had been working on various matrimonial sites handling profiles of multiple people (including my sisters’) and hence I believe I can provide an insight on practical usage of shaadi.com
I am big fan of mouthshut.com as I get real reviews & hence I think its our moral duty to give back to the community from where you get hell lot of information? My contribution to mouthshut.com is available at: https://mouthshut.com/taheemrajat/timeline.
I have my matrimonial profile created on majority of sites, including shaadi.com and then I thought to invest in a site so that I can contact brides directly. Nearly all sites provide same kind of facilities.
My personal experience as follows:-
Why did I invest in shaadi.com?
1> I was able to send my contact details in my expression of Interest – that way the newbie users of matrimonial sites don’t have to struggle to find my contact details. Moreover, it would hide my contact details in my expression of interest until & unless it is accepted – ensuring that only the interested parties get my details
2> The way it showed my profile (number of pics, representation, Astro details) convinced me that this site would help me showcase my thoughts across.
3> Most importantly, I was offered a whooping 35% discount on premium membership (12 months) - This was way too competitive pricing against any prevailing pricing of matrimonial site in Dec 2012 (Around 4500 for 200 contacts for 12 months).
4> Off all the matrimonial profiles I created, I had nearly double the accepted members (as per my criteria) on shaadi.com
5> Search rendered me more number of profiles as per my criteria (Only later I discovered the dark side).
Good points:-
1> I got to see a lot of profiles.
2> Advance search was impressive.
3> Alerting mechanism was acceptable –I did get smses & mail alerts for expression of interests received, rejected, accepted, etc.
4> Profile was well compartmentalized enabling usability & view-ability.
5> It’s a well-known brand and hence my communication with the parents of accepted brides was easy to initiate.
Night-mares:-
1> My profile got updated few times – without my knowledge? At one instance my profile was completely washed out and the only thing that was mentioned in description was: “Looking out for suitable match”. Luckily I had profiles on many other sites so I just copied it again - Interestingly, I came to know about this from prospective brides that things are missing on my profile – From then, I had to manually check my profile at regular interval of time to check for issues.
2> Chat won’t initiate half of the time & other half of time chat facility won’t deliver my messages (intermittently) leading to miscommunication during the conversation.
3> More than 60% of the profiles won’t have pictures uploaded and wont upload it – This says that girls don’t trust this site.
4> Furthermore, half of the profiles didn’t have verified contact details – Boom! Your invested money goes waste – when raised to customer care they mentioned that the party (Accepted members) didn’t want to reveal the contact details –?
5> About 15% of the profiles for which I could extract the contact details, was wrong! When inquired, I was informed that when the profile was created the contact details were right, not sure why it is not working now – My money go wasted again!
6> Slowly I realized, about 30% of the profiles were fake - There were profiles that were based on matrimonial jokes, few had some paragraphs from Novel in description, few pics of girls were way too revealing (certainly, nobody would post these kind of pics on matrimonial sites – I am serious – not thinking orthodox over here) – What does the verification team do?
7> Policies of shaadi.com would change without warning – All of a sudden you are not able to send expression of Interest to more than 50 people, One fine day you are not allowed to view more than 10 contact details, even if your membership is expiring.
8> Once your membership is about to expire, you start getting hell lot of calls from customer care executives to renew your membership & they keep on annoying you everyday since then?
9> Android application of shaadi.com would refuse to even start after about a month of usage.
10> Astonishingly, your communication with accepted members gets erased abruptly – All the messages exchanged are no longer visible/available.
11> Search facility wont really render you exact results – I tried lot of times searching for profiles I knew should be part of search and bang! it never made it to search results – Awesome, isn’t!
Overall Verdict:-
1> Prepare your profiles on few leading matrimonial sites.
2> Express interest & count the maximum number of expressions of interest and accordingly invest.
3> Watch for reviews for matrimonial site you wanna invest before you decide – Do not rush.
4> People do have real success stories on shaadi.com – its not totally useless, it just has bad business tactics in place and poor customer care service. Also very poor mouthshut.com reviews. :):):)
5> Overall, create your free/paid profiles on matrimonial sites only if you are really sure you wanna get married - Its Coz of buggers too, actual site’s purpose & reputation is hit hard.