Middle Eastern Dating Apps

It is not only the Vegas of the Middle East, but the UAE ( United Arab Emirates) is also a haven for expatriates and that is why there is need to identify the best dating sites targeted at people from that region. If you are looking for the best sites in Dubai where you can meet the love of your life, then you have come to the right place. Here, we are going to review four sites that are very popular with people living and working in the UAE. What will you be looking for considering that the UAE has a very conservative dating culture? Well, like most of the expatriates who live and work here, you will probably be looking for an opportunity to date a woman from home, or a fellow expatriate, or a single Arab woman. The saving grace is that online dating is very prolific here and the only thing you have to do is to identify a good UAE dating site, and you will be set. Note that you may have to use a VPN since most dating activities are censored.

May 22, 2019 In the modern world, we cannot do anything without a smartphone and new technologies that have touched not just the technology but also communication and relationships. This has affected even the Middle Eastern dating, although, of course, no one is going to give up the Muslim traditions. ArabLove is a fantastic dating platform where millions of Arab singles join to find dates and relationships. ArabianDate is one of the safest Middle Eastern dating sites; it’s the best site to find love. Muslima is another amazing Middle Eastern dating site that allows members to join the dating site in a few minutes.

Like most modern dating sites, Middle Eastern men dating sites have their own mobile apps. They are developed specifically for phones running on Android or iOS. You can download them on the appropriate stores, usually free of charge.
This Middle Eastern Dating App Is A Game-Changer. By Mariella Mosthof.
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Here goes, a few credible dating sites that you can try out:

1. Muslima.com

Muslima.com is a Dubai dating site aimed at singles who could be looking for an Emirate single to date. As its name suggests, you will find that this dating site is targeted at the Muslim community living at home and abroad too. Thankfully, although you will find people from different countries on this site, and there will be those looking for a person with your types of traits. Muslim dating culture is a bit reserved but when it comes to dating the Emirates are flexible and you will have a very enjoyable experience.

With membership spreading among countries like Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Yemen, Qatar, Bahrain, Iran, Jordan and many more, this site is quite cosmopolitan and so you should be prepared to meet people from everywhere in the world. One thing you will note though is that most of the people that you find here are working as expatriates in the Middle East. There are Britons, Africans, Americans, South Americans, Indians, Filipinos and many more. The most prolific users are aged between ages 20 and 50. As you sign up for an account on this site, note that it is meant for Islamic dating, and therefore the core membership is made up of 4.5 millions of Muslim singles.

This is a Cupid Media site. It is a paid-for dating site, but at the same time, most people start with the standard/free membership and then they upgrade later. Using the site for too long as a free/standard member will not do you much good since two free members cannot communicate. Therefore, to send and receive messages, please upgrade to paid membership, as that will also tremendously increase your chances of getting a partner.

How much does it cost to access all the site features? Well, there is Gold membership, which costs $34.99 for one month’s subscription, $23.33 per month for three-month subscription and $11.67 per month for a yearly subscription. Note that these payments cannot be paid on monthly basis – you pay as one lump sum. By choosing a package, you will be unlocking features like ad-free browsing, communicating with every member through email and live chat, rank above the standard members, use advanced matching features to enhance your chances of getting a partner and many more.

For Platinum membership, the cost is slightly higher than what you pay for Gold membership. For one month’s subscription, you will pay $39.99, for three months’ subscription, you will pay $26.66 per month and for 12 months’ subscription, you will pay $13.33 per month. All these monies are paid in lump sum. To go with the extra fee, you will get features like profile highlighting, advanced matchmaking features and translation of profiles to a language of your choice.

Payment methods include credits cards, PayPal, bank transfer and Paysafecard. Note that the default setting is for auto-renewal and therefore you have to opt out of that.

The site support more than 20 languages including አማርኛ, العربية, Bahasa, Indonesia, English, Deutsch, Italiano, Español, Türkçe. The site also has Android dating app available now, which can make much easier for you to keep online with your smartphone.

The main benefit is that this site focuses entirely on Muslim dating.

Pros:

A large number of members.
You can receive messages from paying members for free.
International dating with members from UAE and other regions.
Advanced searching features to help find your potential partners.
Easy to use Android dating app.

Middle Eastern Dating Apps 2020

Cons:

No iOS Apple app.

2. Match.com

Match.com is perhaps one of the most exciting dating sites in the world today for its unique features. For example, it has event nights where people from the same locality meet and mingle, thus hastening the process of one getting a partner. However, you are reading this because you are looking for dating sites that accommodate singles from the UAE. Does Match.com do that? Well, it is international and therefore you can be sure that it is one of the most popular sites for dating in this region. There is even a whole section dedicated to bringing you tips for dating in the Middle East, an area with some of the most conservative dating cultures in the world.

There are many features to look forward to. For example, there is the Daily 5 feature, which matches you with 5 people every day. With such a high number of matches, it is almost guaranteed that you will get a match in no time at all. The MatchTalk feature will enable you to have phone conversations with other members without having to give your phone number. Then there is the VIP Emails that can only be sent out once in a week to let another person know that you are so very much interested in them and following that, your profile will be prominently displayed to them for the next 30 days.

How does Match.com work? It is very simple really. You must first create an online profile for you to contact other members. You can then send the people you like a request for their information. They will look at your profile and decide whether they like you enough to match with you. If they do, then your email addresses will be passed forth and from then onward, you can contact each other through your email addresses. This is why it is very important that you fill up the profile nicely, say as much as you can about yourself, you know, the basics, like what you are looking for, religion is a basic of course and then you will be set to date. This simplicity is what makes Match.com the best Dubai dating site.

But the most outstanding feature on Match.com is the advanced match feature that will allow you to match with people who have the qualities that you desire. Apart from entering the qualities (keywords) in the search bar and hitting enter, there are three other ways to find matches:

Online now – this feature will bring you people who are online at that moment if you would like to communicate with them immediately.

Mutual Matches – These people have the same traits as you do and they could be looking for a person like you.

Reverse matches – This one will bring you people who are looking for a person like you.

How much does using Match.com in Dubai cost? Well, the cost is in dollars, since this is an international site. Firstly, there is a 3-day free trial, which you ought to cancel before it expires or you will be billed automatically.

If you would like to subscribe for a month only, then you will pay $35.99

If you would like to subscribe for the Standard plan, there will be two packages for you. In the first one, you will pay $19.99 per month for three months (in one lump sum) and for the second plan, you will pay$17.99 per month for six months (lump sum).

Finally, there are the Value plans, which offer more features. The first one is a 3-month plan for which you pay $23.99 per month for 3 months and the second one is $19.99 per month for 6 months.

Match Guarantee – this one is offered to people who subscribe for at least six months and can meet the required conditions. If you stay a whole six months without getting a match, you will get the next six months free of charge.

Match.com has both Android and iOS apps available, which make you easier to find your partner online on your smart phone.

Will you get value for your money? Well, unless you try, you will never know.

Pros

Easy and fast to sign up.
A time-honored matching website with good reputation.
Advanced matching algorithm to help you find best partners.
There are many ways to communicate with other members including wink, email, chat.
A large number of members from UAE and Muslim singles worldwide.

Cons

The costs are higher than average .
Only paid members can send and reply to messages.

3. Tinder

Tinder is a very popular dating app and many people have used it. What most people find outstanding is that your soulmate could be just a swipe of a finger away. It is true; all you have to do is just swipe, either to the right or to the left. If you like a person, you swipe to the right and if you do not like them, you can swipe to the left. That is how easy it is to get or match on Tinder. But first, you would have to download the Tinder mobile app and register for a free account.

If you are in the UAE, you can use Tinder to find a soulmate. It is possible. There are more than 1 million users of Tinder in Dubai. This number has grown by now and therefore it has become increasingly easier for you to get the love of your dreams.

Tinder works in a very simple way. The download is very fast and then after the app is installed in your phone; it will access your account to create your profile by accessing your Facebook account details like your first name, photos and even age. You should not worry though because Tinder is not going to display on your Facebook profile.

With the information garnered from your Facebook account and the additional details that you fill up in your account, you are then going to be matched to potential matches from your area. This means that if you are in Dubai, then you are going to be matched to people from Dubai. What happens is that the app displays profiles of potential matches and if you like them, you swipe right. If you do not, you swipe left to discard and that profile will be gone forever.

Whether you are single, divorced or even widowed and you are in Dubai for work, live there or are just a tourist, Tinder is the best UAE dating site because of its simplicity and high success rate. Just imagine that if you swipe right on a photo and the owner of that photo swipes right, that is considered a match and you too can then start messaging one another. It is that simple. You can also integrate Tinder to your Instagram account so that you can see the Instagram profiles of the other users.

Is Tinder free to use in Dubai? The app is free to download from your app store and using it is mostly free, but there is a Tinder Plus version that will cost you a small amount of money. But do not worry because you will get more than enough value for your money.

Is Tinder legal in Dubai? While online dating is considered or ethical. Well, you can use Tinder for many things. For example, when you are in the UAE, you can use this app to talk with people close to your locality to ask them about restaurants. You can also access this dating site through VPN.

Tinder dating app is free of charge to download but they have a Plus version for $9.99 per month for all users under 30 and $19.99 per month for all users above 30 years of age. We could not establish whether there are special rates for users from the UAE.

Pros:

The user pool is very big.
Free dating app and fun to use.
No limits on messaging.
You can find casual sex, marriage and friendships, any relationship you can imagine.

Meet Middle Eastern Men

Cons:

If you do not pay, you can only swipe right on 100 profiles every 12 hours.
There are more men than women on Tinder.

4. Arablounge.com

Niche dating websites in the UAE do not come any better than arablounge.com, which is specifically targeted at Arab singles. While other dating sites like Tinder and Match.com offer a wide mix of people, this one is different since it offers you an opportunity to meet Arabs only. This site is not targeted at Arab singles, but it is also a great dating site for people who would like to date Arab Christians.

While this site has a great and simple user interface, signing up on this website is quite a process! There are about 100 questions to answer before you can be signed up. Thus, set some good time aside to sign up on Arablounge.com. You will not be disappointed as many reviews show that this is truly the best UAE dating site and you will be guaranteed to get the love of your life.

It is free to create your profile on the Arablounge.com dating site. It is also free to browse other profiles, it is free to receive messages and you can as well upload as many photos as you like on your profile. With more than 250 members online at any given time, you can be sure that you will find someone to spend your life with, but it could take longer since the membership on this site is a bit low. Take your time and chat with a few people first before you can arrange for a physical meeting.

ArabLounge is targeted at Arab bachelors living in different countries in the world. Therefore, the core membership of this group is made up of Arab single women from the Middle East, other places in Asia and Africa.

How does ArabLounge work? It is very simple really, since you will be matched with profiles depending on the answers that you gave during the signup process (remember the many questions?) Then there are the reverse matches where you will be brought profiles of other members who are looking for a person who has qualities such as yours. You can also use the photo slide show feature to choose a person that you would like to match with based on their personality and personal information.

The site supports languages of العربية, Deutsch, English and français, making people with different langauges can date singles from Dubai and UAE.

How much is the cost for premium membership? It is a bit steep compared to the other dating sites in the UAE. However, it is manageable.

For a monthly subscription, you will pay $49.37
For 3-months subscription, you will pay $37.02
For 6 months’ subscription, you will pay $30.83 and
For 12 months’ subscription, you will pay $24.84

Standard membership is free of charge.

Pros

The site is easy to use.
Detailed profiles to help you find proper members.
High member activities.
Advanced matching system.

Cons

Not many active members.
Only paid members can read messages.

Conclusion

The above-reviewed are some of the best dating sites in Dubai, but do not sign up and just go to dating straight away. Look at their blog or dating advice sections so that you can learn a thing or two about dating in the Middle East. The culture is a bit conservative and therefore you want to be amply advised before dating a person from there. In addition, even when you have the best Dubai dating site, you may have to use VPN to access it.

Hawaya is a blueprint for global companies looking to capitalize on diversity.

Sameh Saleh is the Founder & CEO of Hawaya, a dating app that was developed in Cairo, Egypt and acquired by Match Group. He tells his story on Episode 47 of The Men’s Room podcast.

Banking on an app developed specifically for Muslims at a time when the world is trending towards inclusivity seems counterintuitive, but the reality is that cultural differences exist and tapping into this on a large scale is every multinational corporation’s wet dream.

That’s exactly what Dallas-based Match Group did when they acquired the Egyptian dating app Harmonica (now Hawaya) in August 2019, adding to a roster of over 20 dating apps that includes Lexa.nl in the Netherlands, neu.de in Germany, ParPerfeito in Brazil, Black People Meet and Chispa for Hispanics. Like Hawaya, those last two are particularly alluring from a business perspective as they cast a wide net that is not limited by geography. In point of fact, Hawaya was designed to help Muslims find a life partner, so while it was developed and tested in Egypt, it is already being rolled out all around the world, including in Canada I just discovered by happenstance, where it was launched in July 2020. (I came across this in the news, not as a potential user. Although, the two week quarantine upon landing in Canada did have its moments.)

Hawaya’s acquisition news went largely unreported but for the American company, this Egyptian startup promises to be a massive golden goose, if you consider that Islam has at least 1.8 billion adherents, making up about 24.1% of the world population. Furthermore, studies suggest that Islam is the fastest-growing major religion in the world and the number of Muslims worldwide is projected to be nearly 2.8 billion by 2050. Match Group’s current market cap of over $20 billion could very well seem like humble beginnings by that time.

I interviewed Hawaya’s easy-going CEO Sameh Saleh in early 2020, fresh off the exit and also post company name change. That move replaced ‘Harmonica’ with a more appropriate moniker that includes the Arabic word for love, hawa. Saleh co-founded the app in early 2017 with Tamer Saleh, Shaymaa Aly & Aly Khaled.

“Four years ago I was living in Malaysia and I noticed how hard it was for women in the Middle East to find a life partner. My sister is very close to me and she was going through this journey. There was a lot of pressure on her and the only available solutions were arranged marriage, which wasn’t very efficient, and online dating platforms, which at that time were not really safe or private enough. This is where we said ‘We need to find an environment that’s private enough for our sisters, our cousins, our friends,” recalled Saleh.

It was a problem begging for a solution. Marriage is next to mandatory in conservative Muslim culture, and the process leading to it has little to do with the way things are done in the West. There’s no dating and then ‘let’s see where this goes’, or God forbid, ‘let’s live together to find out if we’re compatible’.

I remember an Egyptian friend in Journalism school who told me about her summer trip to Cairo. The concierge (or custodian) of her building would watch her disapprovingly going in and out, even reprimanding her once for socializing with a male friend. Fraternizing with the opposite sex is socially unacceptable in Egypt, as it is in many Gulf countries and within Muslim families and communities around the globe.

The fact that I still remember this little anecdote shows how absurd it seemed to me at the time that a college student could not socialize freely and that an unrelated man should have a say in a young woman’s life. It provides a flyover glimpse at the deeply-rooted differences that exist between our Western cultures and those complex social behaviors that could never be fully grasped by a board of directors in Texas.

For instance, the importance of familial approval. Hawaya has a feature that replicates the real-life tradition of ‘meeting the parents’ of the potential mate before things progress to anything more serious. “The Guardian feature means that women can allow their cousin, or their best friend or even their parents to look at their chats, if the woman wants to,” Saleh explained.

Only an attuned insider could create a product that anticipates the dating behavior of their users down to the minutiae. “That’s what makes us very unique: we did not take the success of Tinder and say, ‘Let’s make a copy for the Middle East.’ That’s not how we started,” Saleh explained. “Even Liberals in the Middle East and Muslims across the globe, the way we approach relationships is very different. We always approach relationships with high intent, seeking marriage eventually. And that’s what makes Hawaya a unique proposition, globally.”

Saleh and his co-founders knew the time was right to create new tech-enabled habits in this region steeped in history and tradition. Online dating is still somewhat taboo in the Middle East but that’s changing now, driven in part by Hawaya. The truth is that arranged marriages, even in the most conservative Muslim settings, were ripe for a technological boost.

“People now think about the fact that they’re using technology in every aspect of their lives, and they want to find a life partner that they feel comfortable being with and continue their life journey with,” Saleh reflected. It’s worth noting that as of April 2019, 67.2 percent of the population across the Middle East had access to the internet, so this is a population eager to adopt the sophisticated digital tools that the West has had access to for some time now.

Last but not least, Hawaya also zoned in on a trend that’s pretty much defined the current social, marketing and startup environment we find ourselves in on a global level: women’s empowerment. While the startup ecosystem in the Middle East is no exception, female-centric products and content are in demand. It’s also no secret that VCs in the Middle East sometimes favor women-run startups in the same way Yale University favors certain under-represented races.

Best Middle Eastern Dating App

Merit-based vs affirmative action might be a prickly issue, but from a broader social-equality perspective, giving women more control in the game of love was a timely and positive move. How well the app has been funded and received is proof of that. In this part of the world where modesty and head coverings are the norm, the focus on giving women a safe and private online environment was perhaps the magic ingredient in the startup’s success.

“We really focused on safety and privacy, because we know there’s still stigma in this market. My partner at Hawaya is a woman and I’m doing this for my sister, so we made sure the app is super private and safe to use. We introduced this selfie verification concept where all our users have to be ‘selfie verified’. We use AI technology to make sure the photo you uploaded is actually your photo. This weeds out people who aren’t serious and all the fake profiles,” he explained. “We also have this feature where you can hide your photos and blur them, so that once you’re comfortable you can start un-blurring your photo.”

By really fleshing out what the specific needs of their market were, the team at Hawaya has managed to eliminate all the barriers. They have created a precisely shaped puzzle piece that fits perfectly into the global Muslim mindset. “Egypt is a great market to test your app. We have some diversity so you can get metrics. Once you cater to these demographics, you can scale in other markets now that we’re seeing all these VCs going across countries; you can raise funds in Egypt but you can also easily raise funds from KSA, Dubai and so on. These types of arms help you expand to other countries in the region, and that’s really, really powerful,” he admitted. “We’re proving to be a global app, and are proving that an app out of Egypt could provide services to users all across the world. That’s really a beautiful story and I think it can be done again. It’s not a unique story. I think that many problems we have in Egypt, if we find a real solution to it, there’s no reason why it can’t go global, even beyond the Arab world.”

As global tech-based corporations look for ways to reach untapped groups in the population and extend their reach beyond borders, there’s no doubt that acquisitions of localized startups in emerging markets will happen more and more frequently. This will allow those locally-based companies to scale up while allowing larger corporations to avoid faux-pas in foreign markets and the heavy cost of R&D. After all, AI is the driver for technology, but it always begins with NI (Natural Intelligence).

Arab Dating App

This article was first published in Data Driven Investor as an excerpt from ‘The Men’s Room: 50 Lessons From The Arab Renaissance.'