Hot or Not is a rating site that doubles as a matchmaking engine, letting you create and use hotlists and rate others on a scale of 1 – 10. The site and the app is enjoyed by over 380 million people worldwide and has over 1 million active users at any time!
Hot or Not has been around for a very long time, since the early 2000s, and is cited as a source of inspiration for some of the largest sites around today, including the early version of Mark Zuckerberg’s Facebook, ‘FaceMash’. Since then the site has evolved to incorporate more elements of online dating services with an emphasis on sexy shots and photos.
As a sign of the times, Hot or Not shifted to focus on younger audiences, emphasizing the mobile-friendly nature of the swipe left or right trend that Tinder popularized. There are now ways to focus on your own privacy or make your page as popular as you want.
No matter what you are looking for, whether it’s trying to find dating or just having fun, Hot or Not has a broad range of features to keep you entertained!
To show you why we think Hot or Not and its app deserve your attention, we review it and look at its members.
Check our ranking with the best dating apps!
Our Summary
The Hot or Not website and app are a great fit for the modern digital age, especially for younger audiences who make up a large portion of its base. The overall Hot or Not experience is entertaining enough when you want your photos rated or to look for sexy photos of people near you. However, the main problem that Hot or Not has is that it’s a little hard to say if this is really a great dating site.
Most people who sign up are interested in only having their photos rated and then rating other people’s photos. At most they may be interested in chatting and having some fun online, but that’s usually where the line is drawn. The site is more focused on encouraging a social media platform that’s aiming at popularity.
When it comes to relationships, there’s little to really start encouraging dating, much less to keep it up. If you are looking for just having fun though without any form of dating, then the site may be perfect for you.
🆓 Free profile vs paid profile review
To really get the most out of your Hot or Not experience, you will need to upgrade to a premium service and use credits. However, you can still make do with just the free version. So how do the paid and free Hot or Not App dating experiences measure up?
Free membership
- Profile creation
- Upload unlimited photos
- Get matches
- Chat with users
- Browse through profiles
- View photos
Paid membership
- See who wants to meet you
- Highlight your messages
- See who made you a favourite
- Undo your vote
- Become invisible
- Chat with new users first
- Most popular users
💰 Types of membership
Whether you would like to keep your privacy intact while giving reviews of profiles or you want to increase your popularity, the best way to go about it is with either the membership or the credits that Hot or Not has. There is one type of premium membership but many different options to pay.
Premium payment plans review
Hot or Not has several ways to upgrade your membership, ranging from a single day to a lifetime. You can only purchase the day plan with a credit card, and it only accepts payment from either credit card or Paypal.
| Premium | Monthly price | Total |
| 1 day | n.A. | R 42 (credit card only) |
| 1 week | n.A. | R 105 |
| 1 month | R 378 | R 378 |
| 3 months | R 308 | R 925 |
| 6 months | R 230 | R 1388 |
| Lifetime | One payment | R 2525 |
Credits – What they do and how to earn them
Credits can be used for a lot of different things, including chatting with women and improving your popularity on Hot or Not.
- Rise up to first place –Get seen by more people
- Get featured now! – Be seen on every page in your area
- Get shown more – Be shown more often in encounters
- Give the perfect gift – Give the person you like most a gift they’ll remember
- Add fun stickers to chats – Add fun stickers in Hot or Not chat
- Meet more ‘Hot or Not’ users – Meet more people in encounters
- Chat to more people – Chat to 5 more people
- I’m online – Notify girls that you are online
Credits – bundle costs
Hot or Not’s credits have different prices between the website and the mobile app. The website’s prices are payable with credit card and Paypal.
- 100 Credits – R 63.00
- 550 Credits – R 273
- 1,250 Credits – R 441
- 2,750 Credits – R 946
For mobile you will have fewer options for credit bundles, but they are also cheaper:
- 100 Credits – R 31.50
- 550 Credits – R 105
- 1,250 Credits – R 147
💡 How to reduce costs?
Try out the free version
There’s a lot to explore on the site with just a free membership, and you should take advantage of that when you first register. This way you can see if the site is for you or not.
Try out the mobile app
Hot or Not is clearly intended for the mobile market, although the site is just as fine to navigate. You will notice right away that credits are considerably cheaper on the mobile version of the site, so take advantage of that if you just want to test the waters!
📊 Membership structure
How many Hot 🔥 or Not 🛇 app users in South Africa?
There are over 1.8 million Hot or Not users in South Africa alone, and a whopping 380+ million worldwide! There are more than enough chances to find someone in your area for fun and maybe even dating!
Hot or Not App’s demographics of love
Most people on Hot or Not are under 35, and there is a slight majority of male users on the site.
- ~40 of the site is women
- 46% of users are between 25 and 34
- 26% of users are between 18 and 24
Hot or Not is focused on a younger, more mobile-friendly niche within the dating market, and has seen its best success by encouraging young people to be focused on their social media popularity.
✍️ Registration process and profile creation
Hot or Not gives you two different ways to register with the site. The first is through Facebook or one of the other platforms it offers. The second is through your email.
The registration process is quick and easy to do, and you can finish your profile later if you would like.
- Signing up
First select whether you would like to register with either Facebook or through email. If you are registering through Facebook, you will have to login to your account to verify your registration.
If you are registering with an email account, you will have to first select whether you are male or female. Pick one to move onto the next step. - Setting up your account
You will then be asked to give a name, your age, a location, and a valid email address that can be used to verify your account. You will also need to create a password for the site.
- Select a profile picture 📷
You will now need to provide at least one profile picture for the website. This will be the primary thing that people see, so make sure you choose your best picture!
- Verify your account
You will receive an email from Hot or Not now that will contain a link. Click the link to verify your account. You can then sign in at any time with the password you picked.
- Using 🔥 or 🛇
You can now begin using the Hot or Not service! If you are on the website, click the heart to like a person’s picture or the X to select ‘not’. You can also upgrade your membership from here or increase your popularity with credits.
📱 User friendliness
Hot or Not dating site
Registration is a quick and easy process no matter if you do it with Facebook or your own email. It will only take a moment and all you need to do is verify your account with a valid email address to get started.
Navigation
The site really emphasizes you liking or disliking pictures of others online and is geared toward making this process the primary focus. You can smoothly transition from looking at someone’s pictures to doing a search for people nearby, or from there to your own profile.
Profile
The profile is quick to set up and can be added to at any time after you register. Fill it out as soon as possible to get your popularity as high as you can sooner than later!
Hot 🔥 or Not 🛇
This is the titular and primary feature of the site, and it’s easy to do. Just click on either the heart to state that someone is ‘Hot’ or click on the ‘X’ to state that they are ‘Not’. On mobile this will be different.
Hot or Not dating app
Hot or Not is clearly intended for the mobile market, so the app functions wonderfully. This is a case of the website being designed based on the app, so much of these features function similarly.
Registration
Registration is just the same as the website, and just as easy to do.
Navigation
Because the site is intended for mobile, the app works best here to let you view others and get viewed.
Hot 🔥 or Not 🛇
This is a simple swipe left or right feature, which is different from the website’s heart and X icons. This works much the same as Tinder does.
Adjusting profile
This can be done at any time and is easy to do.
✉️ Contacting users with Hot or Not App Chat
To contact another person and begin chatting you will first need to swipe right or click on the heart icon to say that you find them hot. If they do the same to you then you can begin chatting via their Encounter system, which is the primary feature of Hot or Not.
How to contact another user:
- Swipe Right or click on the heart icon for someone you like
- You can view more information on their profile now
- Select Chat
- Type out a Message and click ‘Send’
👍 Pros and cons 👎
Pros
- A million members are online at any given time
- Your purpose can be to make new friends, chat, or date
- Profile pictures are free to view
- App is user-friendly
- Sign-up is easy to do and flexible with how you do it
Cons
- Site is geared more toward fun and social chatting than dating
- Can be expensive quickly between credits and membership
- Profiles are viewable by public by default, not just Hot or Not accounts
- Facebook will import all your photos
🙋 FAQs
Simply wait for users near you to view your pictures and rate them. You can also spend credits to appear in more searches and members will automatically show up more often.
Your score is available on the right side of your account.
Click on the gear icon on the upper right corner of the web page. At the very bottom of the page you’ll find ‘Delete account’. Click this and then follow the instructions.
Connections are made when you and a user swipe right on each other’s profiles. You can then start chatting.
In your profile, just click on the pencil icon next to your current location and either enter a new one or select one from the dropdown menu.
If you cannot use or see the pencil icon when trying to change your location it is because of one of these reasons:
• You are using the mobile app and the website at the same time
• You don’t use the app and your browser’s location services are not providing the site with accurate coordinates
To add interests, just visit your profile and either select interests from the available categories or add your own (these will need to be approved before they appear on your profile, so please don’t write anything offensive).
ℹ️ Company information
The site was founded in October 2000 by James Hong and Jim Young, two friends and Silicon Valley-based engineers. Since then it was sold for a rumoured $20 million on February 8, 2008 to Avid Life Media, owners of Ashley Madison.
Address:
20 Eglinton Avenue West Suite
1200 Toronto
ON M4R 1K8 Canada
