I purchased Skadate right around June 2011. I am a completely non-techie person. I wanted some modifications done. What I had in mind was just something basic. Skadate insisted and recommended that I went with SOD Technologies (whom they are now using for their 24/7 support – scary!). Well, long story short, after losing loads of hair and what remained turned grey, SOD T finally delivered the completed product a month later than promised. I trusted their initial quote and made marketing campaigns to launch the site – HUGE lesson learned. SOD T has extremely limited familiarity with Skadate template. I had to email them the demo link which can easily be found on Skadate website to show them what the original template skin looked like (since they made a mess of everything and had to reverse engineer) and they were shocked and pleased that it existed. Really?! That gave me great confidence that everything was going to work out just fine. Not.

Anyway, a few months into it now, I can tell you that I totally REGRET modifying the site. Sod T had made the scripts SUPER HEAVY according to the host company I used (again Skadate’s recommendation). If 3-5 people log in simultaneously, the site slows or hangs! Skadate and Arvixe (host company) agreed that 3-5 people is quite heavy for shared hosting. I felt deceived. So, for all of you out there who are on a BUDGET, take note – shared hosting won’t cut it! Shared hosting ($3/4 per months as advertised) is only sufficient to get you through the “set up” phase – meaning only “you” logging in and customising your site. Once the site goes life and you have any kind of traffic, expect poor performance on your site. Chat features will come to a halt, almost. I had to upgrade and transfer to VPS (just this week – more problems of course!) hosting for the site to run efficiently. So for anyone out there who thinks this can be a small budget project/investment, do think twice.

As for bugs, yes. Loads. Every few weeks I find a bug. Contact support and they will tell you to upgrade. Great. And since I had my site modified, it’s now a more complicated upgrade. I am not a techie so I can’t do it myself. And if you ask support to help upgrade because there is a bug in the version you bought – there’s a fee. And if you modified your site, the fee is higher. However, if you beg (like I did) then they will help you, but don’t expect a quick turnaround.

If I had to do it again, NEVER. But if someone holds a gun to my head and ask me to start a dating website, I’d say sure, use Skadate, but don’t modify and you better be a programmer who can fix problems yourself. Otherwise it’ll end up costing you some pennies! Don't be fooled by the $350 price tag.

I'm seriously unhappy that I decided to go ahead and purchase SkaDate EVEN AFTER reading all these terrible ratings. I am not one to be deterred by random disgruntled customer/black pr... thought since the "pre-sale" customer service was so good that I'd go ahead and buy it. anyway long story short - a day into buying the product i've already come across a hurdle. installation didn't go through all the way (they blamed it on the hosting company - although i know from past experience and a quick call to my hosting company that it wasn't a problem with hosting). they are so quick and dismissive once teh sale was done. Now i'm scrambling for help in the forum - trying to figure out all this problem with my site crashing randomly. I have NO CLUE and no help certainly... and the best part... when i ask for help through the support system - i get offered the wonderful $95/month plan to pay for support... YEAH RIGHT!! i pay for a product i cannot even customize even though they say it can be! moment you step into the backend to customize css, everything falls apart and no documentation to help us out! This is beyond illegal to scam customers into buying a bugged-out software, with very little to no support (and limited "unique" templates) and then have them scurrying to pay more just to fix YOUR software... we are the customers, we shouldn't be fixing your errors. So if you cannot guarantee a bug-free product - then DON'T charge us for support!!!! I SINCERELY learned my lesson (although it cost me a grand $400 USD). Never buy from a company with real bad PR... there's truth behind it (after all it cannot all be "fake comments") and by the way, before you step on this message board telling me to come forward. I'd be glad to.. except i dont' plan on releasing my personal information on the web. simply contact me (I'm unfortunately still stuck being your customer til I find a more reliable software). So reply back to me if you have a remedy for this ridiculous situation!