Ashley Madison Review: Still a Good Sugar Website in 2024?

You probably heard of the Ashley Madison hack, and paradoxically, the site has become even more successful since that time. So, can it offer something really good to people looking for extramarital affairs or people looking for a sugar partner? There’s no need to test the features yourself—we’ve already joined the community, bought some credits, and started looking for sugar babies. Did that work? Find the answer in our Ashley Madison review.

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Ashley Madison Free Trial

Ashley Madison is 100% free for women, so if you’re a lady searching for a partner here, you don’t need any welcome bonuses. If you’re a man, the situation is different: in this case, you’ll get access to a lot of free features, but all the messaging tools are fee-based, and you’ll have to buy credits to start sending messages. There are no free credits for new users here, but if you’re going to buy the largest credit package, you’ll get a huge discount ($0.25 for 1 credit instead of $0.49 for 1 credit with a smaller package), and your profile will be highlighted for 1 month for free.

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Ashley Madison Website Overview

Top Features:

Seeing who favorited your profile, priority highlighted messages, chatting.

Motto:

Life is short. Have an affair.

Ashley Madison

Gender ratio:

70%

30%

Visits/Month:

11M

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Who Should Choose Ashley Madison

• A wife who wants to have an affair without letting her husband know, and a husband who doesn’t want his wife to know about his little adventures
• Sugar babies looking for a free sugar site and sugar daddies looking for a place with lots of sugar babies dreaming of meeting a benefactor

Creating an Account on Ashley Madison

Ashley Madison was initially designed as a married dating site, and yes, 20 years ago, that made society a bit nervous, especially considering it was just impossible to deny millions of people joined it. However, much has happened, so does its slogan 'Life is short, have an affair' still work as well? Obviously, it does—now Ashley has over 10 million monthly visits.

Of course, we joined Ashley Madison, too, and that wasn't that hard. All we had to do was:

• Click See Your Matches (pink button) on the main page
• Added the required information (nothing extra special or unexpected—just information on location, age, marital status, email address)
• Provided some more details on our preferences and added a profile photo (we didn't blur it or add a mask, and this step could also be skipped)
• Accessed the site

Yes, it was that simple. We didn't get a super detailed profile or provided enough information to advanced matching algorithms—Ashley Madison just doesn't work like that. Discreetness is the top priority, so the team doesn't even make an effort to encourage members to create good profiles. Still, we believe a good profile always gives you an advantage over others, so here's what we can recommend to all potential Ashley Madison members.

Tips to Make a Good Profile on Ashley Madison

• Catchy, meaningful, and not dirty profile make you stand out
• Writing a self-description may be challenging, but it's worth it as you can provide more information not only about yourself but also the terms of the sugar arrangement you are looking for
• Add pictures, you can make them private if you want to and grant access only to members you like and who request it

Ashley Madison Cost: Is This Dating Site Cheap or Expensive?

Ashley Madison is definitely not expensive, it's rather completely free, however, only for women. We signed up as a male member, and male members need to pay to use special services, but there are a lot of free features, as well. So, let's take a closer look at both categories of services (we tested all of them).

Prices

Free Features

As a standard male member from Ashley Madison, we could use do a lot of things, actually, namely:

So, basically, all features except for messaging are free. However, you can't watch private photos without requesting access or uploading a profile photo.

Paid Services & Their Costs

Again, there are not so many special features on Ashley Madison, and the prices are pretty reasonable. The Priority Man status is granted to you if you buy the Elite credit package, and that's exactly what we did, and maybe that's one of the reasons why we received that many messages from women. The rest was spent on messaging, both Priority mails and regular messages.

There's another interesting bonus from a company—people who buy a credit package get 30 days of Message plus for free. That means that they can read and reply to collect messages without spending credits, and for us, that was a pretty useful feature.

How to Look for Matches on Ashley Madison?

What about Ashley Madison's search algorithms and communication tools? We mentioned that profiles are not that detailed, but what exactly will you see as a member? Here are our impressions.

The Search Feature

There's only one type of search on this site, and the number of filters is not that impressive. We could search for matches by:

• Age
• Area (from within ten miles to any area, which means all around the world)
• Last login
• Marital status or a relationship status
• Profiles with private/public photos
• Weight
• Height
• Relationship goals or limits (short-term relationships, long-term relationships, cyber affairs, etc.)

We couldn't search for members by their interests or features, and that was disappointing. Still, aside from the number of filters, the search worked well enough.

Profiles

When you join the community and every time you browse the site you are redirected to the Discover page. The system doesn't consider your preferences, but we found a few pretty attractive ladies just by scrolling down the page. When we wanted to narrow the search, we just clicked filters and applied any of them that seemed useful at the time. Again, you can view profiles for free, and we probably browsed hundreds if not thousands of them, and around 30% were detailed.

There are the Vitals, and all members have them, so you will definitely learn one's age, body type, gender, and zodiac sign. Interests & Desires are more useful just because they tell you more about personal preferences and things that a user is looking for. A few wrote self-descriptions, and fewer wrote long ones, but it was definitely the most interesting part of the profiles. We can't say that profiles of male users (we looked through them, too, searching for male sugar babies) were less detailed, which was pretty common for other sugar and regular dating sites—they were pretty much like female profiles.

Interaction

So, messaging is the main communication tool on Ashley Madison. We could go to our inbox by clicking Messages on the Main Menu, or we could just contact a member right away by following the Message Me link in a user's profile. When you open the Chat window, regular messages are set by default, but you can switch them to Priority Mail with one click.

Ashley Madison Special Features: What Makes It Stand Out?

Basically, we've already described all the special features above. Members who buy the most expensive pack of credits become Priority men, and all paying members can send Priority messages to women.

Our User Experience: Does Ashley Madison Work as a Sugar Website?

Ms. Lady in Red

We met a few wives looking for a benefactor on the site, and we remembered Ms Lady In Red best. This lady had an open marriage, so no cheating was involved, and though we totally realized this site was for “married dating”, this still worked better for us. She had a very deep personality, and we had a lot of great conversations, and though she was a bit older than the sugar babies we were initially looking for, we’d definitely choose her, maybe even for a long-term arrangement.

Alexara

We found Alexara using search—she was a young 22-year-old woman, skinny, pretty, and studying at college. However, she was looking for a Platonic sugar relationship, no sex, just long-distance communication. Well, we were pretty curious about the reasons why she chose this very site to find them. She said that was a site for cyber affairs, too, and could but just agree with her, but still, we imagined a real sugar daddy and acted on his behalf, so that didn’t work for us.

MissM10

Lady MissM10 was one of the most attractive ladies we met on Ashley Madison, and she was one of those who indicated she was a sugar baby in her profile. This charming Canadian definitely stole our heart, and we started discussing the terms of our potential arrangement. She asked for pay per meet, in cash (we said we’re going to move to Canada soon), and asked for $300—the average price that most sugar babies who don’t want to receive a monthly allowance usually ask for.

User Experience

Bill

Ashley Madison rate

Keep an eye out for priory messages. Ashley Madison automatically charges 5 credits for each message unless you go into chat settings and switch to regular messages. It’s pretty annoying, but I got used to it, and the ladies more than make up for the slight inconvenience.

Owen

Ashley Madison rate

I chose Ashley Madison because it’s one of the few sugar dating sites with a convenient mobile app. This way, I keep all my sugar activities on my phone and don’t have to worry about someone going through my browser history at home or at work. And it’s easier to snap selfies to exchange with sugar babies. It does take a one-time payment to get access to the app, but it’s worth it for me.

Tom

Ashley Madison rate

A long-time Ashley Madison fan here. I’ve been using it for around five years, on and off, between relationships, and I’m happy with what I get and not willing to look for another platform. There are plenty of SBs eager to please if you’re ready to pay, though I’ve noticed an increase in girls interested in online-only arrangements, which don’t work for me.

Kyle

Ashley Madison rate

I didn’t expect responses to my every message, so I wasn’t disappointed like some other guys. I’ve been at this sugar dating long enough to recognize the red flags, and I’m not afraid to report any girl who seems suspicious. Thanks to Ashley Madison, I found two ppm sugar babies in my neighborhood and have a couple more in reserve.

Is Ashley Madison Worth It? Our Expert's Opinion

Sam Golden

Researcher

Ashley Madison is no more the site where one can find an affair and nothing but an affair. Now it is used by lots of people, and we were actually surprised to know how many women look for sugar arrangements on this site. 5 out of 10 ladies are likely to mention that they are looking for a sugar daddy in their profiles, and about 8 out of 10 ladies we contacted said they were okay with such types of relationships even if they didn’t declare the desire to find a benefactor. So, yes, it works for sugar daddies and sugar babies.

Jessica Powell

Author

As for the site itself, it’s still a pretty good (yet simple) dating platform. It’s one of the sites that accept everyone, doesn’t make you pay too much money, and doesn’t show you those annoying ads all the time. Every adult user can sign up, meet a woman (it will take time as not all profiles are detailed, and some members are looking for nothing but cyber affairs), but finding a match and enjoying the experience overall is absolutely possible.

How to Use Ashley Madison Effectively?

Here are some tips we wish we knew before we joined Ashley Madison:

1. Contacting ladies without profile photos is a lottery, and the first thing a member should do is request access to private photos to make sure a girl is real
2. Sending a priority message makes sense, but only if you really like a girl, especially an attractive girl with a detailed profile—she may be receiving hundreds of messages a day
3. Blurring photos and masks are useful as this is a platform for married dating, but you get way more attention without it just because you look like you have nothing to hide
4. There are fakes on Ashley Madison, so sending money to a sugar baby in advance is a bad decision

Ashley Madison vs Victoria Milan

Both Ashley Madison and Victoria Milan are great websites—each of them has a mobile app, email verification, and a very good reputation. The main difference is the size of the dating pool. Victoria Milan has 100,000 monthly visitors, while for Ashley Madison, this number is 100 times larger. That’s why we can confidently say that Ashley Madison is a better option for those interested in finding an affair. VictoriaMilan is still worth it, though, especially if you’re looking for a sugar dating service.  

Conclusion

So, if you are considering the idea of joining this community, take into account all pros and cons of Ashley Madison. For us, the experience was satisfying, and it's possible to find a sugar baby on the site—it's rather more difficult to find a hookup with a real married woman on the site just because you need to stand out from the fierce competition. Sugar daddies definitely have an advantage over others, so why not use it?

Sam Golden

Researcher

Our writers and editors can’t work without relevant information and the latest data that show what trends in the sugar community are at the moment. An experienced theoretical psychologist, Sam Golden, is the one who finds information that is impossible to find and allows us to share only relevant content with you.

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