Afro Connections is seeking to connect black singles from all over the planet. For a niche-specific site, it does a pretty good job of catering to the cultural specifics. Some sites seem to miss the mark, usually in a rush to cough out as many cookie cutter sites as they can. With that aspect under control, we took a deeper look into what Afro Connections has to offer and this is what we found…

Afro Connections seems to be in a decline since last we reviewed. Their Alexa score is off our charts, landing a zero for their popularity. Mind you, Alexa certainly doesn’t tell the whole tale. The searches I ran in my area turned up a few members and you really only need one good connection. Mind you, if you had to take a monthly membership, I probably wouldn’t risk it. However, this dating site offers something that most dating sites don’t.

AfroConnections lets you choose between buying a monthly membership for around $20 a month and buying credits. The smallest credit package you can buy is about $10, but that gives you three credits to use. That means that you don’t have to shell out the full load if you only find a handful of people you’re interested in. All-in-all, it at least gives everyone options, whether there are many people on in your area or not. This is fantastic feature from where we stand.

“AfroConnections.com just doesn’t have the membership database to compete with other leading dating sites.”

There are the usual search options on this site as you’ll find on others like it. You can pick between many different criteria when trying to narrow your search. Hopefully you fill out yours on the way in because that really helps to give value to the search tool. Unfortunately, I found I could easily skip most of the options during my profile creation. This ability is good if you’re just looking to check out what AfroConnections.com has to offer, but bad if you plan on staying around. You want people to commit to their profiles. In a way, it obligates them to the site, and that’s what building a dating community is all about.

For those who like to search close to home, the site lets you choose a five mile radius based on your zip code, but this is only for US residents. When you do find those profiles that are close to home, you can check them out without worry of having parts hidden, such as pictures, until you pay. However, when you are ready to contact or be contacted by someone, you should be ready to whip out your charge card.

You have to pay to chat with any of the people on AfroConnections.com. This isn’t the case with all dating sites. Some will let you reply to messages for free—and we’re big fans of those sites! If that’s an issue for you, you may wish to consider looking elsewhere for online love. However, the credit system they have in place goes a long way to making up for this issue.

Extra features are also nice on social networking sites. When we last reviewed Afro Connections, they offered a chat client so you could instant message. That seems to have disappeared. The other feature it had, and still offers, is Cyber Cupid. This search program looks for matches based on the criteria you’ve entered about what your perfect match would consist of and they mail you each week with anything that pops up. For those who’d rather sit back and relax, this feature takes away the work. It also takes a way a lot of the fun of searching, but hey, who are we to judge!

AfroConnections.com delivers when it comes to ease of navigation. All of the links are big and bold and there’s very little room to get lost. Just make sure to keep an eye on your back button!

When all is said and done, AfroConnections.com just doesn’t have the membership database to compete with other leading dating sites. It is a professional site and it offers its share of promise, but by not allowing nonmembers to reply to members messages for free, it seems to be shooting itself in its digital foot. However, if you want to check it out, you can get in easily enough and run some searches. Even if you only find a possible connection or two, you can always try purchasing tokens. That way you’ll be able to stop your losses should the site not deliver.