1. Should you use a paid dating agency or a free agency? Contrary to what you may think, you are not necessarily more likely to be successful with a paid dating agency than a free one. A paid dating agency will have a greater budget for advertising, and this is where your money tends to go. Most paid dating agencies allow you to set up a profile for free, and you can sometimes find that the people you contact can't reply because they haven't purchased a subscription; this can waste a lot of your time. You would not find this problem with a free agency; nor would you get the problem with an agency that allows non-subscribers to reply to your message. However, a free service is more likely to contain lower quality profiles, possibly including swearing and similar, because with free advertising-sponsored sites, there is little money to pay for people to manually check profiles.

2. How good is their matching technology? Matching technology varies from matching physical characteristics such as height and eye colour, to in-depth psychological question reviews and surveys to fill in, such as seen on OkCupid. In general, physical characteristics are usually unimportant when it comes to finding someone with whom you would wish to have a relationship. Age, personality, whether they have children, their religion and similar are more important, and where dating agencies provide options to match based on these items, you are more likely to be successful, and you will cut down on your searching time.

3. Should you go for a general dating agency, or a dating agency aimed at a particular subsection of the population? There are plenty of dating agencies and introduction agencies that cater for people that hold a certain religion, people who are looking for a certain kind of relationship or just friendship, and other subsections. If the person who you are looking for must have a certain characteristic, then it may be worth looking at a dating agency aimed at people who have that characteristic, otherwise it's best to stick with the general ones.

4. How attractive is the dating website? If the website of an online dating agency is attractive, you will be more likely to visit it regularly. You are no different from anybody else in this respect. Also, some dating websites email you when significant events happen, like a new person signing up in your area, or somebody sending you a message. If they do this, then you are more likely to visit the site when such an event happens, and the site will likely be more successful for you.

5. What is the general opinion of that dating site? What do people think of it? Don't be fooled by dating agencies that tell you that they arrange one marriage a week; they may well do so, but that may be quite easy for them if they have millions of profiles on their system. Look for the opinions of expert reviewers, and the opinions of ordinary men or women who have used the dating agency.