Some people lose the drive to play matchmaking after reaching The Global Elite or are just fed up with the state of matchmaking. So what’s left for us who want a change of pace? There are a couple of options out there. You can either start pugging against really good people, search for a team and play scrims or try to get into leagues. There are three third party companies that offer such services: ESEA, FACEIT and CEVO. After playing on them for about a year now I think that I can give pretty good insight on what these services do well. This will give you a pretty decent understanding about which service is best suited for you. You can find a breakdown of the pricing at the end of this article.

Lets look at the pros and cons of these services: Pros:

– Effective anti-cheat

– Karma System

– 128 tick (really good servers)

– Client (clean and simple)

– Paywall (people that pay tend to be more enjoyable to play with)

– Queue system

– Reserved slot on Frag Shack servers (only with a Insider subscription)

– League system with huge prices

– Scrim system

– Recruitment center which helps individual players find teams for the league.

Cons:

– $6,95/month for Premium, $14,95/month for Insider. (cheaper for longer periods)

– Client is really intrusive

– No ladder system, resulting in unbalanced games from time to time

– People play to achieve a high RWS. Resulting in stupid and overly aggressive gameplay.



Pros:

– 128 tick

– Ladder system (Compete for prices and be motivated to get into FPL)

– Elo-System

– Free (queueing with invisible elo system)

– Queue system

Cons:

– $7.43/month for Unlimited, $11.99/month for Premium (needed to join Ladders and see your Elo) (cheaper for longer periods)

– Servers (despite being 128 tick, they are bad servers more often than not)

– No client. Website is horrible to navigate in. Bugs.

– People tend to go afk/leave because they don’t care.

– Takes a long time until you play with good people.

– A lot of people cheat due to the horrible anti-cheat.



Pros:

– 128 tick (really good servers)

– Good Anti-Cheat

– Free to download and play.

– Has a client.

Cons:

– Client is confusing.

– No queue.

– People tend to go afk/leave because they don’t care. (no paywall)

– No laddersystem, resulting in unbalanced games from time to time.

– Bad players more often than not.

To sum it up:

If you have the money to pay for ESEA/FACEIT, CEVO is definitely out of the question. ESEA scores with the best anti-cheat in the game, good players right out of the gate and no need of grinding ladders. It lacks endgame competition due to not having a ladder though. Faceit has a ladder system going for them, which starts off with a long grind through trolls and bad players. But if you aspire to get into FPL, FACEIT is the way to go. If you just want to play with friendly and good players ESEA is recommended. CEVO wins if you want to stay free to play.

Prices for extended subscriptions:

ESEA Premium 1 Month: $6.95 ($6.95 per month)

ESEA Premium 3 Months: $19.95 ($6.65 per month)

ESEA Premium 6 Months: $37.95 ($6.33 per month)

ESEA Premium 12 Months: $69.95 ($5.83 per month)

ESEA Insider 1 Month: $14.95 ($14.95 per month)

ESEA Insider 3 Months: $42.95 ($14.32 per month)

ESEA Insider 6 Months: $79.95 ($13.33 per month)

ESEA Insider 12 Months: $149.95 ($12.51 per month)

FaceIt Unlimited 1 Months: $7.43 ($7.43 per month)

FaceIt Unlimited 3 Months: $17.82 ($5.94 per month)

FaceIt Unlimited 6 Months: $26.70 ($4.45 per month)

FaceIt Premium 1 Month: $11.90 ($11.90 per month)

FaceIt Premium 3 Months: $31.23 ($10.41 per month)

FaceIt Premium 6 Months: $53.52 ($8.92 per month)