We announced the closure on 14 May 2020 on the Guardian Soulmates site with a message to our soulmates:

The end is finally here – after more than 15 years of online dating Guardian Soulmates will be closing this June. We’ve come a long way and are very proud of all the thousands of people we’ve helped introduce, the good dates people have been on (ok, we know not all were good, but we tried), the weddings that took place and the families that have been created.

To every single person who has used our service, thank you. You have been part of a wonderful community of like-minded people, open to finding love and meeting people. But like all good things, we must now come to an end and we’ll be shutting up shop.

It hasn’t been an easy decision to make, but the online dating world is a very different place to when we first launched online in July 2004. There are so many dating apps now, so many ways to meet people, which are often free and very quick.

Whilst Soulmates has always been a premium offering, focused on creating a safe and fun space for like-minded people to meet and hopefully find love, we find ourselves as very little fish in a very big pool. To keep up with the changing times we’d need to invest heavily in new technology and develop a new way of operating, and it’s just not viable.

While we love Guardian Soulmates, it is the right time for us to bow out. We do so with a heavy heart, but with incredible memories and happiness for the relationships we have helped to create that will live on.

Thank you.

The Guardian Soulmates team x