For: Long established, busy, great prize money, wide choice of games

Against: Software not quite as sophisticated as on other 90 ball bingo websites.

Most people who go to bingo halls will have heard of Mecca Bingo - after all, they run one of the largest and most successful circuits of bingo halls in Great Britain, as well as the oldest - Mecca were the company that introduced the UK to bingo in the 1960s via the founder of the Miss World competition, Eric Morley. Despite Mecca Bingo's popularity and well known name, they only entered the arena of online 90 number bingo games in late 2005, but they have been offering other games, including Bingo Keno and cashline bingo online for some time. The Mecca Bingo website always seems to be very busy, and therefore it offers very good prize money.

Once you've visited the website and signed up, you can play free versions of many of their games (but not 90 ball bingo). You're not given any free money to play with, but you can claim £10 back once you have deposited over £10.

Once you have decided that you enjoy the online bingo games and start to play cash bingo, it is easy to deposit money with your credit or debit card. It is also an easy site to withdraw your bingo winnings from. You can withdraw as little as £10, and withdrawals are transferred back to your bank account very quickly. The Mecca site uses its own software, which has a couple of disadvantages. People who use the Firefox web browser will not be able to play the 90 ball games, and although you can play up to six strips of six at a time, you can only see one strip at a time as they are tabbed and you have to click through them. We think that this is actually quite good, as it puts you off of playing multiple strips, which can work out to be very expensive! The games are called fairly quickly, and the site has a male bingo caller, with a very nice Liverpudlian calling voice.

The 90 number bingo games offered on the website vary in price throughout - costing between 10p and 50p per ticket per game. You have a choice of automatic card daubing or doing it manually, but manual daub can't be selected until the game has actually started.

One of the best things about Mecca Bingo is that it is unique in offering cashline bingo games online in the UK. These are similar to the board games played during intervals in bingo clubs, but the prize money is based on how many numbers it takes before you claim - you're not playing anyone else. But the stakes are variable, and so are the different games you can play for (diagonal line, four corners, full house etc).

Mecca also have friendly chatrooms, and is particularly welcoming for people who have only played in bingo halls before - many of the visitors to this website are folk who also play in their clubs!