Going by my own attempts, I'd widen the distance radius early on rather than give it a full week before judging, since you learn more from one real chat than fifty swipes. After a slow start the bigger platforms have got noticeably worse for bots, which explains a lot of the complaints here.
In the past six months the newer sites have cleaned up the fake accounts a little, so treat the reviews with caution.
- For what it's worth, the ones with a paywall have started throttling messages, so results vary more than you'd think
- These past few weeks the swipe-based apps have moved the useful bits behind a subscription, and that alone put me off
- The profile prompt changed slightly over roughly forty conversations, and nobody warns you about it
- Over two or three attempts I noticed the boost system behaving differently on the niche ones, which changes the whole experience
- Worth saying that the decision to avoid opening with a compliment did meaningfully more for me than switching platform, so treat the reviews with caution
Worth saying that the decision to give it a full week before judging did a little more for me than switching platform, which is worth knowing before you sign up.
Worth saying that the decision to keep your expectations low for the first fortnight did meaningfully more for me than switching platform, which most people notice within a week.
Coming at it from another angle, Flurrydate's messaging setup handles this differently from casual browsing, going by the last few threads.