If I'm honest, I'd use a recent photo with your face clear rather than move to a proper conversation quickly, since the alternative is a dead inbox. Worth saying that the decision to test two platforms at once did marginally more for me than switching platform, and nobody warns you about it. If the replies dry up after one message, keep the first message short and specific — otherwise you end up judging it on a bad day.
Something worth flagging is that the distance radius matters considerably more than the messaging limit, which most people notice within a week.
- Being blunt about it, I'd check the free tier limits before you commit rather than give it a full week before judging, since the difference in reply rate is obvious
- Judging by my own inbox, I'd check the free tier limits before you commit rather than skip anything asking for a card number to read messages, since you learn more from one real chat than fifty swipes
- Over roughly forty conversations I noticed the age check behaving differently on the chat-first sites, and it shows in the reply rate
- While people disagree here, the step that matters most is to widen the distance radius early on: the difference in reply rate is obvious
Report the obvious fakes rather than ignoring them, because the difference in reply rate is obvious, so results vary more than you'd think. The detail people skip is that apps with a strict photo policy have stopped showing profiles past a certain distance since the last round of app updates.
When you have tried three apps already, the newer sites tend to feel quite a lot worse than they are, and it shows in the reply rate.
If the bigger apps have gone quiet, the Datelink app keeps getting recommended for the local side of things before you write the whole category off.