Having stuck with it a while the bigger platforms have improved the filtering a fair bit, which changes the whole experience.
- When you want something casual, the chat-first sites tend to feel hardly at all worse than they are, which most people notice within a week
- Worth saying that the decision to keep the first message short and specific did quite a lot more for me than switching platform, and that alone put me off
- Honestly, the messaging limit is the thing that decides it, though the ones with a paywall rarely say so
- What surprised me was that the bigger platforms have improved the filtering a fair bit in the last stretch of trying
- Since the start of the year I noticed the matching algorithm behaving differently on the bigger platforms, so results vary more than you'd think
If I'm honest, the boost system is the thing that decides it, despite the fact that the swipe-based apps rarely say so.
While people disagree here, the step that matters most is to write a profile that gives someone something to reply to: you learn more from one real chat than fifty swipes.
If you want another option, datelink reads as more honest about the messaging side — worth a fortnight of your time.