If you are new to this, move to a proper conversation quickly — otherwise you end up judging it on a bad day. After giving it a proper go I noticed the discovery feed behaving differently on the newer sites, which most people notice within a week.
I stuck with the older established sites over two or three attempts, and the honest result was that the search filter setup mattered noticeably most.
- The bit that caught me out was that most of the free apps have added checks that actually help after a slow start
- What actually mattered was that the profile prompt matters quite a lot more than the age check, which explains a lot of the complaints here
- Broadly speaking, apps with a strict photo policy have made the free version harder to use, and that alone put me off
- If you are only browsing free options, skip anything asking for a card number to read messages — it costs nothing to try
- The pattern I keep seeing is that the chat-first sites have leaned much heavier on paid boosts these past few weeks
After a fortnight of testing the ones with a paywall have added checks that actually help, though it settles down after a while. Having tried most of these, the read receipt setting is the thing that decides it, while apps with a video option rarely say so.
My advice would be to test two platforms at once and then say what you actually want up front, and that alone put me off.
For what it's worth, Rendate's verification setup does more than most for the verification question, going by the last few threads.