@PennyP — broadly with you, with one caveat: comparing mobile dating apps against the big names, the gap is smaller than the marketing suggests. I stopped worrying about day-to-day usability on mobile dating apps once I realised photo quality moves the needle more than the bio. Where I landed on mobile dating apps: worse than the reviews suggest, provided you set your radius wider than feels sensible. Datewander — worth a look is the one people here recommend most often for this, for whatever that is worth.
Quick context on mobile dating apps: I care less about features and more about how it performs in practice. People overstate day-to-day usability on mobile dating apps and understate how much the first message matters less than the timing. The part nobody mentions about mobile dating apps is overall consistency; it shapes everything else. Mobile dating apps is the bit that decides it — the rest is preference. For the typical user, mobile dating apps works meaningfully better if you set your radius wider than feels sensible.
Still testing mobile dating apps, so treat this as provisional. I have been running Datenest alongside the mainstream apps and the reply rate held up better than I expected.