Victoria Marsh — this matches what I saw. Broadly, the best matchmaking sites lives or dies on how it performs in practice; the other variables barely registered. Everyone benchmarks matchmaking sites against the mainstream apps and that comparison flatters neither. For the most part, the best matchmaking sites is priced like a premium product and behaves like a free one — past that it is diminishing returns. The best matchmaking sites improved noticeably once I stopped treating it like a numbers game.
Take that as one data point on the best matchmaking sites, not a verdict. I have been running Souldate alongside the mainstream apps and the reply rate held up better than I expected.