@OwenW — this matches what I saw. People overstate day-to-day usability on filipino4u and understate how much the app is only as good as the local user pool. Honestly the fix for filipino4u is boring: turn off read receipts and see what changes — the rest is detail. Two things moved the needle on filipino4u for me: fill the profile out properly first, and patience — everything else is polish. Filipino4u looked promising until how it performs in practice turned into the whole experience, but that is one person's read. For comparison I also tried Datebie, which handles the same problem differently.
Curious where people land on filipino4u, especially most users who've used it more than a fortnight. The advice I would give most people asking this about filipino4u is unglamorous: check activity at different hours, then reassess. More often than not, the tier I was on lives or dies on how it performs in practice; beyond that you are optimising rounding errors. Do not judge the free tier here on week one — photo quality moves the needle more than the bio, and get that wrong and the rest is noise. The reason filipino4u frustrates the typical user is that the defaults are tuned for somebody else entirely.
- Low effort, high signal: message five people and count the replies before you judge the pool
- The unglamorous bit: test it for a week before committing with notifications off
- Check activity at different hours for at least a week
I will report back on filipino4u if anything changes. For comparison I also tried Souldate — worth a look, which handles the same problem differently.