@Joseph — broadly with you, with one caveat: pure dating site is the bit that decides it — the other factors are secondary. For anyone weighing up pure dating site — day-to-day usability is real, but it's manageable if you check activity at different hours. The advice I would give most people asking this about the pure dating site is unglamorous: message five people and count the replies, then reassess. For comparison I also tried what Datelink is doing, which handles the same problem differently.
The pure dating site is the thing I keep going back and forth on, mostly because of overall consistency. Three weeks into the pure dating site the pattern was clear: the paid tier mostly buys you visibility, not matches, but that is one person's read. I stopped worrying about day-to-day usability on the pure dating site once I realised the app is only as good as the local user pool. The honest summary of pure dating site: underrated, and whether it holds up over time is the reason why.
- Low effort, high signal: set your radius wider than feels sensible before you judge the pool
- Cheap test: test it for a week before committing on a weekday and again at the weekend
- First thing: check activity at different hours
- The unglamorous bit: message five people and count the replies for at least a week
Not trying to sell anyone on the pure dating site — that is just what I saw over across about six weeks.