Ok so I got officially divorced last month but I’ve been separated for about half a year. I think I’m ready to at least begin going out on casual dates. I’m a male and seeking a woman but I’m not looking for hookup one-night stand apps like Tinder. There seems to be a lot of options when it comes to online dating, but I’ve never used a dating app or website before. I’d like opinions about which ones are the best as far as price, methods of communication, and number of members.
Price, communication and number of members aren’t as important as response rate. There are many dating websites - such as Plenty of Fish, eHarmony, etc. in which there are many thousands of members, but you’ll get a response rate of perhaps less than 5% or even less than 1%. With some other websites, though, there’s maybe a 20-40% response rate.
On the other hand if you live in a rural area only the big sites will have a reasonable number of possibilities. Here is a list of sites:
A lot depends on your age. For older people, pay-to-play sites such as Match seem to have fewer flakes than the runner-up, Okcupid, but both are the main biggies. My youngish coworkers tell me that OkCupid is what they use when they move beyond Tinder. Plenty of Fish seems to be the worst as far as flakes and scammers. I think it may depend on your location, too.
I really like OkCupid because it allows a high degree of freedom of expression in the profiles and isn’t just swipe-based. Tinder seems to be a thing for younger people and people in lower socioeconomic classes. The richer people I know prefer Coffee Meets Bagel, where I think the woman is the only one allowed to make first contact – it works out for them because anyone attractive on the other dating sites get messaged nonstop. I think the ratio of messages on other sites is like for every first message a man gets, a woman will get roughly 50-100. So it quickly becomes unusable. Not sure what they do for non hetero relationships.
eHarmony is one of the older ones, very exclusive and hard to use and people who don’t pass their quiz for likability and date-ability aren’t allowed to be on there. It’s also pricey and Christian oriented, so usually considered lame these days.
Match.com and PlentyOfFish are like second-tier OkCupids, similar in niche but kinda janky in comparison.
Previous thread on the subject:
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=564799&highlight=okcupid
An important thing to keep in mind is that the sites will be tracking how you use the site to predict who will be a good match for you. So, if the initial info you see is a dealbreaker of some sort, don’t click on the profile or you’ll see more people like that.
I wouldn’t necessarily dismiss Tinder out of hand. I’ve asked a couple of women about their experiences on it because I’ve heard all about the app’s reputation, but they both said it wasn’t any sketchier than the other sites (note: both were middle-aged and that might make for a different experience from younger users). And yes, its median age skews young, but it does have twice the number of users than its nearest competitors.
OKCupid was enjoyable at first because the compatibility questions are fun to fill out, but I’m spending less time on it now because it doesn’t seem very popular in my area. When I look for matches in my home city, I see the same 15 or so faces every time and no new faces.
Several years ago I used Match.com and had success. Had a long term relationship that started with someone I met on there. After that unfortunately ended, when I was ready to date again, I derided to save some money and try OKCupid and have been having success with that. I do believe if I keep going on OKCupid I will have to pay as you are limited with what you can do for free but so far I have been meeting people without paying.
Bumble is the one where the woman is the only one allowed to contact first.
I actually think OKCupid is not worth the time. It doesn’t matter how scintillating your profile/opener is if the person is not attracted to you, so if you’re a man (who in most cases has to send the first contact), you’ll waste a LOT of hours coming up with witty openers and getting nothing in return. The Tinder clones at least get the attractiveness part out of the way first, so when you actually do take the effort to come up with something to write, there is a much higher response rate.
Thread bump after a few weeks, as OkCupid recently removed the “Visited You” feature. This, in the same fashion as the removal of the “Who’s New” feature some months back, makes the site less useful as it mucks with a standard strategy - visitors (in my case women visitors) to a profile would marginally be more receptive to correspondence from the person who’s profile they visited, so you (the visited) would then first-message the visitor (again, margins count in this case!). No more. The official reason, properly translated to “argle-barble-blah-bleh-bly” seems to boil down as “We’re trying to think of a way to monetize this with A-List”.
OKCupid, attempting to become the new Facebook and failing miserably everyday…
My friend (female) had great luck with Bumble.com
I met my wife on OKCupid. Of course, that was 5 years ago so I haven’t been back since, but I agree with you that it sounds wack. Also, that article says they added photo commenting? Hmm. Cool, I guess? Not sure of the point.
I was also disappointed they removed visitors for the same reason but a friend (who I (ironically?) met on OKCupid because she visited my page) said, “if it’s important to you to find someone why can’t you spend a few bucks?” And I have no good answer to that so I may pay.
So back in 2014, I met my husband (we got married last year - yay) “through” Tinder. I say through because we both swiped right - but several weeks apart. By the time he came up on my search, he had already given up on Tinder 3 weeks before. We had mutual friends on FB however, so I sent him a friend request - we started chatting, and the rest was, as they say, history.
I would suggest, however, that you might want to also try Meetup.com - it’s free, it’s not a dating site - but you could join groups that do activities that you enjoy - and it would be a great way to find singles you have something in common with (besides the fact that you are single).
Oh, and for the record - my hubby and I are both in our 40s - since age has been mentioned 
Either way - congrats on having the courage to search for love (always a challenge after a divorce/break-up to not give up). And good luck in your search!
I remember seeing Coffee Meets Bagel on Shark Tank…wasn’t their schtick that they only connect you with your FB friends and friends-of-friends?
OKCupid is no longer completely free??
After 2 months at match.com, I find that it is consistently trying to match me up with dozens of women who are looking for somebody taller, younger, better paid, in better shape, and more Christian than me. I emailed tech support asking wtf with that, and their reply boiled down to “shut up and keep looking.”
Guess they make their revenue on ad views.
It’s free to browse and email. In order to see who “Liked” you, you have to pay. I don’t think you have to pay to read messages. About a third of the filtering options in the search are only available on a pay-to-play basis.
Ah, ok…same pay options they’ve always had, then. I haven’t been active there in a long time, but I keep telling myself I’ll jump back in the game eventually. I like OKC largely because it’s free. And although the pool of men my age is smaller, I’ve found the quality to generally be pretty good.
No and in fact they seem to be stripping out features all the time to encourage payment.
ETA: you can send and receive messages when you are a free member but there are limits to your messaging that I can’t remember at the moment.