Online dating is a recent addition to the complex world of love and romance.
There are so many options available, but how good are the connections you make? Is there something lacking from the online dating experience?
These are the issues the following apps look to solve as they help you chart a course to true love.
Tinder
The all-star of the swiping style dating apps, Tinder has been a revelation since it arrived on our cell phones back in 2012.
After creating a simple picture-based profile, users scroll through thousands of pictures in the hope of making a match. Tinder uses geolocation to introduce you to the people in your local area, from there you start swiping.
The popularity of the app means there will always be a lot of options for finding dates. People tend to consider Tinder as more of a casual love site than a serious one but all is possible.
The app is free to download and free to use. However, it caps off pretty quickly on swipes and messaging privileges until you pay for the premium version.
Grindr
Grindr pioneered the swipe right hook up app formula and really brought it to the mainstream.
For those who aren’t aware, this is an app that caters to gay and bisexual males. It set the standard for how a lot of hookup apps would be developed in the future.
Creating a profile is simple, so you can easily get down to the business of meeting people. Grinder users select a “tribe” which narrows down the type of guys they can meet. As with Tinder, users are matched based on liking photos, after which they can engage in conversation and meet up.
The premium Grinder Xtra version allows for an advertisement-free browsing experience. In addition, it unlocks the push notifications setting that is blocked on the free version.
Bumble
Bumble is a dating app that also encourages you to make friends and business associates.
For the most part, however, it is a dating app – and a feminist one at that. Females are the “Queen Bee’s”, they hold all the power of selection and connection. Once a female member accepts a male suitor into her “hive” – bee analogy alert – they can begin communicating.
Bumble only gives users a 24-hour window to begin chatting once they have liked one another. If they fail to chat within that window the connection is lost. As far as we know this is not based on the actual bee-haviour of bees, but who knows.
You can upgrade from a free to a premium account to expedite the search process and unlock some more tools. For example, there are video and voice chat options available for those who have already connected within a hive.
Don’t worry, bee happy.
HER
San Francisco start-up, HER seized on the opportunity to create queer women a dating app all of their own.
You could think of it as a grinder for girls but in truth, it is quite different. The HER team creates a safe environment for women to talk and meet each other online. In addition, they provide the essential ingredients of any dating app – a world of potential suitors in your local area.
Bringing the fun element of dating to the forefront, HER builds communities by hosting special events. They prioritize safety and respect in communication and provide lesbian dating with the online platform had been missing.
OkCupid
In classical mythology, Cupid is the God of desire. In modern mythology, Ok Cupid is a dating app that deals in desire. Where Cupid the God was created out of the eternal union between love and war, OK Cupid was created by some students at Harvard University – kind of similar.
Either way, OK Cupid is now one of the biggest and most well-known dating apps available. It offers a huge pool of international users all looking for a good old fashioned date. They have done well too, Cupid has found many many matches over its 16 years of existence. On a couple of occasions, matches actually led to marriage.
The app allows you to search for people within categories such a Beard Lovers or Kinky Nerds for example. It is probably best to not think of people as just members within a category. However, categories can help users find the kind of people they think they are interested in.
Features-wise cupid is pretty well stocked, with options for personality quizzes and scale specific messaging. The ubiquitous premium version is available for those who want the full app and not just the diminished free version.
Plenty of Fish
As of 2017, the world-renowned Plenty of Fish app has over 90 million users.
Now if you can’t find someone you like out of 90 million people, you’re probably a bit too picky.
Of course, the dating game isn’t that simple. Liking someone isn’t enough. With that in mind, POF offers some initial quizzing to find out what kind of dates you are interested in. After that, you are free to go for a swim and see what the fish look like.
They promise their users to find them a match much more quickly than their rivals. Whether that’s true or not is impossible to verify. However, POF does offer one of the most comprehensive free versions of a dating app, and that is a good thing.
Facebook Dating
Facebook Dating was launched by the megastars of social media back in 2018.
Not necessarily a straight forward addition to your regular facebook profile, there are options to keep the two completely separate. On the other hand, you can connect it with regular facebook if you choose to.
This is only available in 20 countries so it’s a little bit isolated. On the plus side, the validity and ease that Facebook and Instagram add to the dating game, is reassuring.
Happn
Happn is a geo-location-based matching site that lets you know who is around you in your local area.
Is that a great idea? There’s pros and cons to such a mobile dating app, for one thing, if you are not in the right range then you can miss out on a bunch of members.
Once you have found your ideal mix of settings, Happn works much the same as any other app. It pairs you off with mutual admirers and gives you a small selection of photos to look at.
Once connected you are encouraged to message each other and take things from there. The premium version reveals more about the people who like you and gives you more options to communicate.
The League
What league are you in?
That’s the premise here, to place yourself in a certain league of attractiveness and high standards. Does it work? Does cutting down the number of suitors make life easier? It depends on what you want, but it does give people a chance to be more selective.
The price of membership is higher than average which reinforces the elitist nature of this app. This may or may not be offensive to people on a moral level, but it does work as a filter.
What do you get in return for this higher price? The same as what you get with every other dating app – a portfolio of potential dates that you can connect with as long as your interest is mutual.
Try it out of every other dating site has left you disappointed.
Coffee Meets Bagel
This app doesn’t work equally. Men are given women to like, and women are given men who liked them. See the difference? You can speculate why that is but in the end, the results are the same – people who share an interest in one another get the chance to converse with the chance to arrange a date.
The focus of Coffee Meets bagel is on quality over quantity. The overall volume of users that you get to select from is down, but more effort is gone into finding a profile that matches your criteria.
As you might have guessed this requires a more lengthy profile creation process than usual, but nothing too strenuous. Changes to the app now allow you to comment on people’s profile pictures. This is an interesting opportunity to make an impression with something other than your looks.
Wrappin’ Up
The picks are there, the big names, the newcomers, the old stalwarts, take your pick. Look carefully though – each option comes with its own particular configurations.
It is well-advised to sit down and ask yourself what kind of dates you want to go on. From there, you can decide upon one or two of these dating assistants.
Good Luck!