THE BEST DATING SITES
| Bumble | Best for confident women |
|---|---|
| Tinder | Best for quick and easy hookups |
| OKCupid | Best free dating site |
| Hinge | Best for serious relationship seekers |
| Coffee Meets Bagel | Best for breaking the silence |
| Happn | Best for missed connections |
| The League | Best for people with high standards |
| Her | Best for lesbian, bisexual and queer women |
| Clover | Best for confirming a date |
| Plenty of Fish | Best for conversations |
| Match | Best for someone with money to spend |
| eHarmony | Best for marriage seekers |
We have tried to describe some of best apps for online dating for you.
Bumble
Bumble is a free dating app that allows women to send messages first. If the guy doesn't get a response back within 24 hours, he'll lose the future dates. Because that's the one thing my love life really didn't have: arbitrary time limits.
The timer is programmed to promote touch, and some people really appreciate it. But if you're someone who's going to procrastinate, Bumble might not be for you. Also, because women need a message first, Bumble tends to weed out the more precarious males. However, the levels of excessively optimistic people appears to be higher than I've seen in other apps. Bumble also has a BFF feature to help you meet new people, but that's really not our focus, so I'm going to save it for another time.
Tinder
Looking for a bond, friendship or long-term relationship, Tinder has been involved. It's essentially the first stop for people joining the dating world. When you want to play the odds when it comes to online dating, you need to swipe where everyone is swiping.
On the upside, the profiles are short, which lets you make choices quickly. The downside is that a short dating profile makes it difficult to find out what a lot of people are looking for. Knowing so little about a individual can also make initial messaging a lot more difficult. You 're going to have to walk through a sea of profiles, which makes it easy to slip through people you may have offered a chance under different circumstances.
OkCupid
OkCupid, how disappointed you are with me. I have friends who have met their spouses through OkCupid. My last serious relationship was with OkCupid. In reality, I've been on and off OkCupid for about the last 11 years. Profiles are far more in-depth than most online dating sites, so if you answer a seemingly infinite set of questions (like a personality test), they'll spit out a fair Match / Enemy percentage of profiles to help you determine interest-based compatibility.
Changes over the last few years have made OkCupid a bit more like Tinder (both owned by the same company) more focused on swiping and removing the option to send messages to the user without first matching them. You can always send a message—-it just won't show in the recipient's inbox unless you match. And who doesn't want to send a positive message to someone who may never see it? OkCupid, however, pointed out that these improvements helped to minimize the amount of negative messages received by users, which may be a positive trade-off. Unfortunately, in my experience, OkCupid has become a ghost town.
Hinge
Hinge's current slogan is, "designed to be deleted," so if potential match for a serious relationship is what you're looking for, this is the dating app I would recommend.Originally, the app centered on common contacts and mutual friends that you and a future partner shared on Facebook, which was a trick I've never been sold on. But it's been pivoting away from this pattern ever since. Hinge designed the app to make user profiles more attractive (and helpful) than apps like Tinder. You have the option of displaying a lot of useful information that could be used to deal with breakers: your political leanings, your religion, your alcohol consumption rate, or even your level of interest in having children someday. And the prompts offered by Hinge make it easy to build more attractive profiles.
Coffee Meets Bagel
Coffee Meets Bagel aims to give people better quality matches by sending out customized matches or "bagels" at noon every day. They suggest icebreakers for the first messages, and the profiles are more in-depth than Tinder. CMB is not the worst choice for people who want a little extra hand-holding. However, I found the software to be frustrating, with too many features and a lot of gimmicks. I shouldn't have to look up online tutorials to find out how to use the dating app. So why label the Bagels matches?
Happn
Happn matches you with the people who are in the vicinity. It's a cool concept, and it's helpful for people who want to meet someone in a more organic way. That said, I've never met a single person who is actually using the app.
After signing up, Happn showed me 68 people who said I had crossed paths in the previous three hours, even though I didn't leave my apartment all day. This could be beneficial if you're trying to date your immediate neighbors (or Uber drivers) but I don't see the appeal when rivals like Tinder are already demonstrating the difference between you and other users. Frankly, if I saw a nice guy in a coffee shop, I 'd just get closer to him instead of trying to see if he's in Happn.
League
The League is a "elite dating app" that allows you to apply — and have your job title, college and LinkedIn profile. Big cities tend to have long waiting lists, so you may find yourself twisting your thumbs while your application to be one of the elite singles on the platform is being reviewed. (Of course, you can pay to speed up the process.) Exclusiveness can be a draw for some and a turnoff for others, but I'll let you in on a secret: I've seen most of the profiles I've come across on The League's other dating apps, too. So, at the end of the day, you'll probably see the same faces for potential Tinder dates, if you're not considered elite enough for The League.
Clover
Clover was aiming to be the on-demand edition of online dating sites, enabling you to order a date like a pizza. It also offers statistical match predictions based on compatibility and value, although it is not entirely clear how those numbers are determined.
I've been on Clover for quite a while, but I've forgotten it existed since then before I started compiling this list. This appears to me to be a less popular OkCupid and Tinder hybrid with a fairly low user base, even though I live in an metropolitan area with plenty of people using a wide range of dating apps. Clover says it has almost 6 million users, 85 percent of which are between the ages of 18 and 30.
