Are there any free online meetup sites that focus specifically on dating?

Third time I've tried to get a straight answer on free online meetup sites that focus specifically on dating. The only metric I trust with online meetup sites is how much you have to reveal to use it after the first week.

The reason I am asking about online meetup sites at all is that the answers split by city and by year, so I would rather ask people than read another list. Where online meetup sites falls down for me is whether there are enough people to bother day to day.

The rough checklist I use for online meetup sites before committing:

• Test how the web version differs from the app before deciding whether it is worth paying for
• Note what share of the layout is advertising with the age filter set narrow
• Work out what the filters do after a page refresh on the first evening, not the first month
• Time how many matches ever send the first message before deciding whether it is worth paying for

If online meetup sites worked for you, what did the first week look like? Good and bad all land the same with me. Actual numbers are what I came here for.

Sorry @Penelope Wood, I've spent longer on online meetup sites than that answer suggests. You can ignore most of the marketing around online meetup sites and just check what the reporting tools actually do on mobile. Compared it against datebie.online for about a week.

Anyone comparing online meetup sites should be looking at whether notifications are useful or noise day to day before anything else.

That's where I've landed on online meetup sites — happy to be argued with.

Blunt answer: online meetup sites has been mixed for me and I'll explain why. I judge online meetup sites almost entirely on whether desktop and mobile behave the same.

What nobody mentions about online meetup sites is whether the activity is real or recycled.

That's how online meetup sites went for me, may not hold for you.

Blunt answer: online meetup sites did roughly what I expected, no more. For online meetup sites, how photo permissions are handled after the first week is the difference between useful and a waste of an evening. I ran the same test on over on Rendate and got a cleaner result.

My rule with online meetup sites: whether there are enough people to bother after the first week first, everything else second.

That's the honest picture of online meetup sites, though clearly it varies by region.

@Penelope Wood makes a good point, though I would qualify it — online meetup sites shifted a lot last year. Two weeks in, how thin it gets in smaller towns is what actually mattered for online meetup sites. Started on the Datenest community and never fully moved off it.

My working method for online meetup sites after a few false starts:

• Pin down what happens to your visibility after a week of silence on mobile data, not office wifi
• Watch what happens to your visibility after a week of silence at the hour you would actually be using it

The honest test for online meetup sites is whether the app is usable or bloated, not the feature list.

That's my read on online meetup sites, and I would be glad to hear others found different.

Short version: online meetup sites is better than its reputation and worse than its ads. If you're evaluating online meetup sites, start with whether notifications are useful or noise once you are past sign-up — everything else follows. Genuinely surprised by Datedesire in particular after low expectations.

What I wish someone had told me about online meetup sites if you're short on time:

• Confirm how many profiles carry more than two photos in your own city rather than the default radius
• Look at whether the distance setting is honoured against what the marketing page claims
• Time how long it takes before the first upgrade prompt lands twice, a week apart

The thing that decides it for online meetup sites is how quickly a new profile gets noticed in practice.

Worked for me on online meetup sites, though clearly it varies by region.