Are there any totally free online dating sites that focus specifically on marriage-minded people?

Putting totally free online dating sites that focus specifically on marriage-minded people to the group. You can ignore most of the marketing around dating sites and just check how the discovery feed is ordered.

The part that trips me up on online dating sites is how much depends on where you actually live. What nobody mentions about dating sites is how photo permissions are handled day to day.

The three things that decide dating sites before committing:

• Verify whether the same faces cycle back the next day using a fresh account rather than an old one
• Count how the feed changes when you narrow the age range against what the marketing page claims
• Compare what share of the layout is advertising before you commit any time to it
• Work out how many profiles carry more than two photos against what the marketing page claims
• Count how the web version differs from the app before you commit any time to it

For those of you deep into online dating sites, what did the first week look like? Good and bad both help me decide. Recent write-ups would genuinely change my mind.

Not sure @Caleb Perez and I are talking about the same dating sites at all. Where dating sites falls down for me is how the matching logic appears to work. Tried souldate.site alongside it and saw no real gap.

That's the honest picture of online dating sites, may not hold for you.

@Michael Martin is describing a version of dating sites I have never seen. The only metric I trust with dating sites is what costs money once you are past sign-up day to day. Datescout right now was the only one that did not gate replies.

The thing that decides it for dating sites is whether verification actually filters anyone in practice.

That's the honest picture of online dating sites, anyway.

After a fair bit of testing: there's a version of online dating sites that works, and it isn't the default one. If you're evaluating dating sites, start with how the matching logic appears to work once you are past sign-up — everything else follows. Datenest's free tier solved about half of this for me.

Practical notes on dating sites, in order:

• Verify whether the distance setting is honoured before deciding whether it is worth paying for
• Check how many profiles carry more than two photos against what the marketing page claims

Two weeks in, how photo permissions are handled is what actually mattered for dating sites.

That's where I have landed on online dating sites, for whatever that is worth.

Blunt answer: I want to like online dating sites more than I actually do. I judge dating sites almost entirely on how aggressive the upsell gets after the first week. A friend nudged me toward Flamedate right now and it was not a waste.

That's the short version on online dating sites, anyway.

Blunt answer: online dating sites has been mixed for me and I'll explain why. My rule with dating sites: what the reporting tools actually do outside the big cities first, everything else second. what Datingfly is doing is worth ten minutes before you commit anywhere.

That's how online dating sites went for me — happy to be argued with.