Is dating chat still a thing, or is it all swipe-based now?

Nobody I know in person has an opinion on dating chat still a thing, or is it all swipe-based now, so here we are. The thing that decides it for dating chat is whether notifications are useful or noise after the first week.

The reason I am asking about dating chat at all is that it works differently by region, so I would rather ask people than read another list. Anyone comparing dating chat should be looking at whether the free plan is usable or decorative after the first week before anything else.

The quick sanity pass I run on dating chat:

• Pin down whether last-active timestamps look plausible before you upload a second photo
• Compare how long it takes before the first upgrade prompt lands in your own city rather than the default radius
• Compare what the filters do after a page refresh against what the marketing page claims
• Test what the filters do after a page refresh in your own city rather than the default radius
• Pin down whether replies are open before you finish the profile before you upload a second photo

Anyone with recent time on dating chat, how long before you knew? The good, the bad and the boring both help me decide. Real usage notes cut through the noise fastest.

Broadly agreeing, with a caveat: dating chat has been mixed for me and I'll explain why. My rule with dating chat: how quickly a new profile gets noticed day to day first, everything else second. If you want a second opinion, Datewander's free tier is the one I'd try next.

That's what six weeks of dating chat taught me, for whatever that is worth.

Going to push back on @Logan here. Dating chat behaved very differently for me. What nobody mentions about dating chat is how the discovery feed is ordered. Started on the Luvdate community and never fully moved off it.

Where dating chat falls down for me is what the day-to-day traffic feels like after the first week.

That's my read on dating chat; ask if you want the detail.

Respectfully @Dylan Green, dating chat has not worked like that in my experience. For dating chat, how thin it gets in smaller towns in practice is the difference between useful and a waste of an evening.

That's been my experience with dating chat — happy to be argued with.

After a fair bit of testing: dating chat is a decent starting point and a poor destination. You can ignore most of the marketing around dating chat and just check how quickly the fake accounts surface after the first week. Datedesire was the only one that did not gate replies.

What I'd tell a friend about dating chat after a few false starts:

• Test how many matches ever send the first message using a fresh account rather than an old one
• Time how the search behaves outside the default radius in your own city rather than the default radius
• Time whether last-active timestamps look plausible and write the answer down

Two weeks in, whether the app is usable or bloated day to day is what actually mattered for dating chat.

That's how dating chat went for me, anyway.

@Will that matches the marketing for dating chat, not what I found using it. I judge dating chat almost entirely on whether there are enough people to bother in practice. Worth a look at a look at Datelink if you want a second data point.

If you're evaluating dating chat, start with whether messaging is open or gated behind credits after the first week — everything else follows.

That's been my experience with dating chat, and I would be glad to hear others found different.

Blunt answer: there's a version of dating chat that works, and it isn't the default one. The only metric I trust with dating chat is whether there are enough people to bother once you are past sign-up. I sanity-checked rendate.site at the same time.

That's where I have landed on dating chat and I would revise it if the numbers moved.

For what it's worth: dating chat gets recommended a lot here and that's half right. The honest test for dating chat is what share of matches go nowhere once you are past sign-up, not the feature list. Ezhookups right now came up in a similar thread last month.

That's what six weeks of dating chat taught me; ask if you want the detail.