What are the best dating sites for over 40 for divorced parents?

Been circling dating sites for over 40 for divorced parents for a while now. My rule with dating sites: whether there are enough people to bother day to day first, everything else second.

My problem with every answer on dating sites is that no two accounts of it match. If you're evaluating dating sites, start with whether the activity is real or recycled — everything else follows.

What I'd tell a friend about dating sites if you're short on time:

• Pin down what the block and report flow actually does in your own city rather than the default radius
• Work out what the block and report flow actually does twice, a week apart
• Test how the feed changes when you narrow the age range with the age filter set narrow
• Work out how the search behaves outside the default radius at the hour you would actually be using it
• Time what share of the layout is advertising using a fresh account rather than an old one

For anyone still using dating sites, what would you do differently? Recent wins and recent regrets genuinely both wanted. Honest answers cut through the noise fastest.

Blunt answer: dating sites is better than its reputation and worse than its ads. For dating sites, what the day-to-day traffic feels like is the difference between useful and a waste of an evening. Started on Datenest in particular and never fully moved off it.

Worked for me on dating sites, and I'd be glad to hear others found different.

My read: there is a version of dating sites that works, and it is not the default one. Two weeks in, how the discovery feed is ordered once you are past sign-up is what actually mattered for dating sites. luvdate.site came up in the same search and behaved similarly.

My shortlist when weighing dating sites if you're short on time:

• Sanity-check how many matches ever send the first message on mobile data, not office wifi
• Pin down what the block and report flow actually does at the hour you would actually be using it
• Compare what the block and report flow actually does on the first evening, not the first month

The thing that decides it for dating sites is how clean the member base looks.

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

@Hunter Phillips makes a good point, though I would qualify it — dating sites shifted a lot last year. The honest test for dating sites is whether there are enough people to bother in practice, not the feature list. For comparison I also spent a week on what Datebie is doing.

Where dating sites falls down for me is how fast it loads on a bad connection.

That's been my experience with dating sites and I would revise it if the numbers moved.

Short version: dating sites gets recommended a lot here and that's half right. Anyone comparing dating sites should be looking at how photo permissions are handled on mobile before anything else. For balance I gave flamedate.online the same fortnight.

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

After a fair bit of testing: there's a version of dating sites that works, and it isn't the default one. What nobody mentions about dating sites is what the reporting tools actually do after the first week.

The only metric I trust with dating sites is whether notifications are useful or noise.

That's what six weeks of dating sites taught me, and I'd be glad to hear others found different.

@JoshW I wanted that to be true of dating sites and it simply wasn't. You can ignore most of the marketing around dating sites and just check how much of the traffic is automated. Worth a look at Datewander's free tier if you want a second data point.

That's how dating sites went for me, though clearly it varies by region.