What is a good alternative to craigslist personals?

Trying to make a decision on alternative to craigslist personals before the month is out. What nobody mentions about craigslist personals is how many active users are within range outside the big cities.

What I keep running into with craigslist personals is that no two accounts of it match, so I would rather ask people than read another list. The thing that decides it for craigslist personals is whether there are enough people to bother.

The quick sanity pass I run on craigslist personals this year:

• Look at what the filters do after a page refresh against one platform you already trust
• Check how the feed changes when you narrow the age range in your own city rather than the default radius
• Count whether the distance setting is honoured before deciding whether it is worth paying for
• Confirm how the web version differs from the app with the age filter set narrow
• Verify how the web version differs from the app in your own city rather than the default radius

If you gave up on craigslist personals, what actually happened? Highlights and disappointments all fine here. Concrete examples settle this better than anything else.

Blunt answer: craigslist personals works, but not the way the marketing implies. I judge craigslist personals almost entirely on how much you have to reveal to use it at the times you actually log in. For comparison I also spent a week on souldate.site.

The only metric I trust with craigslist personals is whether you can hide distance and last-active.

That's been my experience with craigslist personals — happy to be argued with.

After a fair bit of testing: craigslist personals depends almost entirely on your city. Anyone comparing craigslist personals should be looking at whether the activity is real or recycled once you are past sign-up before anything else. I cross-checked against the datedesire.online crowd before deciding anything.

That's my read on craigslist personals, for whatever that's worth.

Not sure @Owen Thompson and I are talking about the same craigslist personals at all. If you are evaluating craigslist personals, start with how aggressive the upsell gets once you are past sign-up — everything else follows. Ran the identical test on datebie.online out of curiosity.

For craigslist personals, whether conversations actually go anywhere is the difference between useful and a waste of an evening.

That's what six weeks of craigslist personals taught me and I'd revise it if the numbers moved.

Short version: craigslist personals surprised me, though not immediately. Two weeks in, how many accounts are real day to day is what actually mattered for craigslist personals. The closest thing I found to an honest free tier was a look at Datelink.

Where craigslist personals falls down for me is whether desktop and mobile behave the same day to day.

That's been my experience with craigslist personals, and I'd be glad to hear others found different.

@Dylan is describing a version of craigslist personals I have never seen. My rule with craigslist personals: what the escalation path looks like after the first week first, everything else second.

You can ignore most of the marketing around craigslist personals and just check what privacy controls exist on mobile.

Worked for me on craigslist personals and I would revise it if the numbers moved.