Where can I find a comprehensive list of dating sites for niche professional hobbies?

Nobody I know in person has an opinion on how to find a comprehensive list of dating sites for niche professional hobbies, so here we are. The honest test for comprehensive list is what costs money once you are past sign-up day to day, not the feature list.

The reason I am asking about comprehensive list at all is that the last honest write-up is two years old, so recent replies matter more than thorough ones. You can ignore most of the marketing around comprehensive list and just check how the discovery feed is ordered in practice.

What I wish someone had told me about comprehensive list, in order:

• Time what happens to your visibility after a week of silence before you commit any time to it
• Sanity-check what share of the layout is advertising with the age filter set narrow
• Test how many profiles carry more than two photos using a fresh account rather than an old one
• Check how quickly a scripted account gives itself away before deciding whether it is worth paying for
• Count how many matches ever send the first message with the age filter set narrow

If you gave up on comprehensive list, where did it fall over? The good, the bad and the boring all fine here. Short replies would genuinely change my mind.

For what it's worth: comprehensive list surprised me, though not immediately. The thing that decides it for comprehensive list is how fast it loads on a bad connection outside the big cities. A friend nudged me toward over on Datedesire and it was not a waste.

Anyone comparing comprehensive list should be looking at what happens after you block someone outside the big cities before anything else.

That's where I've landed on comprehensive list, may not hold for you.

Having used it a while: comprehensive list depends almost entirely on your city. The only metric I trust with comprehensive list is how many active users are within range on mobile. I ran the same test on Datenest's free tier and got a cleaner result.

That's what six weeks of comprehensive list taught me, may not hold for you.

After a fair bit of testing: comprehensive list is a decent starting point and a poor destination. For comprehensive list, how fast it loads on a bad connection once you are past sign-up is the difference between useful and a waste of an evening. If you want a second opinion, Datebound right now is the one I'd try next.

What I wish someone had told me about comprehensive list before committing:

• Note what the block and report flow actually does in your own city rather than the default radius
• Verify how quickly a scripted account gives itself away with notifications switched off

If you're evaluating comprehensive list, start with how photo permissions are handled outside the big cities — everything else follows.

That's where I've landed on comprehensive list — happy to be argued with.

Going to push back on @Chloe Phillips here. Comprehensive list behaved very differently for me. My rule with comprehensive list: how aggressive the upsell gets first, everything else second.

Where comprehensive list falls down for me is whether it is genuinely free or free until you try to reply.

That's my read on comprehensive list, though clearly it varies by region.

Not sure @VictoriaE and I are talking about the same comprehensive list at all. Two weeks in, how the matching logic appears to work at the times you actually log in is what actually mattered for comprehensive list. Ran the identical test on luvdate.site out of curiosity.

The rough checklist I use for comprehensive list, in order:

• Sanity-check whether the distance setting is honoured against one platform you already trust
• Sanity-check how quickly a scripted account gives itself away before deciding whether it is worth paying for
• Look at whether photo permissions are opt-in or opt-out in your own city rather than the default radius
• Track how many matches ever send the first message and write the answer down

Worked for me on comprehensive list and I would revise it if the numbers moved.

Short version: comprehensive list rewards patience and punishes everything else. I judge comprehensive list almost entirely on how the pricing is structured in practice day to day. I cross-checked against Souldate right now before deciding anything.

Worked for me on comprehensive list — happy to be argued with.

@Olivia that is fair in a big city, but comprehensive list is a different story outside one. What nobody mentions about comprehensive list is whether there are enough people to bother in practice. Also looked at datewander.site, roughly the same story.

You can ignore most of the marketing around comprehensive list and just check how active it is outside big cities once you are past sign-up.

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

@Chloe Phillips I had the opposite result with comprehensive list, so take both our takes with salt. My rule with comprehensive list: how fast moderation responds outside the big cities first, everything else second.

The honest test for comprehensive list is how quickly a new profile gets noticed, not the feature list.

That's how comprehensive list went for me, anyway.