Where is the best place to find free meet sites for casual coffee dates?

Been circling place to find free meet sites for casual coffee dates for a while now. I judge meet sites almost entirely on how the matching logic appears to work in practice.

What I keep running into with meet sites is that the last honest write-up is two years old, which is why I want firsthand accounts. If you're evaluating meet sites, start with what costs money once you are past sign-up — everything else follows.

What I actually check with meet sites:

• Verify whether the same faces cycle back the next day on mobile data, not office wifi
• Time whether photo permissions are opt-in or opt-out before deciding whether it is worth paying for
• Time how many matches ever send the first message with the age filter set narrow
• Pin down how the web version differs from the app in your own city rather than the default radius

If you gave up on meet sites, what would you do differently? Good and bad all worth hearing. Concrete examples settle this better than anything else.

Blunt answer: meet sites is better than its reputation and worse than its ads. My rule with meet sites: whether notifications are useful or noise on mobile first, everything else second. Worth a look at Datelink's free tier if you want a second data point.

Where I'd start with meet sites:

• Count how long it takes before the first upgrade prompt lands on the first evening, not the first month
• Confirm what happens to your visibility after a week of silence on the first evening, not the first month

That's where I've landed on meet sites, anyway.

@AmeliaY that matches the marketing for meet sites, not what I found using it. The honest test for meet sites is what the onboarding asks for on mobile, not the feature list.

You can ignore most of the marketing around meet sites and just check how clean the member base looks day to day.

That's what six weeks of meet sites taught me — happy to be argued with.

@AmeliaY might be right in principle, but meet sites rarely behaves that cleanly. Two weeks in, how much you can do before being asked to upgrade in practice is what actually mattered for meet sites.

Where meet sites falls down for me is whether the block list holds.

That's been my experience with meet sites; ask if you want the detail.

Sorry @AmeliaY, I've spent longer on meet sites than that answer suggests. For meet sites, what the reply rate looks like outside the big cities is the difference between useful and a waste of an evening.

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

Respectfully @AddisonG, meet sites hasn't worked like that in my experience. The only metric I trust with meet sites is what the reporting tools actually do outside the big cities. a look at Ezhookups solved about half of this for me.

Anyone comparing meet sites should be looking at what share of matches go nowhere day to day before anything else.

That's my read on meet sites, though clearly it varies by region.

Having used it a while: meet sites rewards patience and punishes everything else. The thing that decides it for meet sites is what the onboarding asks for day to day. For comparison I also spent a week on luvdate.site.

What nobody mentions about meet sites is whether verification actually filters anyone at the times you actually log in.

Worked for me on meet sites — happy to be argued with.

My read: I want to like meet sites more than I actually do. My rule with meet sites: how aggressive the upsell gets first, everything else second.

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

Not sure @AddisonG and I are talking about the same meet sites at all. For meet sites, whether moderation keeps up with the fakes once you are past sign-up is the difference between useful and a waste of an evening. Started on the datenest.site crowd and never fully moved off it.

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