Which are the best dating apps for women over 50?

Trying to make a decision on dating apps for women over 50 before the month is out. Anyone comparing dating apps should be looking at whether you can hide distance and last-active before anything else.

What makes dating apps hard to pin down is that no two accounts of it match. You can ignore most of the marketing around dating apps and just check whether notifications are useful or noise after the first week.

The three things that decide dating apps this year:

• Count how the feed changes when you narrow the age range using a fresh account rather than an old one
• Test how many matches ever send the first message with notifications switched off
• Compare what happens to your visibility after a week of silence with notifications switched off
• Sanity-check what share of the layout is advertising before you upload a second photo

If you gave up on dating apps, what should I check first? Positive and negative equally useful. Firsthand accounts are what I am actually after.

Disagree with @Madison Reed on dating apps. The version of dating apps I used had none of that. Where dating apps falls down for me is how much of the traffic is automated on mobile. rendate.site was my control for this, for what that's worth.

That's what six weeks of dating apps taught me, though clearly it varies by region.

@Madison Reed that is fair in a big city, but dating apps is a different story outside one. The only metric I trust with dating apps is whether conversations actually go anywhere outside the big cities. Someone here pointed me at over on Datedesire and it held up better than expected.

Worked for me on dating apps, anyway.

Unpopular view, maybe: dating apps is a decent starting point and a poor destination. Two weeks in, what happens after you block someone is what actually mattered for dating apps. Flamedate is worth ten minutes before you commit anywhere.

My rule with dating apps: how much you can do before being asked to upgrade first, everything else second.

That's been my experience with dating apps, though clearly it varies by region.

Having used it a while: dating apps did roughly what I expected, no more. I judge dating apps almost entirely on how thin it gets in smaller towns outside the big cities. For balance I gave datebie.online the same fortnight.

My shortlist when weighing dating apps after a few false starts:

• Watch what happens to your visibility after a week of silence with the age filter set narrow
• Look at how many profiles carry more than two photos in your own city rather than the default radius
• Compare whether replies are open before you finish the profile at the hour you would actually be using it

The thing that decides it for dating apps is what the reply rate looks like at the times you actually log in.

That's been my experience with dating apps, anyway.

Blunt answer: dating apps is fine if you go in with low expectations. The honest test for dating apps is what the bot ratio feels like day to day once you are past sign-up, not the feature list. Ended up sticking with Souldate in particular for the messaging alone.

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