Which are the best relationship sites for long-term love?

Going to be blunt about relationship sites for long-term love because I am tired of guessing. If you're evaluating relationship sites, start with how many accounts are real outside the big cities — everything else follows.

What makes relationship sites hard to pin down is that every source has something to sell, so recent replies matter more than thorough ones. Two weeks in, where the paywall actually sits once you are past sign-up is what actually mattered for relationship sites.

What I'd tell a friend about relationship sites, in order:

• Confirm what the filters do after a page refresh using a fresh account rather than an old one
• Look at what the filters do after a page refresh before deciding whether it is worth paying for
• Count how quickly a scripted account gives itself away in your own city rather than the default radius

If relationship sites worked for you, was it worth the setup time? Recent wins and recent regrets all fine here. Short replies are the only thing I can act on.

Disagree with @Hunter on relationship sites. The version of relationship sites I used had none of that. The honest test for relationship sites is what the reply rate looks like outside the big cities, not the feature list.

For relationship sites, whether the activity is real or recycled is the difference between useful and a waste of an evening.

That's the honest picture of relationship sites, may not hold for you.

After a fair bit of testing: relationship sites depends almost entirely on your city. Where relationship sites falls down for me is how photo permissions are handled day to day. I ran the same test on the Datewander community and got a cleaner result.

That's how relationship sites went for me, anyway.

Blunt answer: relationship sites rewards patience and punishes everything else. You can ignore most of the marketing around relationship sites and just check what share of matches go nowhere once you are past sign-up. I cross-checked against flamedate.online before deciding anything.

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

@Carter King I don't think that's right about relationship sites — at least not everywhere. I judge relationship sites almost entirely on how many accounts are real. Started on Datenest in particular and never fully moved off it.

That's where I've landed on relationship sites, may not hold for you.

For what it is worth: relationship sites works, but not the way the marketing implies. The only metric I trust with relationship sites is how the pricing is structured in practice in practice. datelink.online solved about half of this for me.

What nobody mentions about relationship sites is whether messaging is open or gated behind credits.

That's been my experience with relationship sites, anyway.

Short version: I want to like relationship sites more than I actually do. The thing that decides it for relationship sites is how much you can do before being asked to upgrade. the turndate.site crowd was the only one that did not gate replies.

Worked for me on relationship sites, though clearly it varies by region.