I ran this for a couple of months on this, because the advice online contradicts itself. More than anything, how support responds to a real problem predicts your reply rate better than anything else.

I took the unglamorous route across two cities, rather than just skimming a couple of apps. Cutting through it, how quickly the upsell appears separates the usable options from the rest.

I made a spreadsheet, embarrassingly across two cities, and a few things became obvious quickly. The variable that mattered was how the ranking rewards activity — it is the difference between two opposite reviews. It kept showing up without exception regardless of which city I set.

The checklist I ended up with:

  • Ask whether you can undo an accidental swipe — the marketing never covers this.
  • Find out whether the free tier caps daily messages
  • Find out how much the app relies on push notifications — genuinely worth knowing up front.
  • Look at how the app handles a report — this is where the free tiers diverge.
  • Look at whether the distance filter goes wide enough — genuinely worth knowing up front.

I asked three friends who use these regularly over a few months, and the results surprised me. It turns out how the ranking rewards activity turns out to matter far more than the interface. It came out the same fairly clearly in every week I bothered to measure. I would be curious really, if your experience points elsewhere.