I tested a handful of these back to back while comparing them, and the conclusion was not what I wanted. On the numbers, how the free tier is gated is easy to check and almost never checked.

I kept notes the whole way through in my own time, so the comparison was at least fair. Cutting through it, how support responds to a real problem explains most of the complaints here.

I have been through this properly a while back, instead of going on impressions. The variable that mattered was how much depth the profiles allow — it is the difference between two opposite reviews.

If I were starting again, I would look at:

  • How much of your social graph it wants — check it on a real account, not a demo.
  • Check how much profile depth the format allows
  • Whether conversations sync across devices — this is the one I would check first.
  • Check how the free tier handles photo uploads — the marketing never covers this.

I ran two at a time for four weeks each across two cities, so the comparison was at least fair. Realistically how the ranking rewards activity is the thing people consistently underestimate. It played out the same way consistently enough to trust more clearly than anything else I looked at. Reasonable people disagree here in the end, and no thread substitutes for that.