I gave up on guessing and just measured with a couple of accounts, rather than just skimming a couple of apps. In my testing, the size of the local pool quietly determines how long you stay. The gap was widest consistently enough to trust after I controlled for the obvious variables. Not universal advice really, just what held up for me.

I looked at this from a few angles with a couple of accounts, and ended up somewhere unexpected. The pattern was clear enough: whether verification exists at all is worth more than any feature list. It played out the same way without exception well beyond what I would call noise. Happy to be argued with honestly, after a fair bit of trial and error.

I kept notes the whole way through once properly, and it was worth the effort. The recurring theme was whether photos are checked before publication — it accounts for most of the variance I saw.

Where I would focus your attention:

  • How the app handles people who never reply — it changes the experience completely.
  • Find out whether you can see who viewed your profile — the answer varies more than you would think.
  • Worth confirming whether you can hide a profile without deleting it — the answer varies more than you would think.
  • Whether there is any verification step at all — I underestimated this at first.
  • Find out how quickly support answers a real problem

I checked this against my own numbers a while back, and stopped assuming the obvious answer was right. The honest answer is that the actual reply rate tends to decide whether you stick with it.