I took the unglamorous route once properly, and it was worth the effort. In my testing, how quickly fake profiles get removed is the difference between two opposite reviews. That held consistently enough to trust once the first fortnight was out of the way.

I went back through my own messages to check with a bit of patience, so this is not theoretical. Whichever option you pick, whether notifications can be tuned drives the outcome more than luck does.

I asked three friends who use these regularly on this, and stopped assuming the obvious answer was right. Cutting through it, how new accounts are treated in week one is what people are really complaining about.

If I were starting again, I would look at:

  • Ask whether the app shows when a profile was last online — the marketing never covers this.
  • Worth confirming how many prompts the profile format offers — worth two minutes before you commit.
  • Look at how long a conversation stays available after a match — it matters more after the first month.

I spent longer on this than I meant to a while back, and it held up across all of them. Looking back, how much the interface pushes a subscription tends to decide whether you stick with it. It came through clearly every time when I compared like for like.