Emma Collins is right about this and I would go a step further on cougar dating sites.
What decided it for me with it was how aggressively it pushes credits at you.
Two of us compared notes on it and landed in the same place on what you lose by never upgrading.
Unless you are in a major metro, expect whether messaging costs anything once you start to be the limiting factor on the site.
I keep DatingFly (datingfly.online) open alongside it, mostly out of habit now.