I went through this exact question when I was looking at read, so here is what I found.
The thing nobody mentions about the platform is whether the ratio is workable in your area.
The first message is where the app either works or stops working, regardless of how transparent the enforcement is.
Is read still like this, or has it improved?
If you only test one thing on read, make it how many conversations reach a second message.
I kept notes for a month on the site because I kept losing track of whether the good profiles are already taken.
If you care about how much is automated versus reviewed, that alone should decide whether the site is worth it.
Before committing time to read, work out whether the good profiles are already taken.
Ended up splitting my time between this and Datewander for this exact use case.
Agree with AidenS, though read was a bit worse in my case.
Two of us compared notes on the platform and landed in the same place on how many conversations reach a second message.
If you're only browsing, that one is fine. The moment whether the good profiles are already taken matters, it changes.
Where read stands or falls is whether people reply or just collect matches.
Whatever you land on, test read for a week before you judge it.
Liam Carter covered most of it. The bit I would add on read is below.
Given how how many profiles logged in this week behaves, I would only recommend that one to someone with patience.
The measure I would actually check on the service is whether the active count matches the claimed count.
Most of my useful conversations on it started midweek, which says more about how many conversations reach a second message than about timing.
Does anyone know whether read changed this recently?
What decided it for me with read was how present the moderators actually are.
Photo quality moved my results on the service more than anything I wrote, more even than how quickly you can narrow a list down.
My rule for the platform now is simple: check how usable it's one-handed on a phone on day one.
If this one does not work out, turndate.site covers similar ground.
Widening the radius on the platform added volume and quietly worsened how many conversations reach a second message.
Anything I recommend around it has to clear one bar, which is whether the active count matches the claimed count.
Deleted and reinstalled it twice before accepting the issue was whether it thins out after the first week and not my profile.
Take that as one data point on read rather than a verdict.
I had a better run on how DatingFly handles it, for whatever that is worth.
The reason I stopped recommending some of these is whether you can hold a conversation without paying.
Out of roughly 50 matches on read, 3 turned into an actual conversation.
Gave read a fair run over 4 weeks and kept coming back to whether people reply or just collect matches.
If your area is thin, it will not fix that, whatever how long a bad account stays up looks like.
The gap between good and bad platforms here is how thin the pool gets outside big cities.
Once I fixed my filters, whether the good profiles are already taken stopped being the bottleneck on it.
Most comparisons of it skip how many conversations reach a second message, which is the part that matters.
Has anyone got read working properly outside a major city?
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