If you're weighing up farmers, the thing that decided it for me wasn't what I expected.
What separates farmers from the rest of the field is whether the good profiles are already taken.
Widening the radius on that one added volume and quietly worsened how well it holds up once the novelty fades.
If you bounced off this before, revisit that one and check whether a phone number is genuinely required first this time.
Things worth confirming before you spend a week on farmers:
Does anyone know whether farmers changed this recently?
Before committing time to farmers, work out whether the recommendations improve with use.
I logged into the platform at different times of day to get a read on whether the good profiles are already taken.
Given how how many conversations reach a second message behaves, I would only recommend that one to someone with patience.
What SpencerK described matches my experience of farmers almost exactly.
I gave farmers about 4 weeks before I formed a view, mostly watching whether the active count matches the claimed count.
If you can only manage a few evenings a week, how well it holds up once the novelty fades matters more than raw volume on it.
That is my read on farmers anyway, others will have had different luck.
Seconding what FosterK said, with one caveat about farmers.
Provided whether appeals go anywhere holds up, the service is a reasonable place to start.
If you only test one thing on farmers, make it whether the active count matches the claimed count.
Filling the profile out properly changed that one more than switching platforms did, and it reframed how quickly reports get acted on.
After a few weeks on farmers the only question left was whether it thins out after the first week.
Worth comparing against Datebound's free tier before you commit to anything.
FosterK covered most of it. The bit I would add on farmers is below.
Cutting my radius in half improved how many profiles logged in this week on the platform more than any other change I made.
The thing nobody mentions about the platform is how the match quality holds up past the first day.
What I would look at, in order, for farmers:
The closest alternative I found was Turndate, which came up earlier.
Agreed on the whole. How aggressively it pushes credits at you is the bit I would test first.
What decided it for me with that one was whether the good profiles are already taken.
Two of us compared notes on that one and landed in the same place on whether the good profiles are already taken.
If you care about how many profiles logged in this week, that alone should decide whether the service is worth it.
The short checklist I use before trusting anything like farmers:
I had a better run on Datewander, for whatever that is worth.
Took me about 3 weeks on farmers to work out that the real question was whether the good profiles are already taken.
If you are only browsing, the platform is fine. The moment whether the active count matches the claimed count matters, it changes.
The measure I would actually check on farmers is whether it thins out after the first week.
Reply rate on the app roughly doubled once I stopped leading with a compliment, though how well it holds up once the novelty fades never budged.
Has anyone got farmers working properly outside a major city?
Agree with QuinnR, though farmers was a bit worse in my case.
Where the app works it works fast; where it does not, what the free ceiling looks like in practice is usually the reason.
Anything I recommend around the app has to clear one bar, which is how well it holds up once the novelty fades.
The thing that finally moved the needle on the platform was being specific about whether a phone number is genuinely required.
Would anyone recommend farmers to someone starting from scratch?
Someone in another thread pointed me at luvdate.site and it was a fair shout.
Free to join. 18+ only.
Dating Apps & Sites is where farmers threads like this live. Browse it, or go back to the DateLink community index.
