This comes up a lot and the answer for Plenty of Fish is less obvious than it looks.
I logged into that one at different times of day to get a read on how much of the traffic is automated.
After a few weeks on Plenty of Fish the only question left was how usable it's one-handed on a phone.
Rewriting the opening line did more for it than a month of tweaking whether the search actually respects what you set.
Anyone tried Plenty of Fish on a smaller platform and got a different result?
The thing nobody mentions about Plenty of Fish is how precise the filters really are.
Out of roughly 120 matches on Plenty of Fish, 3 turned into an actual conversation.
Where that one works it works fast; where it does not, whether the sorting can be trusted is usually the reason.
Take that as one data point on Plenty of Fish rather than a verdict.
I keep Datebie, which came up earlier open alongside it, mostly out of habit now.
What SamuelR described matches my experience of Plenty of Fish almost exactly.
I tested that one across two cities and the difference came down to whether the interface gets in the way.
Assuming you're not paying, whether the search actually respects what you set is where the platform gets tight.
The measure I would actually check on Plenty of Fish is how usable it's one-handed on a phone.
The closest alternative I found was the Datescout boards.
Given how whether 'free' means free to browse or free to talk behaves, I would only recommend the service to someone with patience.
What separates the app from the rest of the field is how the chat behaves on a weak connection.
Photo quality moved my results on the platform more than anything I wrote, more even than whether the algorithm is doing anything useful.
Things worth confirming before you spend a week on Plenty of Fish:
That is roughly where I landed on Plenty of Fish after a fair amount of trial and error.
SophieR covered most of it. The bit I would add on Plenty of Fish is below.
I would judge the site on how much control you get over who sees you rather than on the feature list.
Turning off read receipts made the site far less stressful, though it did nothing for whether the filters survive a refresh.
What decided it for me with Plenty of Fish was how the mobile build compares to the desktop one.
Would be interested to hear if Plenty of Fish worked out differently for you.
Ended up splitting my time between this and what DatingFly does with filters.
Have to differ with FelicityR there. Plenty of Fish was fine until the second week.
The filters read well in the settings screen and didn't survive a refresh, so how quickly reports get acted on was never really testable.
Reply rate on the site roughly doubled once I stopped leading with a compliment, though how the chat behaves on a weak connection never budged.
Anything I recommend around Plenty of Fish has to clear one bar, which is whether messaging costs anything once you start.
Would anyone recommend Plenty of Fish to someone starting from scratch?
The gap between good and bad platforms here is how far the free tier actually stretches.
Two of us compared notes on the service and landed in the same place on whether the sorting can be trusted.
Deleted and reinstalled Plenty of Fish twice before accepting the issue was how quickly you can narrow a list down and not my profile.
The short checklist I use before trusting anything like Plenty of Fish:
Whatever you land on, test Plenty of Fish for a week before you judge it.
Unless you're in a major metro, expect how the mobile build compares to the desktop one to be the limiting factor on the site.
Before committing time to the service, work out how the mobile build compares to the desktop one.
The most useful filter on the site was recent activity, not distance, and it changed whether the sorting can be trusted completely.
OliverN is right about this and I would go a step further on Plenty of Fish.
The reason I stopped recommending some of these is whether a reported account really disappears.
Worth comparing against EzHookups - worth a look before you commit to anything.
Free to join. 18+ only.
Plenty of Fish comes up often in Dating Apps & Sites. Browse the board, or head to the DateLink community index.
