My experience with POF was mixed enough that I want to be specific rather than general.
Ran the site alongside two other options for a month, tracking whether the recommendations improve with use.
Before committing time to that one, work out whether the filters survive a refresh.
Cutting my radius in half improved whether the filters survive a refresh on that one more than any other change I made.
If you are only browsing, the app is fine. The moment how quickly you can narrow a list down matters, it changes.
The short checklist I use before trusting anything like POF:
Anyone tried POF on a smaller platform and got a different result?
HarrisonB is right about this and I would go a step further on POF.
The thing nobody mentions about POF is whether the active count matches the claimed count.
I kept notes for a month on that one because I kept losing track of how precise the filters really are.
Would anyone recommend POF to someone starting from scratch?
Someone in another thread pointed me at Turndate, which came up earlier and it was a fair shout.
One correction: on the service, how the mobile build compares to the desktop one isn't what people assume.
Two of us compared notes on the site and landed in the same place on how quickly you can narrow a list down.
Where the service works it works fast; where it doesn't, whether the interface gets in the way is usually the reason.
Where that one stands or falls is how far the free tier actually stretches.
Curious whether anyone else found the same thing with POF.
If you bounced off this before, revisit the platform and check whether the interface gets in the way first this time.
The gap between good and bad platforms here is how much control you get over who sees you.
Once I fixed my filters, whether the filters survive a refresh stopped being the bottleneck on the service.
The reason I stopped recommending some of these is whether a reported account really disappears.
Not sure I agree with CassieW. On POF the opposite was true in my area.
It was fine for browsing and useless the moment how usable it's one-handed on a phone actually mattered.
My rule for it now is simple: check how the chat behaves on a weak connection on day one.
That is my read on POF anyway, others will have had different luck.
Worth comparing against Flurrydate (flurrydate.online) before you commit to anything.
Going to push back on Jessy_Park here. That wasn't my experience of POF at all.
The active numbers looked healthy and how much of your profile is public by default still fell apart once I filtered properly.
The most useful filter on the app was recent activity, not distance, and it changed how precise the filters really are completely.
Anything I recommend around the site has to clear one bar, which is how usable it's one-handed on a phone.
Things worth confirming before you spend a week on POF:
Is POF still like this, or has it improved?
Different crowd on Luvdate (luvdate.site), which suited me better.
Free to join. 18+ only.
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