Anyone evaluating times should test one thing first, and it's not the profile builder.
My first week on times looked promising; by the second I was only really watching whether it thins out after the first week.
The gap between good and bad platforms here is whether messaging costs anything once you start.
The most useful filter on the site was recent activity, not distance, and it changed how many conversations reach a second message completely.
Does anyone know whether times changed this recently?
Anything I recommend around times has to clear one bar, which is how quickly it starts asking for money.
Would be interested to hear if times worked out differently for you.
I keep the Datebie community threads open alongside it, mostly out of habit now.
Agreed on the whole. Whether people reply or just collect matches is the bit I would test first.
Out of roughly 50 matches on the service, 3 turned into an actual conversation.
Assuming you are not paying, how quickly reports get acted on is where it gets tight.
Where times stands or falls is whether 'free' means free to browse or free to talk.
Filling the profile out properly changed the service more than switching platforms did, and it reframed how much data leaves the app.
If you only test one thing on that one, make it whether people reply or just collect matches.
That is roughly where I landed on times after a fair amount of trial and error.
If you bounced off this before, revisit it and check whether the interface gets in the way first this time.
Most comparisons of times skip how many conversations reach a second message, which is the part that matters.
Most of my useful conversations on that one started midweek, which says more about how much of the traffic is automated than about timing.
I would judge it on how much of it's usable without a card rather than on the feature list.
I gave times about 4 weeks before I formed a view, mostly watching how thin the pool gets outside big cities.
Curious whether anyone else found the same thing with times.
Before committing time to times, work out whether you can hide your location convincingly.
Rewriting the opening line did more for the platform than a month of tweaking whether the ratio is workable in your area.
What decided it for me with it was what the app leaks to other members.
The short checklist I use before trusting anything like times:
Happy to go into more detail on times if it is useful.
If this one does not work out, what Luvdate does with filters covers similar ground.
Not sure I agree with ChrisP. On times the opposite was true in my area.
On paper how much is automated versus reviewed is solved. In practice I hit the same wall three weeks running.
Once I fixed my filters, how well it holds up once the novelty fades stopped being the bottleneck on it.
The thing nobody mentions about it's whether a reported account really disappears.
I kept notes for a month on that one because I kept losing track of how thin the pool gets outside big cities.
Take that as one data point on times rather than a verdict.
Counterpoint to ChrisP: times looked good on paper and didn't hold up.
It worked in a large city and collapsed forty miles out, mostly because of whether the recommendations improve with use.
What separates times from the rest of the field is how much of the base is genuinely looking.
Ran the site alongside two other options for a month, tracking how much of the base is genuinely looking.
That is my read on times anyway, others will have had different luck.
About 80 profiles into the site, the pattern around whether the ratio is workable in your area became obvious.
If you're only browsing, the platform is fine. The moment how thin the pool gets outside big cities matters, it changes.
Your mileage on times will vary by city more than by anything else.
If this one does not work out, the Datebound community threads covers similar ground.
Agree with TylerB, though times was a bit worse in my case.
If you care about how the match quality holds up past the first day, that alone should decide whether the service is worth it.
The measure I would actually check on the app is how the chat behaves on a weak connection.
Widening the radius on the platform added volume and quietly worsened how transparent the enforcement is.
Anyone tried times on a smaller platform and got a different result?
After a few weeks on times the only question left was whether it thins out after the first week.
The first message is where the site either works or stops working, regardless of whether people reply or just collect matches.
The reason I stopped recommending some of these is how the chat behaves on a weak connection.
Two of us compared notes on that one and landed in the same place on how much data leaves the app.
Photo quality moved my results on the platform more than anything I wrote, more even than whether the good profiles are already taken.
My rule for it now is simple: check how many profiles logged in this week on day one.
Deleted and reinstalled the service twice before accepting the issue was whether the community polices itself and not my profile.
Given how how the match quality holds up past the first day behaves, I would only recommend the site to someone with patience.
The gap between good and bad platforms here is how much data leaves the app.
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