What's the general consensus on the latest freedating site updates?

I want to be wrong about what's the general consensus on the latest freedating site updates, so tell me if I am. The bit nobody covers on freedating is the trial that quietly renews.

I have tried a few options across free platforms already and none of them stuck. You can work around surprise billing on freedating, but you have to be deliberate about it.

If you have used freedating, these are the bits I care about:

• Test surprise billing on freedating deliberately in week one rather than hoping it improves
• Fill the prompts in properly; blank profiles get skipped on freedating
• Photos with other people in them do worse on freedating than you would guess
• Ask most people in this thread what freedating is like where they actually live, not where you wish you lived
• Block early and report often on freedating — it trains the feed faster than anything

Any first-hand experience with what's the general consensus on the latest freedating site updates is welcome, good or bad.

@Haley Frost makes a fair point about freedating, but i will push back here, because freedating worked fine for me and the upgrade nag was never the issue. The thing people underrate about freedating is how much the pay-to-see-likes trick depends on your own city. There is no version of freedating where the upgrade nag sorts itself out without you doing something.

Nobody warns you that the trial that quietly renews on freedating scales with how many people are online at your hours. I judge freedating by one thing now: whether surprise billing improves or worsens once you are past the novelty. What changed my results on freedating was treating the pay-to-see-likes trick as a filtering problem rather than a platform problem.

Chloe_W and I've clearly used freedating differently, because i would argue the opposite on freedating: surprise billing is the one thing it handles better than free dating apps. The thing people underrate about freedating is how much surprise billing depends on your own city.

I keep two accounts running to compare the trial that quietly renews across the free-tier sites, and freedating sits mid-table. Not saying freedating suits everyone, but it's not the disaster this thread implies.

Worth a look alongside freedating: Flurrydate, if only to see how differently surprise billing can be handled.

That tracks with my freedating run, which was fine until locked messaging became the whole experience. You can work around the trial that quietly renews on freedating, but you have to be deliberate about it.

The thing people underrate about freedating is how much locked messaging depends on your own city. The pattern I see with freedating is that a free tier that's not free is fine early and degrades as you go. For people replying above, the freedating experience lives or dies on locked messaging and almost nothing else.

Reading this back, my freedating notes say almost the same thing about the paywall. If locked messaging is your main worry with freedating, test it in the first week rather than the first month. I judge freedating by one thing now: whether the upgrade nag improves or worsens once you are past the novelty. Nobody warns you that surprise billing on freedating scales with how many people are online at your hours.

Most of the noise about freedating comes from people measuring the paywall over far too short a window. The pattern I see with freedating is that the upgrade nag is fine early and degrades as you go. You can work around a free tier that is not free on freedating, but you have to be deliberate about it. Whatever you pick, judge freedating on the upgrade nag after a month rather than after a weekend.

If you do try freedating, do this:

• Compare freedating against no-payment dating sites on the same week, or the comparison is meaningless
• Run freedating beside one other option so you have a baseline for the trial that quietly renews
• Do not move off freedating into private messaging until surprise billing looks handled

For contrast with freedating I would look at Souldate; the free tier there behaves differently.

That tracks with my freedating run, which was fine until the trial that quietly renews became the whole experience. What changed my results on freedating was treating the upgrade nag as a filtering problem rather than a platform problem.

You can work around locked messaging on freedating, but you have to be deliberate about it. If the paywall is your main worry with freedating, test it in the first week rather than the first month. Happy to answer follow-ups on freedating if that helps.

Not my read at all: for the members answering here, freedating was the only thing that produced anything. The pattern I see with freedating is that the trial that quietly renews is fine early and degrades as you go.

For most people in this thread, the freedating experience lives or dies on the trial that quietly renews and almost nothing else. Most of the noise about freedating comes from people measuring the pay-to-see-likes trick over far too short a window. That is my read on freedating, and others here clearly disagree.

Broadly agree on freedating — the upgrade nag was what decided it for me too.

If a free tier that's not free is your main worry with freedating, test it in the first week rather than the first month. Either way, locked messaging is the thing I would test first on freedating.

I keep Souldate open as a control while testing freedating — useful for judging a free tier that is not free honestly.