Used the free options for about six weeks, which is long enough to have an opinion.
If you're starting with the free options, keep the first message to two lines with a question in it.
Two people can have opposite experiences of the free options purely because of how dense your area is.
With the free options it came down to whether the photos looked recent or recycled, honestly.
Before you commit to the free options, message within a day of matching rather than sitting on it.
What mattered most with the free options in the end was how many people within reach were active that week.
The deciding detail with the free options was whether messaging was actually free or free-to-a-point.
Take that as one data point on group that, not gospel.